Kate Winslet Refused to Let Mare of Easttown Director Edit Out Her ‘Bulgy Bit of Belly’ From Sex Scene

HBO

Kate Winslet didn’t let vanity get in the way of her role as a small-town Pennsylvania detective on HBO’s limited series Mare of Easttown.

The 45-year-old actress told the New York Times that director Craig Zobel had assured her he’d remove “a bulgy bit of belly” that appeared during a sex scene between her and co-star Guy Pearce, but she refused to let it happen.

“Don’t you dare!” Winslet recalled telling the filmmaker, adding that her Mare of Easttown sex scene might be her last. “I think my days are getting a little bit numbered of doing nudity,” she admitted. “I’m just not that comfortable doing it anymore. It’s not even really an age thing, actually. There comes a point where people are going to go, ‘Oh, here she goes again.’”

Winslet further revealed that she sent back the show’s promo poster because she felt her face was too retouched. “They were like ‘Kate, really, you can’t,’ and I’m like ‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the side of my eye, please put them all back,'” she said.

The actress also worked with the costume department to find unflattering clothes for her character – a hardened investigator with emotional baggage – and told the crew to use unglamorous lighting that would make her face “look not nice.”

Winslet added, “Listen, I hope that in playing Mare as a middle-aged woman — I will be 46 in October — I guess that’s why people have connected with this character in the way that they have done because there are clearly no filters. She’s a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from. I think we’re starved of that a bit.”