Pop Culture Fix: Kate Winslet Says The Lesbian Sex in “Ammonite” Is “Not Like Eating a Sandwich”

Hello, my dear friends. How are you all feeling? Are you hanging in there? I’m thinking of you and sending you my love along with today’s Pop Culture Fix


+ Ammonite, maybe you’ve heard of it? Well, THR has a whole profile with Kate Winslet today, and she’s happy to let you know that these lesbian sex scenes were her safest ones she ever filmed and she and Saoirse Ronan choreographed them thank you very much.

“Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves,” Winslet explains of the most explicit one. “It’s definitely not like eating a sandwich. I just think Saoirse and I, we just felt really safe. Francis was naturally very nervous. And I just said to him, ‘Listen, let us work it out.’ And we did. ‘We’ll start here. We’ll do this with the kissing, boobs, you go down there, then you do this, then you climb up here.’ I mean, we marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative. I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on Ammonite. And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”

+ Well. This Kate McKinnon Tiger King biopic is really happening, I guess! She sure is going to be playing Carole Baskin! NBCU’s NBC, Peacock and USA are all buying it together?

+ Over at Variety, Caroline Framke chatted with Janelle Monáe and others about Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You: “As a fellow android exploring what it means to be human, watching Michaela be vulnerable on-screen as she walks in her truth gives me and so many the bravery to walk in ours.”

+ Amber Benson, for one, is really excited about the idea of a Buffy reboot with a WOC lead.

+ Samira Wiley is playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Sense 8’s Jamie Clayton is trans actress Christine Jorgensen and lots more LGBTQ+ superstars are other groundbreaking real life gays in HBO Max’s four-part mini-series Equal.

+ Lena Waithe’s Twenties has been renewed for season two.

+ Speaking of Lena Waithe, don’t miss Carmen and Natalie’s conversation about The Chi‘s third season.

+ Greg Berlanti to do his gritty reboot thing with The Powerpuff Girls (and knowing what we know about Greg Berlanti, one of them’s surely going to be gay).

+ The Berlin Film Festival is switching to gender neutral acting awards.

+ The West Wing cast is reuniting to get people to vote Trump out of office in 2020.

+ It’s storytime with Lupita Nyong’o, Tiffany Haddish, Grace Byers, Marsai Martin, Jill Scott, Common, Jacqueline Woodson, and more Black artists and writers on Netflix Jr.’s Bookmarks.

+ Blitz Bazawule will direct a Color Purple feature musical.

+ Peek into the The X-Files: The Official Archives creepiest cases.

+ Katie Barnes is doing some of my favorite writing this year. This week: Bring It On: From spirit fingers to appropriation, the cult sports film is much more than a teen rom-com (This was also featured in yesterday’s Also.Also.Also. including a tweet from Gabrielle Union!)

+ Why white male coming-of-age stories should be the exception.

+ Celebrities dole out unprofessional life advice on Don’t Ask Tig and Black Frasier.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1719 articles for us.

14 Comments

  1. I just saw on the news that author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has won the International Booker Prize!

    In an interview they said to identify “both male and female, an inbetween person”. But I’ve seen all sort of pronouns used and am unsure of a label they use.

    I have not read the book yet, but I have read some things by their hands and it was very good.

  2. As a German, I am not so sure if the Berlinale’s decision to erase “Best Actress” and “Best Actor” categories is gonna help the film industry realize where they are still lacking representation. To the contrary, I fear that the winners of this new category will all gonna be white males for the upcoming years… :/

  3. I have mixed feelings about Common. I enjoy many of his songs, but he also has an anti-choice song from the 90s that he still sings, while saying respect women’s choices. Like that song was on a list of best raps songs on a Christian conservative site. I will watch Jr. for Tiffany Haddish cause she’s just great.

  4. So that Buffy reboot is still moving ahead? Great now I have to spent alot of time on the most important thing of this reboot… finding out which queer WOC actress will/should play the new version of Faith!

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