Netflix’s reliable romance success Virgin River has returned for a seventh season, and it’s already nabbed the top spot in the streamer’s ranking of boxsets.
The show might have been denied critical acclaim, but that hasn’t deterred a horde of TV-watchers from flocking to the adaptation of the Robyn Carr novels.
Before a series of cliffhangers topped off the ten-part seventh season, two characters went at it on top of a – pause for dramatic effect – motorbike. I bet you weren’t expecting where that was going, and neither were viewers.
The scene unfolded between local badboy Brady (Ben Hollingsworth) and Brie (Zibby Allen), who have been two of the points on a love triangle, along with local detective Mike (he was not on the motorbike, so you can guess how that went).
After plenty of will-they-won’t-they to-ing and fro-ing, the pair decided that they will! On said motorbike! The people of Virgin River are just doing it differently.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, motorbike sex isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be when you’re an actor having to contort yourself over a padded seat to get the scene in the can. Hollingsworth has said as much in a recent interview.
‘The human body is not meant to have sex on a motorcycle,’ he told Entertainment Weekly after the season seven episodes had dropped on Netflix.
‘My back hurt for weeks. I was arching my back over that thing. Talk about an ab workout. It might’ve translated as pleasure or lust on screen, but Ben Hollingsworth was in pain!’
But he went on to say it was worth it for the scene: ‘I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know it wouldn’t be until episode nine. It felt earned that way. Emotionally, when you earn something, it does kind of set the mood for the audience because they feel fulfilled.’
‘There’s an abandon with Brady and Brie that’s raw sexy, unlike Mel [Alexandra Breckenridge] and Jack [Martin Henderson] or other couples on the show,’ Hollingsworth told the publication.
‘The spontaneity is also representational [sic] of their relationship. It was spontaneous on day one and it didn’t add up or make sense on paper. It just works.’
For the Virgin River curious or uninitiated, there is a bit of a precedent for the motorbike scene: there was a prior sex scene on a – pause for dramatic effect – pool table.
On the comparisons between the two, Hollingsworth told the publication: ‘That scene encapsulates that, because we had the pool table in season six, and that was a pretty epic moment, and the way it was pitched to me was, “This scene would make the pool table blush”.’
Virgin River season 7 is available to stream on Netflix.
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