David Corenswet Says ‘Hollywood’ Sex Scenes Read Like “Soft-To-Medium-Core Porn”

Ryan Murphy's latest hit Hollywood has already made headlines for its dreamy yet scandalous take on old-school Tinseltown, specifically when it comes to the salacious sex scenes. As it turns out, the limited series could've been a lot more over-the-top. David Corenswet said that Hollywood's sex scenes read like "soft-to-medium-core porn" — at least before the initial scripts were tamed a little bit.

Corenswet recently explained that the sex scenes were meant to be "edgier," at least that's what they were like in the original scripts. "I don’t know if this is appropriate, but I mean, it was like soft-to-medium-core porn," he told Variety. "It was very explicit and very descriptive. There were pages and pages just describing the sex and the intimate encounters." It was apparently so graphic, the actor knew it would never end up on screen, even if that screen was Netflix. "There were some things that you just knew, reading it, that were not going to show up on the screen."

Corenswet explained that the graphic detail was there, in part, to help the actors understand what their characters are feeling in the moment. But he was still worried about how much of it he would actually have to do onscreen since "with Netflix and Ryan, you never know because there aren’t any rules." Eventually, the scripts were molded to focus more on the emotional side of sex rather than the physical, including Corenswet's character's "beautiful" first sex scene with Patti LuPone.

One the scandalous moments that didn't make the cut, apparently involved a secret rendezvous with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, which was written in the book by Scotty Bowers that inspired the show. "It was lifted from a scene that may well have taken place and that definitely went a bit farther and had less to do with the characters and had more to do with just the fun salaciousness of the activities," he said. "When I read it, I thought that would be a really big challenge."

Co-star Darren Criss echoed Corenswet's sentiments in a separate interview with Entertainment Weekly, explaining that the cast even had prosthetic fittings for full-frontal scenes, which ended up being cut out completely. "There's no f*cking numbers on the dial anymore for how raunchy it was," he said. "There was sh*t I clutched my pearls at. It certainly did make the initial read-through a little terrifying."

Perhaps Hollywood will ramp up the sex even more if it gets a second season. After all, as Coronswet said, with Murphy and Netflix, there are no rules.