Mare of Easttown: Kate Winslet rejected attempts to airbrush sex scene

Director said he would remove a ‘bulgy bit of belly’ from scene in hit HBO drama

Kate Winslet has said that she rejected attempts to airbrush her appearance during a sex scene in the hit HBO drama Mare of Easttown.

In the series, Winslet plays Marianne “Mare” Sheehan, a detective investigating a murder in small town Pennsylvania.

Speaking to The New York Times, the Oscar-winning actor revealed that when director Craig Zobel said he would remove “a bulgy bit of belly” in a scene featuring her and Guy Pearce, she told him: “Don’t you dare!”

It was also revealed that Winslet twice rejected designs for the show’s promotional posters because her image was “too retouched”.

“They were like ‘Kate, really, you can’t,’ and I’m like ‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the side of my eye, please put them all back’,” said Winslet.

“What worries me is that faces are beautiful, she said.” “Faces that change, that move, are beautiful faces, but we’ve stopped learning how to love those faces because we keep covering them up with filters now because of social media and anyone can photoshop themselves, and airbrush themselves, and so they do.

“In general, I would say I feel for this generation because I don’t see it stopping, I don’t see or feel it changing, and that just makes me sad because I hope that they aren’t missing out on being present in real life and not reaching for unattainable ideals.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Winslet revealed the unlikely inspiration for her Mare of Easttown protagonist.

In a five-star review for The Independent, Ed Cumming described the Mare of Easttown finale as “the ending the series deserves, a feat of poise and resolution that ties up its straggly ends without recourse to stunts or ex machina hi-jinks”.

In the UK, Mare of Easttown can be watched on Sky and Now.