1.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon used to masturbate together in a circle with some of their friends. In a 2019 interview with GQ, McCartney reflected on the sexual experience with great detail. “Over at John’s house, it was just a group of us,” he said. “And instead of just getting roaring drunk and partying, we were all just in these chairs, and the lights were out, and somebody started masturbating, so we all did.”
McCartney continued, “I think it was a one-off, or maybe it was like a two-off. It wasn’t a big thing. But, you know, it was just the kind of thing you didn’t think much of. It was just a group. Yeah, it’s quite raunchy when you think about it. There are so many things like that from when you’re a kid that you look back on, and you’re, ‘Did we do that?’ But it was good, harmless fun. It didn’t hurt anyone.”
When Lana Del Rey covered “Heart-Shaped Box” in a 2012 show, Courtney Love took to Twitter and tweeted to Del Rey the true meaning behind the song: “You do know the song is about my Vagina, right? ‘Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back.’ On top of which, some of the lyrics about my vagina I contributed. So, umm, next time you sing it, think about my vagina, will you? lol xc.”
You can listen to “Heart-Shaped Box” here.
3.
In one of the most talked-about TV shows from 2022, Sebastian Stan and Lily James portrayed ’90s couple Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy. From his full-body tattoos to his Mötley Crüe drumming skills, Stan was committed to portraying Lee honestly, especially when it came to his sex life.
Pam & Tommy creator Robert Siegel revealed to Variety that the scene where Sebastian Stan (Lee) talks to his penis in the mirror directly came from Lee’s memoir Tommyland. “I was simply adapting a chapter from his memoir. I think it might be a first [for television]. There was gentle pushback, because you’ve got to push back a little when a talking penis is presented to you, but Hulu was extremely supportive.”
There were four puppeteers “working with an animatronic penis” on set, which didn’t intimidate Sebastian Stan’s approach to acting: “By the end of it, I treated it like it was an intimate buddy conversation that one might have when they’re falling in love.”
4.
Billie Eilish wrote her 2024 hit “LUNCH” (which is about a woman performing oral sex on another woman) before she had that sexual experience herself. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she said, “I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after. I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.”
You can listen to “LUNCH” here.
5.
If you’ve been living under a rock, then I’m here to tell you Heated Rivalry (based on the book series Game Changers) is one of the best shows that’s hit our screens in a long, long time. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve seen a lot of the show’s spicy sex scenes between Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie) on your timeline, or maybe it’s just my miraculous algorithm. But I digress, because there’s so much more to the sex scenes than meets the eye, according to Heated Rivalry‘s intimacy coordinator Chala Hunter.
Chala Hunter revealed to Elle that accurate queer representation was the most important thing to capture while filming sex scenes between Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie). “The scenes are written very specifically as they are in the book, and [writer, creator, and director Jacob Tierney] laid out the action in the script. Portraying queer joy and queer sex and not insinuating or implying it on screen is rare,” she said. “The sex is such a big part of the emotional, physical, and psychological journey that these characters go through.”
And when it came to Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie filming oral sex scenes, Chala Hunter had a bunch of props to make it seem real. “I had a huge kit of all kinds of pasties and intimacy garments. I also have different layers of thickness if we need to add more padding for an actor’s comfort, for the action to take place,” she said. “It might look like Hudson is rubbing his face in Connor’s crotch, but some of the time, he’s anchoring his forehead to just above Connor’s crotch.”
6.
Janelle Monáe is notorious for hosting fun and sexually adventurous courtyard parties, which mainly inspired her 2023 album, The Age of Pleasure.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, she said, “I have a whole spreadsheet with 50 to almost 100 experiences that I’ve had [at these parties]. I wear red lipstick at these parties — I’ve had moments where if me and a girl or an energy want to engage, you’re going to see lipstick.”
7.
Mel B and Geri Halliwell (aka Scary Spice and Ginger Spice) used to hook up during their days in the Spice Girls. On Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, Mel B revealed, “It just happened and we just giggled at it and that was it. She is going to hate me for this because she is all posh in her country house and her husband, but it’s a fact.”
8.
Cyndi Lauper’s hit “She Bop” is actually about masturbation. In a 2014 interview, Lauper said that one of the She’s So Unusual songwriters called her up in the middle of the night and asked her to write a song about masturbation for the album. She revealed, “Stephen [Broughton Lunt] said, ‘No woman has had this before; you’ll be the first.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ll be good for first — I was the first female streaker in my college.'”
Lauper was determined to be the first female artist to tackle this subject in a song, but she struggled to write the lyrics. She made Lunt buy her sexually-explicit magazines like Playgirl and Blueboy at a store near the recording studio for some lyric inspiration.
You can listen to “She Bop” here.
9.
Harry Styles has expressed on multiple occasions that he chooses to express his sexuality on his own terms and prefers not to define it. In 2022, Styles revealed to Better Homes and Gardens, “I’ve been open with it with my friends, but that’s my personal experience — it’s mine,” he said. “The whole point of where we should be heading, which is toward accepting everybody and being more open, is that it doesn’t matter. It’s about not having to label everything, [and] not having to clarify what boxes you’re checking.”
Harry also explained that his One Direction days made him fearful of expressing his sexuality due to the label’s “cleanliness clauses.” “I felt so ashamed about it,” he said. “Ashamed at the idea of people even knowing that I was having sex, let alone who with.”
