Bridgerton cast left red faced as sex scenes watched by stately home staff

Filming sex scenes can be a nerve wracking experience for any actor and an awkward moment for crew members too.

But things were made all the more… stiff
during filming on the hugely popular Netflix show when room attendants working at the stately home refused to leave the closed set.

Producers chose the privately owned Clyvedon, home to the Duke of Hastings and the Howard family for more than 300 years, as one location for the Regency romance.

But it appears the committed staff at the Grade I-listed North Yorkshire pile were too worried about potential damage to the furnishings during the raunchy scenes, which have viewers hooked.

Director Julie Anne Robinson explained that despite strict protocols on how many people can be on the set when filming sex scenes, the ‘room monitors’ at Castle Howard resisted appeals to vacate the set.

She said: “When you go into a country house, there is far less flexibility than you can imagine — you can’t move the bed, you can’t move paintings, you can’t move the wardrobe, and you have to be quite delicate with the furniture.

“So in the duke’s bedroom, which was in Castle Howard, Phoebe and Regé-Jean spent a lot of time in that bed and there were room monitors in the room when we were doing the sex scenes, and they wouldn’t leave.

“The idea of a closed set is absolutely sacrosanct. But for these room monitors, their jobs were more sacrosanct to them. So they were in the scenes with us.”

As viewers of the series will know, the sex scenes between the Duke of Hastings and his new wife Daphne Bridgerton got very passionate, so it’s unsurprising that the Castle Howard staff were strict with the actors, cautioning them against breaking the furniture with their vigour.

Speaking to Deadline magazine, she added: “We would be shooting a sex scene and they would say, can you go easy on the bed, go easy on the bedpost.’

Bridgerton, based on Julia Quinn’s novels, is on course to be seen by 63 million households in the month since its Christmas Day release and has already been commissioned for a second series.

As well as Castle Howard, the Regency series was also filmed at Wilton House, Hatfield House and the Royal Crescent in Bath.