It is safe to say Jason Isaacs is very comfortable taking it all off for a role.
Earlier this year, the 62-year-old actor made a big impression on The White Lotus has he gave audiences a glimpse of the large snake under his silk robe.
Isaacs’ character Timothy Ratliff unleashes his beast by going commando under his robe and inadvertently flashes his children in one of the more jarring scenes of the season.
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While the full-frontal moment turned out to be a prosthetic, it was the nonetheless quite the sight for sore eyes.
Now Isaacs is opening up about one of the first times he took it all off on stage. It was at the start of his career in one of the most iconic queer productions alongside one of Hollywood’s biggest action stars.
During an appearance on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast, Isaacs discussed playing the lover to a then-25-year-old Daniel Craig in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America during its run at London’s National Theatre in 1993.
The Tony-winning play examines the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s and follows a group of intersecting lives in New York City. Isaacs played Louis, a gay man who leaves his partner because he’s unable to deal with his lover’s AIDS diagnosis. Craig played Joe, a married closeted Mormon coming to terms with his sexuality who begins a relationship with Louis.
The duo got very up close and personal.
“We had a lot of sex,” Isaacs joked to Ferguson, before mentioning how nervous he was to perform the intimate scenes in the beginning.
However all of his fears were immediately soothed as soon as he and Craig locked lips for the first time.
“And then I kissed Daniel and he was so easy with it. And then I was easy with it and we were really easy with each other’s bodies and I thought, oh, it’s just that,” the Harry Potter star said.
“God, I built this up and, and we had to lie naked on under the sheet for an hour every night. And it was easy.” Laying undressed with James Bond? A great gig if you can get it!
Isaacs continued to rave about Craig’s uninhibitedness with letting it hang all out.
“He was the perfect [James] Bond because he’s the only person I’ve ever met who is or maybe more comfortable naked than he is dressed,” Isaacs added. “He’s very easy in his body.”
And easy on the eyes.
But Isaacs and Craig’s in the buff romps also came with some downsides.
“I used to drag him to showers to make him shave because I got a stubble rash off him,” Isaacs said of Craig’s painful scruff.
And when they weren’t reciting their intense lines, the actors went off script and manhandled each other’s privates without anyone ever noticing. Isaacs admitted: “We used to pinch each others bits under the sheets to make each other laugh.”
We love “laughing” with our buddies!
Meanwhile, Craig is no stranger to same-sex love scenes, most recently sharing time in bed with Drew Starkey in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer.
Perhaps to Isaacs’ point of how “easy” Craig is with intimate scenes, the former 007 star downplayed his same-sex moments with Starkey
“I feel like the physical act is the least interesting thing,” Craig previously told EW. “We’re all grownups. This is what people do. But the only thing that’s interesting, and what I think hopefully works about the scenes, is the emotional journey of each character.”
An emotional journey never got us so hot & bothered!
You can listen to Isaacs’ full conversation with Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the Dinner’s on Me podcast.
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