Thandie Newton Compares Her Nude 'Westworld' Scenes to 'Having a Baby'
Thandie Newton has no shame in filming nude scenes for Westworld. In fact, she finds them quite liberating!
While chatting with Oprah Winfrey for Variety's "Actors on Actors" series, the 44-year-old actress, who portrays Maeve on the HBO series, compares getting naked for TV to giving birth to a child.
"You know what it felt like? It felt like having that fourth baby because it was a moment of such intense self-affirmation, not for me, Thandie, but female power," she explains. "I hadn't felt like that before. And it's ironic that I was standing there stark naked for a lot of it because I felt more in control than I've ever done because I said yes to this."
"I said, 'Yes, I will stand here with nothing on and I will speak these words,'" she continues. "I was so committed to this character's trajectory. I felt that it had secrets to how we need to survive as a humanity, which is to fight for the truth."
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At the time of filming the series' first season, Newton had just given birth to her third child, son Booker, now 3, with husband Ol Parker. She was breastfeeding and says she still had her "creepy belly."
"I'm like, 'OK, I'm going to stand naked and just do this thing," she recalls. "I hadn't been to the gym and, for me, it wasn't about looking a certain way. It was about having the courage to stand there naked and do this stuff."
Thankfully, she was tremendously supported every step of the way by her castmates and the crew.
"The showrunner and the director had the crew in such a state of respect and compassion -- everyone was so there for me," Newton reveals. "I'm surprised they didn't get butt naked themselves, just to make me feel better! But every time the camera stopped rolling, he'd say, 'Stop, stop, stop, let's get Thandie a robe.'"
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