10.
Marlene Dietrich openly identified as bisexual and allegedly had sex with notable actors like her Shanghai Express costar Anna May Wong. Dietrich referred to her affairs with women as “sewing circles” and created a safe space where lesbian and bisexual women in the Old Hollywood community could be themselves.
Dietrich was also one of the first actors to have a lesbian kiss in a major motion picture in the US. Dietrich’s character in Morocco (1930), Mademoiselle Amy Jolly, kissed a female audience member during one of her performances in a to-die-for black tux and top hat.
11.
While filming their makeout scenes in Grease, Jeff Conaway (Kenickie) actually gave Stockard Channing (Rizzo) hickies you see in the malt shop scene. Channing said that Conaway was “was really feeling his oats.”
12.
In Honey Don’t! starring Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley, there’s one particular titillating sex scene that’s actually pretty darn funny, once you learn the behind-the-scenes mechanics of it all.
When Honey (Margaret Qualley) and MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza) are at the bar, Qualley revealed the secret trick they used to make the sex act realistic. “There’s someone from the props department on their knees holding a jar of coconut oil,” she said. “Aubrey’s got to lift her finger up and have it be wet. It was playing with different levels of how far you get in that setting and trying to work out the physicality there to make sure that I was saying what we were trying to say, but it was really funny.”
13.
The steamy sex scene from The Boy Next Door, which has 538 MILLION views on YouTube, has gained so much popularity for a reason. Jennifer Lopez and Ryan Guzman, who didn’t use body doubles, brought their A-game when filming their wild sex scene. “My character has to pick up Jennifer, and me being stupid, I put a little bit too much oomph into it,” Guzman said. “The next couple of takes, I was very, very gentle. She was a trooper. She hit her head, she came right back down, and she said, ‘Hey, I’m light. Just take it easy. You don’t need to muscle up.'”
Jennifer Lopez shared a similar perspective as Ryan Guzman when filming their sex scene, ultimately feeling “embarrassed.” But she revealed that as an actor, it’s “your job” to “make it believable.” In a 2015 interview with E!, Lopez confessed, “It was intense. Those scenes are embarrassing. And this movie in particular, with these two characters, the whole movie hinges on if that scene was believable. If it was enough to make this guy go insane.”
14.
While recording “Partition” in the studio, Beyoncé didn’t come prepared with any lyrics. She completely ad-libbed the song as soon as she heard the bass line and beat. In Beyoncé’s Self-Titled documentary, she revealed that she went into the recording studio without a pen and paper and just started singing into the mic. She said: “I’m in the studio and I hear this bass line and this beat. It has snaps, and it has two tracks — it’s very simple. It takes me back to when me and my husband first met and he’s trying to scoop me and he thinks I’m the hottest thing in the world.”
Beyoncé revealed that it was important for her to express her sexual fantasies in “Partition” because of the complex feelings women experience after giving birth for the first time. She said, “You could have your child and you could still have fun and still be sexy and still have dreams and still live for yourself. I don’t have any shame about being sexual, and I’m not embarrassed about it.”
You can listen to “Partition” here.
15.
While filming New York, New York (1977), leading lady Liza Minnelli and director Martin Scorsese had an affair. At the time, Minnelli was married to Jack Haley Jr. (the son of Jack Haley, who played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz), and Scorsese to Julia Cameron. In Minnelli’s 2026 memoir Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, she revealed they had a very tense relationship, one that was consumed by cocaine addiction.
16.
Tallulah Bankhead allegedly sprinkled Marlene Dietrich’s gold wig dust on her pubic hair and showed it off to random people who passed by her dressing room. Bankhead was quoted as saying, “Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw, and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia.”
17.
If you’ve ever seen or heard of Think Like a Man, you know it’s a classic 2010s movie filled with an incredibly stacked cast, featuring Taraji P. Henson, Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall, and Michael Ealy. And, if you’ve ever seen the movie, you’re probably familiar with the memorable sex scene between Taraji P. Henson and Michael Ealy because…well, it’s something.
While promoting the rom-com on Sway in the Morning in 2012, Taraji P. Henson described how excited she was to work with Michael Ealy, and how they shot their sex scene early in production. She told Sway: “The first day on set was the scene where he’s putting chocolate on my thigh — that was the first day! [And] he licked it off. I was like, ‘I need another take!'”
Taraji P. Henson revealed how professional Michael Ealy was while filming the scene, despite the pressure that their first scene together was a sex scene. “He asked, ‘What’s off limits? What can I touch, what can we not do?’ and I was like, ‘You know what, go for it’ (in the most professional way possible).” And those Michael Ealy kisses, you know, love, and have watched on YouTube at least 50 times? “We were kissing for real,” Henson said. “Real kisses.”
18.
And before every Sex and the City episode, Kim Cattrall always came in prepared with a variety of different angles and suggestions to see what would fit better for Samantha and the man she was having sex with. She said, “In the sex scene with the fireman, I suggested: ‘Let me do an orgasm with the sound of a fire engine, let me try different things.’ You don’t know if one’s going to be too much or not enough, so it’s nice for [the SATC crew] to have a few choices.”
As for the men who ended up filming sex scenes on Sex and the City, they wore a cup so nothing would actually show. The cups were labeled “KC” for Kim Cattrall’s initials.