Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan Choreographed Their Own Sex Scene in ‘Ammonite’

Despite awards season looking a bit different this year, Oscar buzz is still very much so a thing, and Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan is one such film generating a healthy amount of buzz. The fact that the actors have 11 Academy Award nominations between them, including one win (Winslet’s for The Reader), makes Ammonite’s release a highly-anticipated one. Now, ahead of the film’s September premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Winslet has spoken about working with Ronan and how they choreographed their sex scene together.

Ammonite is a period drama centered around the real-life 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning (Winslet) and her younger geologist lover, Charlotte Murchison (Ronan). Though, as Smithsonian confirms, the women were actually friends, there isn’t evidence of a romantic relationship between them. However, the film explores a possible romance between Anning and Murchison, and director Francis Lee let Winslet and Ronan take the lead when it came to their sex scene.

Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves, Winslet said in an August 26th interview with The Hollywood Reporter. 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,” Winslet continued. “‘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.”

Winslet said of the experience, I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on Ammonite. And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”

Winslet’s confidence extended to feeling comfortable showing her body as it is on screen, which was something she actually felt excited to do. “I’m nearly 45, and Saoirse is almost half my age,” she explained to THR. “And to have an opportunity to be my real 40-something self, post-children, you know? Women aren’t really having the courage to do that. I was just excited to say, ‘This is what it is, peeps. This is how I am now, and it’s very much not the body I had 20 years ago.’”

Now, Winslet, like the rest of us, is just waiting for Ammonite’s premiere, which she plans to virtually attend from home. “I can be barefoot and I don’t have to put a dress on and feel sick,” she joked. The film will be released in theaters on November 13th.