HBO; Getty ImagesSo about that time when your partner was required to be a dick and wear a dick...
On an episode of HBO's Girls late last month, The Americans actor Matthew Rhys guest starred as a womanizing, prize-winning writer who gains Lena Dunham's Hannah's trust and then attempts to seduce her ever so charmingly...by abruptly exposing himself. The Welsh star wore a prosthetic penis for the scene.
"He said he was gonna do that and I was like, 'Who are you sleeping with?' Like, 'Who do you have sex with on the show?' and he was like, 'Well it's not quite like that,'" Rhys' real-life partner and The Americans co-star Keri Russell recalled, in an interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers Wednesday.
"And then there was the whole thing where he got to choose his own [prosthetic penis]," the actress continued. "But he's in such an awkward position, like 'If I choose a giant one, people are gonna be like, 'What a dick.'' So he's like, 'I just like let someone else do it.'"
Dunham and Rhys talked about his Girls role and prosthetic penis assault in a New York Times interview last month.
"I just want to make sure that everyone knows that's a silicone penis," the actress and show creator said. "We've seen glimpses of penises in the show before, but this one was pretty overt. When we wrote it in, I remember Matthew said, 'I just want to get an understanding of how we're going to shoot this,' and we were like, 'We're not going to make you take out your nude penis. Don't worry.'"
"They asked me, 'Do you want to pick your own prosthetic penis?' Rhy said. "I said, 'No. I'll leave that up to you.'"
Episode director Richard Shepard went into even more detail about Rhys' prosthetic penis in an interview with Indiewire.
"Matthew was like, 'I'll do anything for you, but I'm not showing my two-thirds-erect penis,'" he said. "One of the things that was interesting—I'll talk very blatantly here—you can get plenty of dildos that are an erect penis, but to get something that is sort of semi-erect is incredibly difficult because they don't really sell them commercially. We ended up getting it from a medical supply company."
"We spent a lot of time discussing the size and the color," he continued. "You'd be amazed at the amount of conversation looking at the semi-erect penises over a production meeting table. Then, of course, having Matthew sign off on it, on the size, shape, color, everything. Then doing it."
The actor told the New York Times the prosthetic penis scene was "embarrassing."
"Even more so that it was so predatory in its nature," he said. "There was something deeply uncomfortable about doing it."
Rhys improvised the super creepy smug look that his character gives Hannah after his assault.
"When we filmed that take, I jumped up and was like, 'I hate you!' He and I had become such good buddies over the weekend, and I was like, 'I can't believe you just made that face!' It freaked me out more than I could have imagined," Dunham said. "That was completely Matthew's creation—this guy who makes a 'gotcha' face. You can see that his pleasure isn't sexual. It's a psychological cat-and-mouse game that he likes to play."
"I wanted that moment to be completely shocking without hitting it over the head," Shepard told Indiewire. "I really want to shoot it as a wide shot, so your eye doesn't immediately go [to it], or if it does, you may for a moment question whether what you're seeing is really what you're seeing. I also thought that would be the best way for comedic effect as well. I'm really happy with how it turned out."