Zoya Akhtar talks about Made in Heaven sex scenes, says they were broken down into ‘angles and positions’

Filmmaker Zoya Akhtar, one of the creators, writers and directors of the critically-acclaimed Amazon Prime Video series Made in Heaven, talked about the sex scenes on the show. She said that their intent was to be ‘straight up with it’ instead of being ‘squeamish’.

During a Clubhouse session hosted by The Bollywood Film Club, Zoya Akhtar was asked about the ‘aesthetically shot sex scenes in Made in Heaven’, particularly the ones involving homosexual characters. She was asked about the preparation and process that went behind the scenes.

“I think the first part of the process was intent. I think we didn’t want to be squeamish and we decided that we want to treat this as an extremely normal part of the process and part of someone’s life. Either it could be lovemaking or hooking up or just plain sex which is no strings attached… Whatever it is, we are going to do it in a way that it would be aesthetic, non-gratuitous and we have to be straight up with it. We have to be like, ‘This is it. Watch it. And if you are uncomfortable and you forward it, after four episodes, you stop forwarding it. Because you have to do it.’ That was the first thing – intent,” she said.

Zoya said that all the four directors — her, Nitya Mehra, Prashant Nair and Alankrita Shrivastava — treated the sex scenes much like any other well-choreographed sequence. “We treated it like you would treat a VFX scene or a song or an action sequence, where you actually break everything down into angles and positions, actors know exactly what they are doing, so they don’t come in there and are figuring out or are uncomfortable. You know exactly what their body position is, where the camera is and what’s going on. And of course, it’s a closed set,” she said.

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Heaping praise on her actors, Zoya said that they were not only ‘really good’ at their craft but also quite evolved. “Whether it was Arjun Mathur or Vikrant Massey, these guys are super-evolved and they are super cool. And they are all straight boys. None of them had a problem. It was very comfortable to do. Now, we have intimacy coordinators, so if an actor is not very comfortable with just the director, we have an intimacy coordinator in. The point is, actors need to feel safe and know what you are doing. They need to know what they are doing before they get on set so everyone is on the same page. Just keep it elegant,” she said.

Made in Heaven explores the lives of Karan (Arjun Mathur) and Tara (Sobhita Dhulipala), two wedding planners in Delhi. The show also featured Jim Sarbh, Kalki Koechlin, Shashank Arora and Shivani Raghuvanshi in pivotal roles.

A second season of Made in Heaven is currently in the making. It has been delayed by more than a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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