Orlando Bloom just did a press junket at a film festival and ended up talking about a threesome scene for a solid chunk of it. Which, honestly, is kind of how these things go now. You show up to promote your weird little indie movie and suddenly you’re explaining your character’s “carnal desires” to a room full of journalists in San Sebastián. Welcome to 2025 press tours, I guess.

So What Actually Happened

Bloom, 49, was at the San Sebastián Film Festival pushing his new film “Bucking Fastard” (yes, that’s really the title, and no, I’m not going to pretend I’m not a little delighted by it) when the topic turned to an intimate scene he filmed with Rooney Mara and Kate Mara. Per Variety’s report from Friday, September 18, Bloom described the moment with more thoughtfulness than you’d expect from a guy fielding threesome questions on a stage.

He talked about “such simplicity to the characters and their carnal desires, but also an innocence to the sisters.” That’s a genuinely interesting way to frame it, if I’m being honest. Most actors would just laugh it off or give some canned “it was a professional set, we had an intimacy coordinator” answer and move on. Bloom actually tried to explain the emotional logic of the scene.

His Character’s Whole Deal

According to Bloom, his character (also called, delightfully, the Bucking Fastard) is “sensitive too” and gets “quite quickly out of his depth” during the scene. He called it “a very sincere sort of moment that was created.” Not gonna lie, that’s a lot more vulnerability than I expected from a promo answer about a threesome. Usually these quotes are all deflection and jokes. This one had actual substance to it.

Herzog Weighed In Too, Because Of Course He Did

Werner Herzog, who’s 84 and has basically seen and directed everything a person can see and direct, also recalled shooting the scene. And look, if there’s one director you’d want commentary from about a bizarrely titled film with a threesome in it, it’s Herzog. The man has filmed volcanoes, plane crashes, and a guy who lived with grizzly bears until they ate him. A love scene between three characters probably barely registers on his personal scale of “things that are actually intense.”

“It was a very sincere sort of moment that was created.”

That quote from Bloom keeps sticking with me. There’s something almost old-fashioned about actors talking about intimacy scenes like they’re actual storytelling choices instead of just content to be clipped and shared. I’ve seen this pattern before where actors either overshare for shock value or clam up completely. This felt like neither.

Why This Is Getting Attention Right Now

Here’s the thing. Orlando Bloom has had this specific brand of celebrity for years now where he pops up doing something eyebrow-raising (remember the paddleboarding photos with Katy Perry? the very public, very intense relationship with Kate Bosworth back in the day?) and everyone just kind of… reacts. He’s become this figure who generates headlines almost by existing publicly. And a threesome scene with the Mara sisters, real sisters playing on-screen sisters, in a movie called “Bucking Fastard”? That’s basically headline bait, whether anyone intended it that way or not.

But what’s interesting here is that the actual quotes aren’t scandalous at all. They’re kind of thoughtful. Bloom isn’t winking at the camera about it. He’s talking about innocence and sincerity and characters being out of their depth. That’s not the stuff of tabloid gold, even though the premise absolutely is.

The Rooney and Kate Mara Angle

Can we talk about how weird and interesting it is that Rooney Mara and Kate Mara, who are actual real-life sisters, played sisters in this scene? That’s a casting choice that either shows real confidence from Herzog or is just a wild coincidence that happened to work. I’d bet on the former, mostly because Herzog doesn’t really do things by accident. The guy plans his chaos.

What This Actually Means

Look, at the risk of sounding like I’m defending a guy for talking about a sex scene, I actually think Bloom handled this about as well as you can handle this kind of question. He didn’t dodge it, he didn’t turn it into a joke, and he didn’t overshare in some cringey way either. He gave context. He talked about character motivation. He let Herzog, the actual director, add his own memory of it too, which shows some decent instinct to share the spotlight instead of hogging the moment.

Is “Bucking Fastard” going to be a movie people are still talking about in six months? Probably not, if I’m being honest. Herzog movies are often more talked about than watched by general audiences, and this one already has an uphill battle just because of the title alone (try saying it out loud in a work meeting, I dare you). But this press cycle moment, weird as it is, actually says something kind of nice about how actors can talk about intimate scenes without either pretending they don’t exist or turning them into a punchline.

We’ll see how this all plays out once the film actually gets a wider release and people can judge the scene for themselves instead of just reading quotes about it. Until then, I’m just sitting here appreciating that somewhere out there, a movie exists called “Bucking Fastard,” directed by Werner Herzog, starring Orlando Bloom, featuring a threesome with the Mara sisters. What a sentence to have typed out. What a world.