Over the past few months, Nicholas Galitzine has become a bonafide on-screen casanova with appearances on Red, White & Royal Blue and, most recently, Mary & George, a new historical drama that finds the actor appearing in sex scenes galore.
Based on Benjamin Woolley's The King's Assassin, among other storylines, Mary & George, which premiered on Starz on April 5, centers on the rumored affair between King James VI and I (Tony Curran) and George Villiers (Nicholas Galitzine), who would go on to become 1st Duke of Buckingham.
If you haven't yet watched, let us simplify it for you: Galitzine's character is notorious for sleeping his way to the top, so much so that speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Galitzine revealed that he had to film four different sex scenes with different partners back to back in one day for the role. But the actor found all the intimate scenes to be “incredibly empowering.”
"I was going from room to room meeting strangers and saying, 'Hi, I am Nick, nice to meet you. Okay, this is the position we're going to be in,'" the actor recounted. "[But] you vicariously live through this man's sense of power," he added. "It's an incredibly empowering feeling. We had such a wonderful intimacy coordinator, and for the day players who came in for these singular scenes, I hope I made them feel comfortable. But I'm so proud of all that work that we did together."
Galitzine also added that it was "such a joy to be able to play someone so textured" since "George's power is much more in his physicality and what he doesn't say." He also admitted it was an honor to introduce new people to George Villiers's story.
"Most people in the U.K. won't know about George's ascent to power, but the writing is on the wall as we were doing press on Villiers Street in London," the actor told EW. "Life truly is stranger than fiction. Finding out all of this power that he ascended to and his voracious sexual appetite. There were things that we couldn't even include in the show because we didn't have enough time. He very famously bedded the Queen of France as well."
While Galitzine's next project, The Idea of You alongside Anne Hathaway, won't be as overtly sexual as Mary & George, we will still get to see some pretty intense chemistry from both actors when the long-anticipated film finally premieres via Prime Video on May 2, 2024 — and if you need proof, you just have to watch the trailer.
