As The Daily Beast celebrates the month of Sextember—see what we did there?—our entertainment team decided to celebrate all the hot, inventive, and often extremely weird ways that TV shows have dreamed up in order to depict our favorite thing: two hot actors boning. More than two? Even better. Are they on public transportation on the way to the Hamptons? Hell yeah. Is a ghost involved? A dream.
We asked our esteemed staff of writers, editors, reporters, and critics to come up with their own criteria and category for what constituted a “best”—read: memorable—TV sex scene and to write up their pick. Here’s the erotic madness that we came up with:
Best Ghost Sex Scene
Katherine Heigl and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Grey's Anatomy
Among the most deliciously cruel write-offs in Shonda Rhimes history? That would be when poor Izzie Stevens started hooking up with the “ghost” of her very dead lover, Denny Duquette. Sadly for both Izzie and her would-be resurrected amore, Denny was never actually there; Katherine Heigl was just paying for an interview faux pas with her character’s life. We'd soon find out these trysts were just hallucinations due to brain cancer.
- Laura Bradley
Best Sex Scene Featuring a Member of the Royal Family
Meghan Markle and Patrick Adams in Suits
In the Season 2 finale of Suits, Mike (Patrick J. Adams) finally shared his dark secret with the object of his affection, Rachel (Meghan Markle): He never went to Harvard and wasn’t a lawyer. His being a total fraud, however, didn’t stop the pair from giving in to their lust in the file room, slamming each other’s bodies against filing cabinets in a pretty hot sex scene (especially by USA Network standards). During an interview with Larry King, both Adams and Markle said it was one of their favorite scenes to shoot, with Adams calling it “the culmination of a lot of pent-up emotions,” and Markle adding, “It was what people wanted to see from Mike and Rachel, and it happened in a file room.”
- Marlow Stern
Best Unholy Sex Scene
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott in Fleabag
It took five grueling episodes full of sexual tension, but at the end of Fleabag’s penultimate episode, the Hot Priest finally kisses God goodbye. How can you pretend to love some random dude when Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the most heavenly person planet Earth has ever seen? Their union is made even better by the events of the episode prior, in which God forbids them from having sex by making a church painting crash to the ground. Forbidden love is great, especially when there’s a sexy priest involved.
- Fletcher Peters
Best Ass-Eating Scene
Jonathan Groff and Michael Rosen in Looking
With all due respect to Allison Williams and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in Girls—and, of course, to Murray Bartlett’s Emmy-winning rimming performance in The White Lotus—we’re going with the sex scene that opened the Looking movie between Jonathan Groff and Michael Rosen. Sure, those other examples grabbed headlines, but this scene did one better: It was actually hot.
- Kevin Fallon
Best First-Time-Having-Sex Sex Scene
Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People
Normal People was the perfect pandemic watch. Two hot, young, horny kids going at it? Nothing beats that when you’re in self-isolation! But the limited series, based on the Sally Rooney novel, is not designed to titillate. Instead, each sex scene is filmed in a tender, quiet way, allowing Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal) to tentatively explore each other. The most memorable of these scenes is undoubtedly the first, unforgettable in the same way that losing your virginity is. While Connell’s been around the block a time or two, Marianne hasn’t. Sensitive to this, he makes her first sexual experience completely safe and caring: They get comfortable, then get naked, then get busy. It’s stumbly, exciting, and anxious for Marianne, Connell, and the viewers. Sometimes, nothing is sexier than the truth.
- Allegra Frank
Best Sex Scene in a Firehouse
Kim Cattrall and Michael Lombardi in Sex and the City
Picking a favorite sex scene from Sex and the City is like choosing which of your children is your favorite: It’s impossible. They’re all worth loving in their own, unique way. But the “Where There’s Smoke” episode of the series is forever one of my favorites—the trip to Staten Island, Charlotte getting too drunk, the introduction of John Slattery’s character—and the scenes between Kim Cattrall’s Samantha and the fireman she crushes on are certainly memorable. I think I love them because, while it confirms that the actual banging of a fireman is as hot as we might dream about, it also hilariously subverts the fantasy: He’s kind of a dweeb, unsexy to be around while clothed, and the act itself is interrupted in embarrassing fashion.
- Kevin Fallon
Best Sex Scene Without Physical Contact
Adam Driver and Jemima Kirke in Girls
Girls is a show known more for its awkward sex scenes than its arousing ones. But as someone who’s binged the entire series too many times, I’m here to tell you that they do exist—and, more often than not, involve Famously Sexy (in A Weird Way) Actor Adam Driver. Some of his sexiest work on the show is when he and Jessa (Jemima Kirke) are sleeping around behind Hannah’s (Lena Dunham) back in Season 5, unleashing a red-hot chemistry viewers didn’t know existed. In Episode 2, when they realize they’re probably going to fuck, Jessa makes Adam promise that they’re not going to touch each other. But of course, these crafty people find a roundabout way, masturbating while fully clothed from opposite ends of a couch. This moment is sweetly emblematic of how naturally independent they both are but also really hot when they realize they can’t stop looking at each other.
