Alexander Skarsgård goes full-frontal in ‘kinky’ gay BDSM romance drama with Harry Potter’s Harry Melling

Succession star Alexander Skarsgård is set to go full-frontal in his new gay BDSM drama with Harry Potter actor Harry Melling.

Pillion follows Infinity Pool star Skarsgård as the swaggering, leather-clad biker daddy Ray, who entices meek traffic warden and barbershop quartet fan Colin (Melling) into a dom/sub relationship in which the lines between kink and control become increasingly blurred.

While the premise of the film sounds risqué enough as it is, the film – which recently screened at Cannes Film Festival – reportedly features some “extremely revealing” gay scenes between Skarsgård and Melling.

After passing a note to Colin in a local pub, in which he instructs him to meet the following day for a blow job, the pair hook up in a dark alley, with scenes featuring the licking of rubber boots and the teasing of Ray’s Prince Albert.

According to Variety, the raunchy scene – which features Colin “choking on his prize” – is just the start of Pillion’s heart-poundingly horny offerings.

While Variety suggested that Skarsgård “flashing the goods” may “distract” from his performance, we’d bet that there are many gay cinema go-ers willing to be distracted. 

In Vanity Fair’s positive review, Pillion is described as “graphic” but “far from hardcore”, though there is plenty of titillating depictions of “gay sex and male anatomy”.

The film, which gets its name from the term referring to someone who rides a motorcycle as a passenger by clinging onto the rider, managed to score a not-to-be-sniffed-at seven minute ovation at Cannes.

It’s helmed by first-time feature film director Harry Lighton, who reportedly opened the screening at Cannes by declaring his hope that Pillion will “make you horny” as much it makes you laugh or think.

Speaking to Vanity Fair recently, Lighton revealed that the steamy scenes that did make the cut weren’t even the most explicit.

“We shot some stuff which was more explicit, and it wasn’t the case that I was told to remove it out of the cut. I chose to remove it out of the cut because I think it was always important to me that the provocation of it didn’t override the sentiment, the experience,” he shared.

As for Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling’s experience filming the gay sex scenes, the actors said they felt “very comfortable” with the task at hand.

“I fell in love with Harry from the first second I saw him. He’s just the sweetest, nicest, loveliest human being,” Skarsgård said.

“I felt comfortable going as far as we needed to go in these situations with him. I also discovered a lot of things about Colin and Ray’s relationship that I didn’t anticipate discovering when we first started working on it. There were these tender, beautiful moments that just happened organically, and some moments that were weird and some moments that were funny. But he was incredibly game, very brave in just throwing himself out there.”

Similarly, Melling praised his “dreamy” scene partner Skarsgård for putting him at ease.

“Alex is just the most generous, dreamy scene partner, so what could have been quite a daunting experience couldn’t have been more different, really.

“When you sort out the choreography of it, which is often the most difficult part – you sort out what everyone’s doing, where their hands are going – and then once action is called, you’re in the world of Colin and Ray.”

While cinema lovers undoubtedly can’t wait to be in the world of Colin and Ray, a release date for Pillion is yet to be announced.

An official synopsis for Pillion reads: “Colin (Melling), a weedy wallflower letting life pass him by. That is until Ray (Skarsgård), the impossibly handsome leader of a motorbike club, takes him on as his submissive.

“Ray uproots Colin from his dreary suburban life, introducing him to a community of kinky, queer bikers and taking all sorts of virginities along the way. But as Colin steps deeper into Ray’s world of rules and mysteries, he begins to question whether the life of a 24/7 submissive is for him. Has he found his calling, or simply swapped one form of suffocation for another?”

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