Gershon: [The Wachowskis] knew every angle, every cut. They came from doing graphic novels so they really had it in their heads. Of course, if we’ve learned one thing about Bond, since the British secret agent made his film debut in Dr No in 1962, it’s that you don’t bet against him. Craig’s farewell will see him square off against the anarchist arch-villain Safin, played by Bohemian Rhapsody’s Oscar-winner Rami Malek. He’ll have some help from two Bond women – Bond “girls” being a thing of the past – in Ana de Armas and Lynch. Gershon: Every guy actor I've ever seen on set does pushups and stuff if he doesn't have his shirt on. I was like, "Oh this is what the dudes do, so this is what I'm going to do," because it kind of pumps your arms up. It's all very macho too. You know Corky had a lot of armor on, she was very protective of herself. The more I could feel that, the better I felt as Corky. Tilly: That was my dress. Those are my earrings. That's my watch. I wore pretty much all my own clothes…After the movie, I gave some of the clothes to my sister. The dress, in the last scene, she shows up wearing it [one time] and I'm like, "You know how many lesbians would love to get their hands on that dress. That's an artifact! It should be in a museum!" She's like, "It's my favorite dress!"

Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox. Tilly: It was a classic film noir, except instead of the lead being a male, it was Corky. A studio offered the [Wachowskis] a lot more money to make the movie, but they said that they had to make Corky a man. Gershon: I was coming right off of Showgirls, and I was so ultra femme in that. [I cut] all my nails and my hair off, and I started boxing. I had been dancing for five months, so I was so floaty and I wanted to be in my body more like a boxer…Marlon Brando, Monty Clift, Robert Mitchum. I went to all those guys. There's a certain quietness. I wanted to be like all the guys I project [my ideas of heroism and masculinity] on to.Gershon: I just thought I'd be inspired. I certainly was inspired with tattoos and stuff. I ended up choosing my own tattoos and where I wanted them and all that stuff. Gershon: It was like the four of us having sex. It was like: "Foot! Wall! Head!" It was so choreographed. The camera [is] moving around, and you have one wall go up, another wall went down.

Gershon: I really liked the hip [tattoo] that wrapped around my hip and crept up. You saw the top of it coming out of my pants sometimes. I thought that was really sexy. I had seen that on some girl at a bar, and I was like, "Oh that's hot." Gershon: As soon as I met Jen, I thought, "Oh my God, all I have to do is watch her." She was so amusing and so fun. It's just so easy to watch her, like her butt and her legs. It made my job easy to kind of objectify her. We liked each other as soon as we met. It's also interesting to note how many of these lesbian cops are women of color. Again, queer women of color are more easily accepted by "average Americans" if they're helping to uphold the systems that oppress them. Tilly: Somebody said, "Oh, you know, females don't have any sex organs." [Susie] goes, "Yes we do; it's called a hand." So they did do a lot of shots of hands. Has she been climbing the walls? “You know what? No, weirdly,” says Lynch. “I’m a true believer in everything having its time. And for whatever reason the world needed its time to reset. So I feel a little weirdly unshakable at the moment. Like, if anything else was to happen tomorrow, I’d be like, ‘OK, cool, how do we get present to what’s happening?’ So I’ve had to calm down everyone else around me.”

Contribute to This Page

Gershon: There was one take that all four of us were like, "That's the one." It was like a real love scene. You didn't see a boob. You didn't see anything; it was all suggested. It really played on our face more than anything. Gershon: I'm doing the pipes. I was a little paranoid. I'm definitely not good at any of that stuff, so I just needed to be convincing…I kind of got into it. It's so dirty and messy, and you're shoving this thing in the plug. It was fun. I just wanted to look cool, like I knew what I was doing. I liked all the physical activity. It just made me feel like I was doing all the things that I wish I knew in real life. I remember my mom said, "You're a really good actress." I asked, "Why?" She said, "Because I believed the plumbing stuff." This seems like it shouldn't be a victory. And yet, the list of movies who've accomplished the same feat is painfully abbreviated. Don't talk to me about Blue is the Warmest Color, a movie made famous for its extended, impractical sex scenes and allegations of harassment by its director, Abdellatif Kechiche. Kechiche reportedly bullied the two female protagonists as well as his staff, forcing them to work 16-hour workdays under extreme pressure. Critics further accused the director of creating "voyeuristic" sex scenes intended to solicit the male gaze. I’d come out when I was 17 and been disowned by my parents. I’d moved to London and been in and out relationships and casual flings. She was 40 and had been married for 10 years, with three children under the age of 10. The agency we worked for also represented her husband, an esteemed writer, so I knew I absolutely couldn’t go there. Gershon: I was pushing Sinatra, "The Best Is Yet to Come". I was hearing that in my head, and I think they were toying with that, but then this is what they went with which was great. I mean you can't go wrong with Tom Jones.