Amanda Seyfried’s ‘prosthetic butthole’ isn’t a joke – costuming nudity is important for actors

Amanda Seyfried wears a “prosthetic butthole” in her new movie, The Testament of Ann Lee.

She told BBC Radio 2:

This movie needed to be graphic, so I wore a prosthetic butthole. […] It was cool. It was exciting. I was pregnant and naked, but I wasn’t naked at all. And at the end of the movie I was standing in front of a burning building with just a merkin. I felt so free.

On the surface, Seyfried’s comments might seem like a case of TMI. Audiences generally only see costume as a tool that helps to create and support a narrative. But costume also performs the important, invisible technical function of a quasi-body the actor inhabits to transform into their character.

Actors have intimate interactions with their costume that audiences don’t notice, including personal physical experiences of warmth, cold, comfort, coverage, restriction or movement.

But some roles can require the actor to portray intense emotional vulnerability, or distressing events, which can leave them feeling anything from mildly embarrassed to deeply traumatised.

By creating a costume that can be taken off, even when the character appears to be naked, costume designers help create an important separation between the role and the actor.

Taking care of the actor

Historically, actors have often been expected to do whatever appalling things the director demanded of them, regardless of the consequences to their physical or mental health.

Actors have also been expected to manage their own emotions in these roles. While many have different processes to help them exit the role, they still rely on theatre and film professionals like stage managers, dressers and directors to help manage their sources of emotion and distraction.

An important part of leaving the character behind involves taking off the costume at the end of a play or scene. But if your own naked body is the character’s costume in a scene, then how can you take it off?

Every actor has a different approach. Some don’t mind appearing nude for laughs, while others might use body doubles for sex and nude scenes, which provides them with a surrogate body.

The newer job of intimacy coordinators has developed in the past 15 years to help protect actors on stage and set. These are professional advocates who establish the ground rules, look out for the actors’ physical and emotional wellbeing, and assist with the choreography during scenes that require intimate touching, nudity or sex.

Actors and intimacy coordinators collaborate closely with the costume department to ensure the actor will be protected during nude and sex scenes with the right type of coverage.

Costume designing for ‘nudity’

Costume departments have a host of garments, accessories, prosthetics and hacks to protect an actor’s dignity in nude and sex scenes. These include modesty patches, fake nipples, stick on bras, strapless thongs and pouches that cover the genitals. These can be attached to the body with fashion tape or kinesiology tape.

The devices are made to match the actor’s skin tone and can be padded with a thick material (think yoga mat fabric) or made from a hard plastic to mitigate the impact of being touched or grabbed. Other costume hacks, such as merkins, have been around for hundreds of years.

The use of these devices means you won’t see the actor’s actual private parts or pubic hair; you’ll see the character’s.

This crucial distinction gives the actor a body they can take off.

Read more: Skims has put merkins back on the fashion map. A brief (and hairy) history of the pubic wig

Creating Ann Lee’s naked body

The Testament of Ann Lee covers the life of the founder of the Shaker faith over three decades and shows how she used her religious faith to process the pain and grief of physical tribulations, sexual abuse and the loss of her children, and to inspire others.

Seyfried has described the role of Ann Lee as “fucking daunting” and “really scary”, and has said the part needed to be graphic to show the strength of Lee’s faith in the face of extreme adversity.

Towards the end of the film, local thugs who do not want the Shakers to establish a church near their village attack Lee and her fellow worshippers at night and burn down their church. The thugs strip Lee and beat and humiliate her, accusing her of being a man and of being a witch. Ann Lee’s naked body is on display in front of the burning church during the brutal scene.

This is the scene where Seyfried wore a merkin and the “prosthetic butthole” – likely a modesty sticker, or a strapless, skin-toned thong with the merkin on the front that covered the vulva, perineum and anus.

The pubic wig is seen but the fake anus is not. But wearing them meant Seyfried could focus on the intensity of her acting and fully embody Lee in the scene, without worrying about her own dignity.

The modesty garments also gave Seyfried a body she could take off, leaving any potential for personal trauma, embarrassment or pain from playing Ann Lee behind her.