Elizabeth Olsen is mostly known for her work in past and upcoming Marvel projects and for being the younger (but taller) sister of the infamous Olsen twins. Regardless, she also has a solid block of critically acclaimed work rounding out her resumé from Wind River to Martha Marcy May Marlene and hopefully now, HBO Max’s Love & Death. The latter sees her in a slew of intimate scenes, but now the star has opened up about why filming intimate scenes is
Love & Death just hit streaming at the tail end of last month. Viewers can catch it with an HBO Max subscription, but before they dive in, they should know this is maybe not the Olsen fans have seen on Disney+. Instead, the David E. Kelley drama has the actress playing Candy Montgomery, a mother who eventually starts an affair, leading to her ultimately stabbing a friend 41 times with a knife. This sounds like a spoiler, but it’s also stuff we already know about Love & Death, as the story is based on a well-known killing that actually happened in Wylie, Texas in 1980.
The affair portion of this story has her getting intimate with Jesse Plemons’ Allan Gore. (Her character’s husband is played by Patrick Fugit, of Almost Famous fame.) While intimate scenes are challenging for some actors, and Bridgerton and other shows have added intimacy coordinators in recent years, the MCU actress says she’s been comfortable with nudity since her theater days in an interview with Vanity Fair:
I’ve been doing it since day one of this career. Even when I was understudying, if I had to go on, I was going to be naked onstage. If it makes sense to tell the story—it’s not about my comfort, it’s about being able to tell the story the way it should be. My body is a tool in that storytelling.
While nudity is not really something that Scarlet Witch has gotten into during her run in the MCU, movie roles including the aforementioned Martha Marcy May Marlene and Oldboy have featured her getting intimate. Per what the actress is saying, her body is just one of the tools in her repertoire to help her in creating a character, and it’s one that was necessary for bringing real-life woman Candy Montgomery to life on the small screen.
In fact, Candy’s sexuality was one of the things Olsen says was most exciting about signing on for the character. She reveals her character’s choices went in a dark direction, but that she felt “sympathetic” toward her (and all of her characters), also noting:
I was curious about playing someone who uses her femininity to try and get what she wants. I was interested in playing with the tone that was in the script, where it was like, awkward, but also funny, and also tragic. There was an energy I felt in her that was obsessive and I was curious about it.
Love & Death hit the 2023 TV schedule on April 27th, with subsequent episodes dropping on Thursdays on HBO Max. There will be seven in total, so if you think a bored housewife, an illicit affair and ultimately some major stabbing are your thing, it's one worth checking out.
