Martin Freeman opens up about Miller’s Girl as Jenna Ortega responds to another controversial sex scene
The drama around the controversial sex scene in the erotic thriller Miller’s Girl continues, as the male lead Martin Freeman has decided to break his silence and respond to the controversy around the flick.
Miller’s Girl follows creative writing teacher and author Jonathan Miller, who enters into a complicated relationship with his student Cairo Sweet following a challenging writing assignment. It levies a sharp critique of the power imbalances, exploitation and abuse in student-teacher relationships, as the relationship between the two gets increasingly more sexual and obsessive.
Considering that Sweet, who is played by Wednesday star Jenna Ortega, is much younger than her teacher, many of the movie’s racier scenes have led to a lot of controversy online.
In an interview with The Times published over the weekend, Martin said the movie isn’t intended to glorify age-gap romances and that it’s more “nuanced” than a lot of the discussions about it.
“It’s not saying, ‘Isn’t this great?’” Martin said of the relationship depicted in the controversial movie. Musing that stories about difficult subjects can be tainted by association, he noted: “And that’s a shame. Are we gonna have a go at Liam Neeson for being in a film about the Holocaust?”
Next to this interesting comparison of Miller’s Girl to Schindler’s List, the 52-year-old also stirred up some controversy by confessing that he smacked all of his children. Although doctors recently called for a full ban on smacking, The Hobbit star admitted to smacking his two children from his marriage to the actress Amanda Abbington when he was “at the end of my rope,” painting himself as a bit of an old-school man.
“I was born in 1971—no dads in the f*cking maternity ward,” he said. “You would have been a bit weird if you’d gone to see your kids being born. Now, you’d be considered a bit weird if you didn’t.”
Despite all the controversy surrounding Miller’s Girl, it’s actually not Jenna Ortega’s first movie with a scene partner who is considerably older than her.
The 21-year-old had an intimate scene with actor and rapper Kid Cudi in the movie X, when she was just 19 years old and the now 40-year-old was 37.
The horror movie is about a group of young adult actors and filmmakers who set out to produce a pornographic flick in rural Texas, but soon find themselves fighting for their lives…
It received generally favourable review, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 75 per cent, and Ortega herself credited intimacy coordinator Tandi Wright for enabling the actors to flourish during their performances.
Apparently, Wright and Ortega maintained regular communication to discuss scenes and their execution.
Brittany Snow and Mia Goth, the other two leading ladies, also credited the intimacy coordinator for maintaining their comfort during filming and allowing them to be in full control of the intimate scenes. We love to see it!
