Bodyguard's Richard Madden Says His Family Is Awkward About Sex Scenes

richard madden ellen

It's no secret that movie and TV sex scenes can be difficult for the actors who have to film them, but how often do we think about the emotional toll these scenes take on the families of those actors? Well, Bodyguard's Richard Madden is here to tell you that his family, anyway, is not here for it. The actor recently revealed that he's gotten quite the talking to from his mom about filming such scenes, especially where his nudity is involved, and not warning them before they watch the project.

No, they're never happy about the butt. I've made a few mistakes in my time, which is neglecting to tell my mother that there's going to be a sex scene in a show and then get kind of a hysterical phone call of, 'You must tell me and your father! I was watching it at the time with a cup of tea and nearly spilled it!' Now she covers her eyes.

Poor Mrs. Madden! How dare her son not warn her first about any rampant nakedness on his part in films or TV shows. Richard Madden should know that his parents will want to watch their son's work, and also that they would be surprised to see any of his personal bits suddenly show up on screen. How awkward, right? At least he wasn't watching any of these shows with his parents when the sexy nude scene showed up. I can only imagine how horrifying a situation like that would be for Madden and his parents.

Richard Madden stopped by The Ellen Degeneres Show to talk about his international hit, Bodyguard. And, while Ellen certainly understood how his parents would want to know beforehand that their son would be naked in something that they were planning to watch, she also made sure to mention that we see his butt in the Netflix series twice and even told Madden that he was very sexy in the role. If reassurance from Ellen Degeneres that the audience likes watching you in naked sex scenes isn't enough to keep you taking off your clothes on camera for years to come, I suppose nothing would be.

For the uninitiated, Bodyguard finds Madden playing a former war hero turned London Specialist Protection Officer David Budd while the character is tasked with watching over a powerful politician whose ideas he actually believes to be dangerous to the country. The six-part drama sees Budd tackling this philosophical conflict and trying to decide if he should continue to do his job as ordered, or try to stop the person he's supposed to protect.

The series, which originally aired in Britain on BBC One, was a massive hit there. A whopping 10.4 million people watched the premiere (after on-demand and delayed viewing were added to the totals), with the numbers for Bodyguard's entire run being so strong that the show quickly became the biggest new drama in the UK in a decade. This success, which was undoubtedly helped along by having former Game of Thrones star Richard Madden as the lead, led to Netflix picking up the show for distribution in the US, and Bodyguard landed on the site October 24.

Bodyguard picked up two nominations for the 2019 Golden Globes, Best Television Series - Drama and Best Actor In A Television Series - Drama for Richard Madden, so if you want to see what all the fuss is about (or just take a gander at his naked butt) you can check the show out on Netflix right now.

Adrienne Jones
Senior Content Creator

Covering The Witcher, Outlander, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias and a slew of other streaming shows, Adrienne Jones is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend, and started in the fall of 2015. In addition to writing and editing stories on a variety of different topics, she also spends her work days trying to find new ways to write about the many romantic entanglements that fictional characters find themselves in on TV shows. She graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Photojournalism.