Hollywood star compares early draft of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix show to ‘softcore porn’

Show is set in the 'golden age' of Tinseltown and follows characters as they attempt to make it big

One of the stars of Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series Hollywood has claimed the original script was far more explicit than the final edit.

In an interview with Variety, David Corenswet, who plays gigolo-turned-actor Jack Castello, there were “pages and pages” describing the intimate encounters between characters.

“A little edgier is putting it way mild,” he said of the first draft. “I don’t know if this is appropriate, but I mean, it was like soft-to-medium-core porn. It was very explicit and very descriptive. There were pages and pages just describing the sex and the intimate encounters.

“There were some things that you just knew, reading it, that were not going to show up on the screen. It’s like, ‘That’s not what we do in television.’ And you could understand the point of that is more to describe for the actors what the characters are experiencing, but with Netflix and Ryan, you never know because there aren’t any rules.”

Corenswet went on to point out that one of the main points of the show was to portray “these glamorous icons… having all the base instincts and fantasies and cravings and kinks that anybody has in any era”.

Hollywood, which also stars Dylan McDermott and Darren Criss, is set in the post-war “golden age” of Tinseltown and portrays both the glossy façade and seedy underbelly of the film industry.

The show has received mixed reviews from critics. In a two-star review, The Independent said: “Hollywood can never decide whether it wants to be an aspirational woke-alternate-reality fantasy or a nihilistic black comedy, and its conflicting tones sit uneasily together.”

Read the full review here.