[The story below contains graphic language.]
Sunday night’s episode of Starz’s fantasy drama American Gods featured two Muslim men engaged in what many television critics and observers have called the most explicit gay sex scene in TV history.
The third episode of American Gods, titled “The Secret of Snow,” saw Omani salesman Salim (Omid Abtahi) and The Jinn (Mousa Kraish) engaged in a nearly four-minute sex scene complete with full-frontal male nudity and CGI semen.
But according to showrunner Bryan Fuller, the scene required re-shoots because the first cut didn’t accurately capture the mechanics of gay sex.
“I was like, ‘Okay, unless he has a 12-inch, candy-cane c*ck and can f*ck around corners, his d*ck’s not getting in him,” Fuller said of his reaction to the initial cut, according to Vulture. “So you guys need to go back and figure out where holes are.”
Based on Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed 2001 novel of the same name, American Gods follows an ex-con widower named Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) who joins the enigmatic and mysterious Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) as they traverse a United States filled with ancient mythological gods at war with the so-called “New Gods.”
On writing the sex scene for his 2001 best-seller, Gaiman says he found the process challenging as a straight man, having never before had gay sex.
“I simply went, Okay, well, I’m about to be writing gay sex without ever having had gay sex, but I’ve read an awful lot of books by an awful lot of people, I think I can do this,” Gaiman told Vulture. The book’s description of the sex scene reads: “It is an hour or more before the ifrit comes, thrusting and grinding into Salim’s mouth. Salim has already come twice in this time. The jinn’s semen tastes strange, fiery, and it burns Salim’s throat.”
Having read those lewd lines, Fuller said “We felt like for Salim, as a man coming from a country that throws you off the top of buildings if you’re gay, a blow job in an alley is probably his only sexual experience,” Fuller said.
“We felt like the djinn, in this romantic gesture, wanted to give him a more intimate sexual experience,” Fuller said of the mythical Islamic supernatural creature in the sex scene. “We wanted it to be incredibly visual and gorgeous. We wanted those things not to be lurid, but to be beautiful and captivating and for heterosexuals to watch the love scene between these two men and not go ‘Ew,’ but go, ‘That’s gorgeous.'”
Both Abtahi and Kraish, straight men who have known each other for a decade, said their friendship helped make the sex scene easier to shoot.
“Omid’s a genuine, real-deal, good-hearted human being, so that made it easier,” Kraish said.
“I think that friendship helped a lot with our comfort zone and the connection aspect of it,” Abtahi added.
The pair discussed boundaries and what wasn’t okay.
“We kind of winged it,” Abthai said. “We kind of loosely talked about it, and as actors, you talk about your comfort zone and ‘This is what I’m comfortable with and within these parameters, I’ll give you 110 percent.’ Then the director would be like, ‘Action,’ and you would have four orgasms, expecting a cut after any one of those, and it just didn’t happen.”
“This felt like an action movie,” Kraish said. “We wanted it to be real and we both wanted it to be about two men who are in love with one another.”
Fuller told Vulture he was pleased with the way the scene ultimately turned out.
“I hope there are Middle Eastern young men masturbating to that scene,” he said.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.