Eternals stars Gemma Chan and Richard Madden know full well how significant their characters’ love scene is in Chloé Zhao‘s Eternals. After all, it’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first bona fide sex scene in its 26-film oeuvre. While the impact of the scene is certainly apparent in hindsight, Madden and Chan, at the time of filming, were just trying to portray a 5,000-year relationship between Sersi (Chan) and Ikaris (Madden) as authentically as possible.
“I just saw [the sex scene] more in the storytelling of these two characters and having that intimate moment between them,” Madden tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So I didn’t really see it in the context of the MCU, the bigger picture or Disney, for that matter.
I just thought about this film, these characters and that moment. If I’d actually thought about the scale of that or the significance of that, I would’ve been more nervous than you already are when doing a sex scene.”
While shooting the scene, Chan was especially thankful for her shared history with Madden, as the two actors have known each other for at least a decade.
