Why Riley Keough Was Really Uncomfortable Filming An Intimate Scene With Her Husband

Riley Keough's husband Ben Smith-Petersen got to have a cheeky cameo in her show "Daisy Jones & The Six," but it was a lot weirder to film than expected. While on "Late Night with Seth Meyers," Keough opened up about how her character — the titular Daisy Jones — hooks up with a random guy. Keough told Meyers, "And the producers were like, 'It would be so funny if it was your husband.'"

Keough and Smith-Petersen worked together in the past. They met on the set of "Mad Max: Fury Road." But the couple had never filmed an intimate scene before. Meyers asked Keough about the awkwardness of pretending to have sex with your spouse, and Keough admitted that it was way more awkward than when she films intimate scenes with others. Sex scenes are meant to be very formal and professional, but Keough and Smith-Petersen giggled quite a bit.

In the interview, Meyers joked that he'd be worried about filming an intimate scene with his wife, afraid she'd call him out for doing things differently than the real thing. Keough mentioned how in her scene, Daisy is not really enjoying the sex they're having. Keough said, "And I feel like I really kept feeling inclined to be like, 'In real life — '" Keough and Meyers erupted into laughter, and she added, "' — it's not like this.'" She said she did not share that fact while shooting the scene.

Even though it may be less awkward to film intimate scenes with someone who is not your spouse, it can still be a difficult challenge for actors. Riley Keough was in the first season of "The Girlfriend Experience," a show about call girls who do more than just sleep with their clients, like providing emotional labor, as well as sexual relationships, for a high price.  Around the time of the Season 1 release of "The Girlfriend Experience," Keough was interviewed by Vanity Fair and discussed speaking with a real sex worker to prepare for her role, saying that she asked the source about the emotions tied to that line of work.

"It was definitely a little bit scary going into something that, you know, we had sex scenes every day and it was a lot," Keough said of filming the show. "And it's not the sex part, it's that you have to constantly be connecting with the other, with different actors every day in that way. That was scary to me."

In August 2023, Riley Keough did a Reframed interview on Vanity Fair, where she gave context for photographs throughout her life and career. One of the photos was a shot from "Under the Silver Lake," a film she did with Andrew Garfield. Despite the awkwardness of Keough and Ben Smith-Petersen's "Daisy Jones & The Six" sex scene, at least the set did not have to get shut down. That happened when Keough ate a granola bar with peanuts in it before filming a kissing scene with Garfield. Keough told Vanity Fair that it was a relief that a makeup artist saw her eating it before they filmed the kiss, or Garfield could've gotten very sick due to his peanut allergy.

In the Reframed interview, Keough was also shown a screenshot from "Mad Max: Fury Road." She discussed noticing Smith-Petersen while working on that movie and thinking he was attractive. However, something you probably never knew about Keough is that she told a mistruth to Smith-Petersen early on in their relationship.

"I asked him to go, to teach me how to surf," Keough told the outlet, "which is really funny because I have no interest in learning how to surf now." She laughed and said how she pretended to be more of a beachy, outdoorsy person than she really is, adding, "I catfished him!"