– Kyndall Cunningham
Best Sex Scene in a Graveyard
Anna Paquin and Steven Moyer in True Blood
One doesn’t necessarily realize that one of their kinks is watching a Louisiana waitress pull her vampire boyfriend out of a grave and then bone him passionately while he was still covered in dirt in the cemetery until they see it. So I guess we can thank True Blood for that revelation?
- Kevin Fallon
Best Sex Scene on Affordable Public Transportation
Blake Lively and Penn Badgely in Gossip Girl
For a show that became famous for its OMFG-inducing, badly-behaved teens, the OG Gossip Girl is surprisingly light on actual sex scenes, thanks to a more tame era of The CW. But the show was so good at drawing out its panting, will-they-won’t-they allure that when the sex did happen, just the mere suggestion of it was enough to make viewers need a cigarette. Case in point: Serena and Dan’s tryst on the Jitney returning to New York from the Hamptons. Some seductively eaten chocolate covered strawberries, a traded copy of the now-defunct physical version of NYLON (2008, how sexy), and a bumpy, underfunded New York State road were all it took for these two ex-lovers to end up in the bus’s cramped bathroom. Legend has it if you reenact this in real life, you should be immediately tested for all five types of hepatitis.
- Coleman Spilde
Best Sex Scene Involving Food
Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Hunt in Dickinson
There are plenty of sex scenes that involve food. Do we count Call Me By Your Name’s peach scene? Maybe. Maybe not. But even that wouldn’t be topped by the girlish delight of Dickinson’s second season finale, which finally brings a will-they-won’t-they together in the most delicious way possible. Emily Dickinson is reunited with her best friend/one true love Sue, and the pair share an elongated moment of bliss together in the kitchen shoving cake into each other’s faces, eating the cake off each other, peeling grapefruits, and taking a luxurious bath. That’s self care.
- Fletcher Peters
Best Sex Scene Involving an Asian Guy
Steven Yeun and Lauren Cohan in The Walking Dead
It’s no secret that Asian men are typically stripped of their sexuality in film and television. The situation has gotten so dire that a couple of brief shirtless scenes of Henry Golding in Crazy Rich Asians managed to cause a stir. Steven Yeun’s Glenn Rhee is an exception to the rule. His steamy sex scene with Maggie (Lauren Cohan) in Season 3, Episode 13 (“Arrow on the Doorpost”) of The Walking Dead—in a fortress, surrounded by zombies—was a landmark moment for Asian male sexuality on screen. It even led artist David Choe to jokingly compare his pal Yeun to Rosa Parks during a hilarious exchange on Ugly Delicious.
- Marlow Stern
Best May-December Sex Scene
Hunter Parish and Julie Bowen in Weeds
The MILF trope is well-trodden on TV, of course. But this one sticks out to us because a) Weeds-era Hunter Parrish was peak early-millennium hotness and b) Julie Bowen’s subsequent on Modern Family added a meta layer to the whole mom-and-young-hunk dynamic.
- Kevin Fallon
Best Deadly Group Sex Scene
Lady Gaga and Matt Bomer in American Horror Story: Hotel
No, this is not the first or only group sex seen on television—but it might be the first involving fingernail razors, slit throats, and the most sensual "bloodbath" imaginable. L.A. vampires, indeed!
- Laura Bradley
Best Solo Sex Scene
Adam Driver in Girls
Yes, there’s more Adam Driver Jerking Himself Off content for me to rave about. In Season 1, Episode 5, Hannah visits Adam, who she thinks is officially her boyfriend after she finally reprimands him for being a fuckboy. It turns out this couldn’t be further from the truth. So much so that Adam starts masturbating in her presence, so as to say that he really doesn’t need her. This moment isn’t sexy at all, except that Driver is moving his arm up and down like his dick is 12 inches long. But it does become extremely satisfying when Hannah turns this very rude gesture into a dom-sub moment and instructs Adam to give her a couple hundred bucks. Hannah may be bound to this man to an embarrassing degree, but at least she’s getting compensated.
– Kyndall Cunningham
Best Home Demolition Sex Scene
Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Before Bella Swan and Edward Cullen's famous bed-breaking scene in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, we had Buffy and Spike hurling each other around a dilapidated old house with enough sexual gusto to literally break down walls. Angel, who?!
- Laura Bradley
Best Chris Messina Sex Scene
Chris Messina and Amy Adams in Sharp Objects
Yes, there is an honorary category just for Chris Messina. OK, I’m not necessarily sure how robust this category is, at least strictly speaking about TV series. (Messina’s sex-scene filmography does, however, merit your perusal.) But our crush on Messina knows no bounds, and, in this Sharp Stick scene with Amy Adams, the way he undresses and then touches himself before getting down to business is just so hot in an inexplicable way.
- Kevin Fallon
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