If you’ve been watching any of the major American TV series recently, you may have noticed some new members in the cast. Some notable members. Some lower members. From the animatronic talking todger of Pam & Tommy to the bathroom bugle bared by Harry Goldenblatt in And Just Like That …, plus a whole panoply in the latest season of Euphoria, we seem to have entered a dust storm of dick.
Despite having instances of full-frontal female nudity on screen since the experimental Dutch TV show Hoepla in 1967, the male equivalent seems to have lagged behind for several decades. This may have been partly caused by so-called obscenity laws, which prohibited the broadcast of an erect penis on national TV. Indeed, it wasn’t until August 2020 that British viewers got their first glimpse of an erection on telly, as part of Channel 4’s documentary Me and My Penis. British viewers have also been treated to glimpses of male nudity, even the odd nubbin, in a range of shows for many years – from War and Peace to Top Boy, from Misfits to Cucumber. Flaccid, yes. Fleeting, yes. But they were there.
Back in 2014, Glyn Pritchard got memorably tasered in the tender parts in Channel 4’s Babylon. Pritchard’s character was caught in a police raid wearing nothing more than a T-shirt (what he laughingly calls a “crop top” when we chat). There were, the crew told him, various ways this could unfold. “They said I could do all the rehearsals, and all the other camera angles, with underpants on,” says Pritchard, who is due to perform in King Lear, in trousers, at London’s Globe this summer. “So I’d only be naked for that one shot. But that made it feel like it would be an occasion – building up to it. So instead, I tried to be naked as much as possible so we all got used to it and it was more comfortable.” Pritchard barks out a laugh. “Obviously, within reason. I wasn’t going for my lunch like that.”
Perhaps what sets the recent American dongs apart is their idiosyncrasy. Even flaccid, the penis in And Just Like That … looked like a demi-baguette, while Pam & Tommy’s soliloquising sausage (inspired by Tommy Lee’s autobiography, in which the Mötley Crüe drummer chats to his penis) is more like something from the Muppet stable than a realistic appendage. Dear reader, it talks.
But who are the people who make this magic happen? As a makeup and special effects artist, Matthew Mungle has been in this line of work for decades, creating quite an impressive number of prosthetic penises. His second job may have been applying Johnny Depp’s makeup every day of the Edward Scissorhands shoot, but he has hit on something of a specialism recently in making realistic, mobile or comic male genitals in everything from Will Ferrell’s Step Brothers to Little Britain USA and Shameless.
“When I get an email or phone call from a producer or director saying they need a penis,” Mungle tells me, “my first questions are: is it cut or not cut, what’s the length and girth, how large are the testicles, and how long are the pubic hairs?” It sounds like a dating profile, I say. Mungle throws back his head in a great laugh. “You have to think about that stuff!”
While he already has a range of soft moulds for various peckers, which can be customised or used off the peg, Mungle also makes bespoke penises for TV and film productions by sculpting a whole new structure out of oil-based clay. That’s right – shaft, testicles, scrotum and curlies, all coming together in one neat package that can be glued to the actor’s stomach.
Well, as Mungle explains, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that: “There’s a flange at the top of the penis where the pubic hair is. I airbrush that with veins, different colours to make it look realistic. Then I have these pieces of hair lace I glue on. The bit at the very top of the flange is what gets glued to the actor’s own skin. That holds it on at the front. There’s also a piece of fabric that I glue on to the testicle area and, on set, that is pulled up between the buttocks and fastened at the top of the buttocks. It’s made of a sheer, nude-coloured power stretch material.”
If this all sounds cumbersome, you may be surprised to hear quite how sentimental some actors get about their intimate additions. “I made the penis for Chris Hemsworth in Vacation,” Mungle tells me. “According to someone who worked on that movie, they put the, er, unit in an acrylic box and presented it to Chris at the end. Apparently, he was so proud of it, he had it on his mantle, right next to Thor’s hammer.” High praise indeed.
As well as matching the colour of the actor’s skin, Mungle has to consider movement – and not just of the member. “The testicles I made for Step Brothers were quite specific,” he recalls, “because he pulled them out of his trousers and rubbed them on a drum kit.” You didn’t see the meat, just the two veg. “They had to move like free-floating testicles, rather than rigid miniature space hoppers. So I decided that we’d make actual testes that we put into a sack, which was very thin.”
Ah yes, the scrotum. Tell us about it. “With plasticising silicone, you can make it as soft or as hard as you want,” Mungle explains, heroically stepping over the innuendo. “Using something called a deadener, you can make the material a little softer than a pencil eraser. Sometimes, for a scrotum, I do a firmer layer first then add a second over the top for the movement.” My eyes must have widened. “I’ve learned to be a chemist as well as an artist,” says Mungle, clapping his hands over his chest. “I’m a little Geppetto in my studio.”
In real life, most penises come with their own set of inbuilt special effects: urination, erection, ejaculation. Yet these aren’t exactly a regular feature of television. Is that prudishness – or because of the technical difficulty? “I’ve never been called on to do a soft penis to an erect penis on screen,” says Mungle. “I’m sure that day will come. However, I worked with Matt Lucas and David Walliams on Little Britain USA and they had a sketch about two workout buddies. We had to sculpt whole body suits for them in latex: they come into the locker room, drop their towels and, well, they have extremely small penises.”
This, I presume, is where most actors will be keen to point out that a prosthetic is needed. Mungle details how he transformed these flaccid members into erections off screen. “We worked a wire into each very small penis. When the time came, I had to go in, get down on my knees, take the little penis wire, pull it up then walk away.” He pauses. “I think there’s actually some video of me doing that.”
Mungle hasn’t yet been asked to create an ejaculating penis, which would certainly feel like quite a step, given the still prevailing prudish attitudes to nudity. “With the way television is,” he says, “I’m not sure you’d get away with that. But I didn’t think they’d get away with showing this many penises!” Mungle worked on CSI not long after the infamous incident in which one of Janet Jackson’s breasts was exposed at the 2004 Super Bowl. “CBS,” he recalls, “came down and every time we did an autopsy of a female, you had to cover the breasts. It was ridiculous! You can pull out the heart, but not see their breasts.”
In this context, why does there seem to have been such a ramping up of rampant male nudity in the last year? Are we genuinely experiencing a change in attitude? Perhaps the increase in visible male genitals is an attempt to counterbalance the sheer number of breasts that have been on TV for years, most notably in such shows as Game of Thrones. Or perhaps TV is finally just catching up with the much less prudish world of theatre. “As an actor,” says Pritchard, “going to do that scene that day, I was far more concerned with the performance than the fact everyone could see my willy. I’ve been naked on stage a couple of times. In fact, I did a play where all five of us were naked all the way through. After the first two minutes, the story takes over and it stops being a thing.”
