Michael Douglas did some love scenes with Matt Damon for their upcoming HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra, in which Douglas plays Liberace and Damon plays his lover, Scott Thorson.
He opened up about the scenes, and rehearsing for them, saying it didn’t phase him at all.
"Once you get that first kiss in, you are comfortable," he told New York Mag. "Matt and I didn't rehearse the love scenes. We said, 'Well—we've read the script, haven't we?'"
He went on to say that he was worried about people judging how he portrayed these sexual encounters, saying, "The hardest thing...is that everybody is a judge. I don't know the last time you murdered somebody or blew anyone's brains out, but everyone has had sex and probably this morning, which means everyone has an opinion on how it should be done,” E! Online reports.
The film will come out on May 26, and Douglas revealed one part of the film that he negotiated with director Steven Soderberg to cut out.
He explained, “Liberace loved sex, and I didn’t have a problem with that. But, at one point, Steven Soderbergh wanted to show Lee [as ¬Liberace was known] watching a gay porno. I said, ¬‘Steven—you can’t do this!’ He said, ‘It’s HBO—it’s all right!’ I said, ‘It’s not that: I’d like my kids to see this R-rated movie, but I don’t want to show them a fourteen-inch d--k!’ It was the only thing I objected to, so we cut to different parts of the apartment during the porno.”
Douglas also talked about meeting him in person, saying “For me, Lee’s gayness didn’t even enter the picture—you just wanted to share the good time with him. And he was nice. I was attracted to his sheer likability.”