Cooper Hoffman had never filmed a sex scene before signing on to Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex,” and his first day on set introduced him to a prop table stocked with ball gags, stilettos, whips, chains and an assortment of sex toys. He told reporters at the film’s Los Angeles premiere that hesitation wasn’t really an option once he committed to the role, describing his approach as refusing to sit out experiences simply because they made him nervous.
The film casts Hoffman as Elliot, a directionless recent graduate who becomes the sexual muse of Erika Tracy, a provocative gallery owner played by Olivia Wilde. Building the film’s most intense scenes required a system the production team developed specifically for the shoot: a one-to-ten pain scale that let the actors calibrate physical intensity in real time.
Choreographer credited with prepping the pair described moments where Wilde would strike Hoffman and ask him to rate the sensation, adjusting force until they landed on a number that matched what the scene needed. The scale gave both performers a shared vocabulary for discussing what was happening physically while staying in character enough to keep the footage usable.
Co-star Chase Sui Wonders, who joined for a widely discussed threesome sequence, described the experience as something actors simply have to commit to rather than fully rehearse. She said building quick rapport with her scene partners mattered more than choreographing every beat in advance, since some of the film’s chaos, including a prop malfunction mid-scene, had to be played through rather than planned around.
Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, has said the film’s explicit content became something of a running joke with his own family, with his sisters telling him the material was mortifying to watch. On set, though, he described the tone as closer to comedic than shocking, saying he and his castmates broke into laughter repeatedly during takes rather than treating the scenes with somber intensity.
“I Want Your Sex,” which also stars Charli XCX, Daveed Diggs and Johnny Knoxville, premiered at Sundance earlier this year before opening in theaters July 31.
