Jessica Chastain Wanted “Balanced” Nude Scenes With Oscar Isaac in ‘Scenes From a Marriage’

Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac are promoting their HBO drama series Scenes From a Marriage together and have already had a viral red carpet moment that showed off their electric chemistry. On Friday, they stopped by The View to discuss some of the other popular moments from the show that have been getting discussed online—full-frontal nudity, for example. In the interview, Jessica said she was willing to consider the nudity only if it were “balanced.”

“I said to Hagai [Levi], who wrote and directed the series, in the very beginning, I said, ‘I’m comfortable with all the nudity, but any part of my body that you show, you’re going to have to show the same with Oscar.’…So there’s a shower scene that I have in episode 2 and you see my body. So now you see his body. So for me, I wanted it to be balanced.”

And it is: Isaac appears nude in episode 4 of the series. He claimed that he didn’t realize quite how much of himself was showing until people started talking about it on social media.

“You get sent the stuff to look at to be like, ‘Okay, I’m fine with that,’” said Isaac. “But I saw it on a laptop quite dark and I didn’t notice what was happening down there. It was a surprise when I started seeing all these things like, ‘It’s full-frontal.’ I was like, ‘No, what are you talking about?’ And I saw it, and clear as day on the big TV there, it’s there for everyone to see.”

Jessica has discussed nudity in parts before, telling Vulture in 2018, “For me, I’m uncomfortable with nudity when it feels like it’s not the person’s decision to be naked, when it’s something that has been put upon them. In a way, I see that as like a victimization.”

As for these two, it seems like they’re definitely comfortable with each other. As Jessica told People magazine, they’ve known each other for decades.

“Oscar I’ve known for 20 years. We went to college together,” she said. “We have the same process. When I got the scripts, I knew immediately it was going to be like a play, because most of it’s just him and I talking for an hour.”

That dedication, plus nudity, makes a great show.

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