The Peaky Blinders actor is opening up about working with Harry Styles (and filming those infamous sex scenes).
Following the My Policeman premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, David Dawson sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the making of the film and working with the incredible cast.
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My Policeman starts in the 1950s with Tom (Harry Styles), a British cop who falls in love with a school teacher named Marion (Emma Corrin), and a museum curator named Patrick (Dawson). It’s no secret the film has more than a few steamy scenes, some of which include Dawson and Styles’ characters getting intimate on screen. Dawson says the production team brought in an intimacy coordinator to create these moments.
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“[Director] Michael Grandage was wonderful in that respect. He created a space that was full of nothing but support and brought on a wonderful intimacy coordinator, and the four of us explored what we wanted those scenes to be together.
“Me and Harry promised each other we would always look out for each other during it. I can’t emphasize the importance of an intimacy coordinator enough.”
Styles also spoke about filming these scenes in past interviews with Rolling Stone and said it was essential for everyone to make these sex scenes about love and passion.
“It’s not like, ‘This is a gay story about these guys being gay.’ It’s about love and about wasted time to me.”
“So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it,” he continued. “[It can be] tender and loving and sensitive.”
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David Dawson on Meeting Harry Styles
Dawson first met Styles virtually due to COVID. They were introduced on a Zoom call after they both were cast in the movie.
“The day Michael says, ‘You’re going to be meeting Harry Styles on Zoom,’ [you think], ‘How strange is life.’ Very quickly, you have to get rid of the musician you knew him as before. He’s a good Northern lad like myself. And we had the luxury of a three-week rehearsal process to build on that friendship and chemistry.”
You can see how that “friendship and chemistry” played out on screen when My Policeman comes to theaters on October 21 and Amazon Prime Video on November 4.
