Ophelia Lovibond wants you to embrace your inner Minx.
"Women have desire too and the idea that you would deny that is just being prudish," the British actress said in a recent interview with E! News. "It's failing to recognize that it's a valuable asset in a woman that you shouldn't be embarrassed to celebrate."
In episode four of the HBO series, her typically conservative character Joyce learns this firsthand when she has mind-blowing, and we mean mind-blowing, sex with Minx cover star Shane (Taylor Zakhar Perez). While it's totally out of the norm for Joyce, it turns out to be exactly the experience she needs to run the female-focused porno magazine.
Joyce realized, "Well, if I'm going to be putting this in a magazine, I kind of need to understand what I'm talking about," says Ophelia.
But the self-proclaimed feminist learns another important lesson after hooking up with the hot fireman: Don't mix business with pleasure.
Though the steamy romp in the sheets was a moment of liberation for Joyce, Ophelia said, "She finds herself suddenly in this quagmire of something that she, on paper, would kind of condemn and would say it's really irresponsible."
In short, Ophelia described it as a "really complex episode that looks at power dynamics and what it can do to you," adding that it's proof these situations "aren't always black and white."
Even so, Joyce walks away from the situation with the knowledge that casual sex isn't the cardinal sin she believed it was. "She doesn't particularly get on with Shane in any other way, other than finding him attractive and she just goes, 'But that's enough,'" Ophelia explained. "We don't need to both sit there reading poetry to each other."
Yet somehow, we think Shane reading poems might be kinda hot?
See the next two episodes of Minx when they premiere Thursday on HBO Max.