The Netflix period drama Bridgerton has caused waves as one of the more popular series to debut on the streaming site in recent months. But it’s also lifted many an eyebrow because of what the Daily Beast called its “exceedingly sexy sex scenes”—which are now being pirated and uploaded to porn-streaming websites.
During the show’s first season, which is now streaming on Netflix, the lead character, Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor), undergoes a thorough sexual awakening and education at the hands of her newlywed husband, the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page). The scenes range from “passionate sex scenes and freeing masturbation moments” to an evocative encounter with a spoon and beyond.
And, naturally, the internet has wasted no time in pirating those red-hot moments and putting them up on adult video-sharing sites alongside far more explicit content, where, according to The Sun, “The pirated scenes from the £5million eight-part period piece have had hundreds of thousands of views.”
They’re hardly the first this has happened to—Game of Thrones and Normal People both went through the same wringer when their steamy scenes popped up on smut sites. Even now, The Daily Beast reported, “A quick search on Pornhub can return results from productions including Euphoria, Insecure, Escape at Dannemora, and more.” Given how popular mainstream shows’ steamy bits are on porn sites, it’s certain that Bridgerton won’t be the last mainstream series to suffer watching their babies grow up and leave the next.
But Netflix is going after them, regardless. The Sun reported, “the streaming service is at war with X-rated domains,” and an unnamed source close to the show told the tabloid, “Netflix have been working tirelessly to hunt down pirates and eliminate misuse of their intellectual property. Anyone thinking about trying this will have the full force of the globe’s biggest streaming service against them.”
And the actors are reportedly just as upset as the company they work for. Lead actor Dynevor told The Wrap, “It never felt like the sex scenes were just there for the sake of the sex scenes. They really told a story. They told Daphne’s sexual evolution and it was really important to get them right.” Dynevor and Page worked with an intimacy coordinator to make their scenes feel real and also “safe,” she said.
That safety seems to have been breached by online pirates stripping the scenes of their context and posting them on porn sites. Now, according to The Sun’s anonymous source, Dynevor is “devastated.”
“Bridgerton’s sex scenes appearing alongside some of the most obscene material the web has to offer has sparked horror and anger,” the insider told The Sun. “It’s been particularly distressing for Phoebe and Regé-Jean, two young actors who signed on for the role of a lifetime and did not consent to being exploited in this way.”
I, for one, am never a fan of copyright infringement or breaches of consent—especially when it comes to sexual content. But it does make one think critically about the very blurry line between mainstream sex scenes and porn clips.
The bald truth is that people who are turned on by the sex scenes in any show or movie, whether it’s pornographic or not, are probably going to jerk off to it. The average consumer won’t necessarily care whether they get off by replaying those scenes on Netflix, watching them on their favorite porn platform, or just remembering them after the fact. We hope that reality isn’t too devastating for mainstream performers to consider.
