In all of Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual musings, he likely never imagined the circumstance that Damian and Elizabeth Hurley created when filming the movie Strictly Confidential: a son directing his mother in a sex scene. “It’s interesting, people are getting very up in arms about this,” Damian tells Vogue, glancing over at Elizabeth. The mother-son duo are Zooming in from the same screen, seated shoulder-to-shoulder in front of a poshly decorated mantle. “It’s just showbiz.”
As a teenager processing his friend’s death from suicide, Damian found catharsis in creating what would eventually become his directorial debut. “It was quite healing. Sitting down and writing this properly sort of closed a chapter,” he says. The film, a “sensual thriller with a devilish twist,” as it’s described by distributor Lionsgate, centers on Mia (Georgia Lock), a young woman struggling to cope with her best friend Rebecca’s (Lauren McQueen) suicide. One year later, Mia reunites with Rebecca’s friends and family on the Caribbean island where the tragedy unfolded. “I think it will resonate with a lot of people who’ve been touched [by suicide], but I also hope, mixed in with that, people can also enjoy [a] sexy, glorious, gorgeous film,” Damian says.
Despite the heavy subject matter, the film—which will have a limited theatrical release beginning April 5—is rife with illicit trysts. One such taboo romance involves Elizabeth’s Lily, who is engaged in a passionate affair with her late daughter’s friend, Natasha (Pear Chiravara). But Damian didn’t write the script with the intention of directing his mother in a queer sex scene. In earlier drafts, Elizabeth’s character was a man, but after Damian was approached by Lionsgate to write and direct the film, he had second thoughts. “I started thinking, How can I make it sexier? And just thought, Oh my God, what if it’s a woman?” he says. “Of course, the second I had that part, it made total sense to beg—beg—my mighty mother to come on board.”
Elizabeth had previously promised Damian—who spent much of his childhood with a camcorder in hand—that she would gladly appear in his first film. She was always game to appear in Strictly Confidential, even when she was playing the much smaller role of Rebecca’s deceased parent, who is only seen briefly in flashback. “He had this genius idea to switch sexes so that mummy is alive and daddy’s dead,” she says. “It ended up, in fact, being a very challenging part for me. I would’ve been upset if I’d ended up with one line.”
But both Hurleys were totally undaunted when it came to filming Lily’s romantic scenes. “The fact that Damien would be my director in those scenes—which isn’t something you think is very likely to happen in your career—I found it was the most comfortable I’ve ever been in an intimate scene,” Elizabeth says. “I think it was liberating, in a way, to know that he had my back. There was nothing gratuitous that we shot, in my opinion. I felt very comfortable. The girl I was working with, Pear, felt very comfortable.” (Although they filmed on a closed set, Strictly Confidential did not hire an intimacy coordinator: “Our budget couldn’t run to that, unfortunately,” she says.) Damian credits the fast-paced nature of the film’s 18-day shoot with helping him to push aside any uncertainty: “We didn’t really have time to give it much thought other than, Let’s get the shot. Let’s make the scene as beautiful as possible.”
The two found that the most difficult part of working together was actually navigating their roles on set: Elizabeth is one of the film’s producers. “I think we both knew that I want the best in the universe for my son, and I know he wants the same for me,” she says. “Having had more experience, any time that I might question a location or the order of the scenes, Damien knows that I wouldn’t be trying to be the big guy.”
The two hope very much to continue collaborating. “We work insanely well together,” Damian says. In fact, he’s already looking ahead to his next film. But don’t expect another sex scene from Damian and Elizabeth Hurley any time soon. “Mom wouldn’t be in this one. She’d just be producing,” he says. Even though there’s a gag order over anything related to this next project, Elizabeth can’t help but gush. “It’s a fabulous script,” she says. Spoken like a proud mother.
