Sex scenes for Wicker were "great," according to Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård

In the film, Colman plays “the Fisherwoman,” a lonely misfit living outside a nearby village who is soon chosen for marriage in a local ritual that displeases her hostile neighbors. Seeking a proper husband, the Fisherwoman soon tasks a local basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) with crafting a mate who, as viewers discover, is woven into the chiseled visage of Alexander Skarsgård. Once the Fisherwoman brings her new companion home, things in Wicker get frisky. “I do find sex scenes very embarrassing, and I didn’t in this,” Colman told EW. “Because we got on so well and because there was humor to the sex scenes as well, which makes it less embarrassing. And [Fischer and Wilson] are married, and they would demonstrate. So it was like, okay, we’re all in this together.” (As for what her co-directors demonstrated on the film’s closed set, Colman doesn’t say, though an intimacy coordinator was involved in every step in the tricky process.) 

Yes, despite the challenges of moving around in a Wicker-man suit during scenes that call for a certain level of vulnerability, Skarsgård agreed that filming the bed stuff for Wicker turned out well. “[The] sex was great,” Skarsgård deadpanned. “The restriction of the costume would inform the sex scenes a little bit because [we] shot those scenes very early on. It was the first couple of days. So I was still figuring out the physicality and what the limitations were of wearing the suit. So there were certain things, like in bed, you’re not super nimble, so it’s like, all right, maybe that didn’t quite work. Let’s do it this way instead, and then you figure out a way to make it work.” Indeed, one can appreciate the challenge of squirming in bed with a colleague on a professional set while wearing a wicker suit if one imagines the experience is similar to, say, swapping head to foot inside a zipped-up sleeping bag, or trying to steer oneself down a steep hill as one rolls inside a giant tractor tire—but we can only speculate.

Whatever way Colman and Skarsgård struck this intimate harmony on set, their effort was clearly worth it. The A.V. Club‘s Monica Castillo wrote that Wicker is “darkly funny and surprisingly moving (and not just on the bedframe),” praising the film’s central love story, which “unearths deeper feelings around belonging, security, and pleasure.” Wicker is in theaters now.