Even if you don’t know the name Rafe Spall, we guarantee you’d recognize his face.
The dashing 41-year-old English actor—son of acclaimed thespian Timothy Spall—has had notable roles in all kinds of projects, from blockbusters (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Prometheus) to Oscar winners (The Big Short, The Life Of Pi) to cult favorites (Hot Fuzz, The Ritual).
Actually, we take back what we said a second ago: We guarantee you’d recognize his body, if anything.
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That’s because some way, somehow Spall has wound up being naked on camera in a number of projects—18 times, by his most recent count!
“I’ve done loads too many,” he joked on a recent episode of Brit comedian Kathy Burke’s podcast, Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake. “They’re nice [to film] if you like 50 blokes watching you pretend to have sex. If that’s your thing.”
Now, we won’t list all of those instances here—there are plenty of websites dedicated to just that. In fact, that’s a reality Spall seems very aware of:
“Apparently it’s a thing where everyone who’s ever been naked on telly is on it,” the actor shares with Burke, no doubt referring to online databases like Mr. Man that catalogue people’s nude scenes on screen over the years. “It’s outrageous.”
It’s seems Spall used to be more laissez-faire about showing off the goods, but now that he’s a family man, he’s a bit more trepidatious. He has three children from his previous marriage who are now at an age where he worries other kids may talk to them about it.
Interestingly, he does still show some skin in the AppleTV+ comedy Trying, which he currently stars in opposite his romantic partner Esther Smith (the two also starred together in the 2014 Black Mirror episode “White Christmas”), though it seems the series is much less gratuitous than some of his past work.
But, of all the intimate scenes Rafe Spall has had to film over the years, his favorite? It was with another man!
“A high point of the sex scenes in my life, my number-one was probably with David Walliams,” he revealed on the podcast. He played Frankie Howerd and I played his life-long lover Dennis.”
Spall’s referring to the 2008 TV movie for BBC Four, Frankie Howerd: Better You Than Me, a biopic about the famous, closeted British comedian, which dramatized the performer’s decades-long romance with a man named Dennis Haymer, who became Frankie’s manager partly to help conceal the true nature of their relationship.
In the story of the comedic icon, Spall shared a handful of intimate—though not explicit—scenes with Walliams (who’s known for creating sketch comedy Little Britain with Matt Lucas, and judging Britain’s Got Talent for over a decade), which he admitted were easy to film because the two were great friends.
“He is a really lovely, loyal person. But part of his bit in life is being flirtatious. That is part of his shtick. And being very fluid across the genders,” Spall said of Walliams. “But when it came to the sex scene, he was scared.”
By that time, however, Spall was a seasoned pro in that department, and had no problem diving head—and hand—first into what the role asked of him: “I had done so many [sex scene.] I wanked him off and I had to kiss him and we had to do all sorts of things. I had to get in the bath with him..”
“When you do a sex scene with a woman, I am always acutely aware that you are in a room with predominantly men so all my concentration goes into making it comfortable for her, “Spall continued. “But with David it was like, ‘f*cking come here, you big dish. Get over there!'”
Well then, Rafe, we know you just swore off on-screen nudity, but as they say, why throw the baby out with the bathwater? It sounds like you have no qualms jumping into baths with dudes before—for art!—so there’s no need to stop doing intimate gay scenes, right? It’s what the people want!
Rafe Spall can currently be seen in season 4 of Trying, no streaming on AppleTV+. Unfortunately, Frankie Howerd: Better You Than Me is not officially streaming online anywhere at the moment.
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