Obliterated's Wild Full-Frontal Nude Scene Is Real - But It Came At A Huge Cost
Sometimes things don't quite go according to plan, which is the basic concept behind the Netflix action-comedy series "Obliterated." The show follows a strike team that receives some bad news during a bawdy Las Vegas celebration of their latest "successful" mission when they discover that there's still a nuclear bomb in need of defusing — an emergency made even more dire due to the fact that they're all heavily inebriated.
Of course, sometimes life parallels art as well, as was the case with C. Thomas Howell's nude scene in Episode 1. As executive producer Jon Hurwitz explained to ComicBook, the scene in question was originally meant to involve a prosthetic due to a no-nudity rider in Howell's contract. However, things went a different route when the actor changed his mind and decided to do the scene au naturel.
"This was real," said Hurwitz. "What you see on the show is real. But there's a funny story behind it. In that first episode, you get to see quite a bit of C Thomas Howell, and our production spent $10,000 on making a prosthetic for him. And the morning of he calls me up and he says, 'You know what, brother? If I'm gonna do this, I'm going for it. I just want to go all out.'"
What changed between the original plan and the final product?
While this might seem like a simple thing to rectify, C. Thomas Howell's no-nudity rider meant that despite the actor's eagerness to undress, there were legal issues that had to be untangled before he could join co-star Shelley Hennig in filming a nude scene for "Obliterated."
Referencing the expensive prosthetic, Jon Hurwitz recalled, "We're like, 'But you signed he [sic] nudity rider that says you're wearing this thing. He's like, 'Tell them I won't do it. Tell them I won't wear it.' And we're like, 'Great! This is even better.' So Sony and Netflix had to get their lawyers to move quickly, [and] quickly adjust his nudity rider. He signed it and then the rest is history."
This entire situation is made even more hilarious when you consider that Howell's character, Haggerty, is the team's bomb expert, and the reason he's nude in the first place is that he spends most of Season 1 passed out after partying a bit too hard. While this might seem a tad risky to some actors, Hurwitz told GameSpot that Howell embraced the role wholeheartedly.
"The moment he read the material for Haggerty, he's like, 'This is gonna be huge for me. This is a character unlike anything I've ever had the opportunity to play. I understand this character. I know what to do with him,'" the producer recalled. And apparently, that included getting completely nude, even if the production had spent a small fortune on a prosthetic "attachment."