Richard Armitage ‘improvised’ wild scene humping a pillow in Netflix’s kinky new BDSM show Obsession

Meghna Amin
Thursday 13 Apr 2023 7:00 am

Richard Armitage has revealed his notorious feral scene in Netflix’s latest sexy thriller Obsession was partly improvised.

The erotic series sees The Hobbit actor take on the role of William, who lusts after his son’s fiancée, played by Charlie Murphy, and unleashes an irrational side as he forges secrets to begin a tumultuous affair – with fatal consequences.

In one scene, William discovers his lover’s hotel room, where he hunts for scent, sniffing around the bed before pounding a pillow.

Talking about filming that scene, he exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘It was really unexpected because it was written as quite a different scene.

‘There was a tissue with her imprint of her lipstick on which we didn’t feel necessarily worked.

‘I was really conscious that it shouldn’t be in any way comedic so we sort of left it quite open and it was a bit of an improvisation actually.

‘Charlie had – without me knowing – sprayed her scent that she’d been wearing throughout the shoot into different parts of the bed and I just got the sense of it, and that’s where the scene just opened.

‘But the recording it wasn’t too planned, actually.’

Talking about taking on the dark role, Richard told us: ‘I read the page-turning script and I suppose I thought I’d never really tackled something like this before, I don’t know if I’m capable of it – not just the physical exposure, but I mean the kind of emotional arc that the character goes through. I love a challenge.’

During the sex scenes, Richard and Peaky Blinders star Charlie worked with an intimacy director, which sometimes saw them rehearse with ‘dance outfits’.

Talking about working with the intimacy director, Richard called it ‘fulfilling’, saying: ‘We both have done intimacy in the past where we’ve been left to our own devices a little bit so its dependent on you making those negotiations and hoping they’re on the same page.

‘But it was not just like guidance but another artistic brain in the room to help us develop the shape of what the physical vocabulary was going to be like.’

Charlie added: ‘We spent more time than I have ever done in the past on scenes, they were like that’s the dance, you know, but finally it was given some air time, and it made me think more about what I was doing and go, “Oh my god I’ve never really thought about what it was to do that, have sex with that person in that moment for those characters, what the fall out is”