HBO's new "sexy teen drug addicts" series Euphoria premiered last night, and the episode featured a graphic sex scene between 17-year-old trans high school student Jules (Hunter Schafer) and Cal Jacobs (Eric Dane, Grey's Anatomy's McSteamy), who is later revealed to be the father of one of Jules' new classmates. Viewers were treated to a rare bit of full frontal male nudity, with Dane's dick making a big cameo. But according to an interview with EW, the penis was in fact a prosthetic.
"Those scenes are very difficult to shoot," Dane said. "It helps to have one voice in your ear. One voice that you can express your feelings to, and somebody that is an advocate for the actors. It just simplifies a lot of things and makes for a safe and comfortable environment while shooting something that is fairly uncomfortable to shoot. And certainly, the stuff that we did in the pilot is no exception. It's a pretty intense scene."
But Dane said he was willing to show off his actual assets had the script called for it. "I'm willing to do anything that's critical to the story and crucial to creating a very real and truthful feel to how the story is gonna go down," he added. "I just don't see how you shoot a scene like that without showing nudity. And, you know, it kind of matches the stakes. The stakes are so high, you can't hold anything back, really."
Besides featuring a cock shot, Euphoria's pilot episode was refreshing in the way that it handled Jules' sexuality. Most trans women on TV are either sexless martyrs or sex workers. Never before have we seen a teenage trans girl on Grindr looking for someone to play with, and based on the few episodes of Euphoria made available to the press, Jules is a complicated teenager whose sexual identity doesn't center on a desire for bottom surgery -- as groundbreaking as Pose is, almost every trans character who has expressed sexual desire has also expressed a hatred for their genitals. Like the rest of Euphoria's main characters, Jules is simply allowed to be a horny teenager, something incredibly refreshing for a young trans girl on television.
Euphoria airs Sundays on HBO.
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