'I said to David Simon, the man running our show, 'I think you need to see a real feminine orgasm in order to show the contrast,' the 'Dark Knight' star shares.

• May 24, 2018

AceShowbiz - Maggie Gyllenhaal fought to keep a masturbation scene in her racy new drama "The Deuce".

The "Dark Knight" star plays a sex worker in the series and in one scene her character pleasures herself after a dissatisfying sexual encounter.

The 40-year-old actress explains she was adamant about showcasing the orgasm as honestly as possible because she felt it would add to her performance.

"I said to David Simon, the man running our show, 'I think you need to see a real feminine orgasm in order to show the contrast and to show that these are performative. It will illuminate the misogyny and the performance and all that stuff'," she tells The Hollywood Reporter.

"When I first said it to him, he pretended to spit his water back in his cup. But then he wrote a scene where my character is sleeping with somebody whom she actually wants to sleep with. He doesn't make her come, and so she turns over and makes herself come (climax)."

"And I was like, 'This orgasm needs to be the realest orgasm ever. This needs to be one that takes 30 seconds, that's very quiet, that's just about her'," she adds. "I thought about it, and then I went in and did that on TV. And that's way more vulnerable than the orgasm that's the performance."

However, Maggie's masturbation scene was cut, which prompted her to write a long email expressing her dismay.

"I wrote a dissertation by email, and then I woke up at six o'clock in the morning to see if they read it," she says. "And the second I got to set, I was like, 'Where is the orgasm?' I explained to them again why they needed it in. And they put it in."