As “Girls” heads into its sixth and final season, it’s already fairly clear that part of its legacy will be its envelope-pushing depiction of sex and relationships. Right from the start, Lena Dunham‘s series made it clear they were going to blaze a bracingly honest, sometimes uncomfortable, and often controversial path. And even the folks at HBO, who usually have no problem with explicit nudity and sex, were concerned that “Girls” might be going too far.
THR (via Uproxx) has an extensive oral history with the team behind the show, and it’s revealed how one particularly messy element of intercourse raised an alarm at the network, and how “Girls” managed to still get away with it.
[JUDD] APATOW: From the beginning, we were aware that what we were doing was sexually provocative, and that’s what made it interesting and new and fun. Lena wanted to reveal something that is normally hidden — so often you’re not talking about a giant part of most people’s lives because people don’t want to portray it on film — and that opened up tons of stories that you’re usually not able to tell. But then we had a scene with a conclusion shot …
DUNHAM: It was actually cum arcing through a shot.
APATOW: And HBO said, “If this is in the show, we could lose our license.” We were like, “Oh my God, we’ve actually found the line at HBO.”
[Former HBO President SUE] NAEGLE: In HBO’s defense, it was like a fire hose!
[Executive Producer JENNI] KONNER: Mike Lombardo [then-president of programming] came to us and said, “You don’t need it,” and we thought, “You pussies.” But when Mike fought us on stuff, which wasn’t often, he was always right. I remember being on the phone with him and Sue, and we were talking about the scene in season two where Elijah [a gay character played by out actor Andrew Rannells] has sex with Marnie. Mike just couldn’t get his brain around it, and we were like, “This is what young people do; sexuality is fluid, you gotta trust us.” And Sue said, “What if he loses his erection?” And he goes, “Yeah, that could work.”
ANDREW RANNELLS: That’s still the closest my penis has ever been to a vagina. (Laughs.)
DUNHAM: We ended up getting our cum shot — it was conditioner and Cetaphil, by the way — it was just with Adam and Shiri Appleby instead.
The sex scene in question wound up causing controversy, but cum was the least of it. In the season two episode “On All Fours,” Adam Driver‘s Adam has an encounter with Shiri Appleby‘s Natalia that’s bad sex at best, and sexual assault at worst. The conversation wound up being around consent, not Adam’s ejaculate. So it seems going even further over the line narratively managed to make the fluids involved no big deal at all.