Report: 'Halston' Star Ewan McGregor Was Keen to Film Sex Scenes

They had him at "sex scene": Ewan McGregor didn't know who the iconic gay designer was, but the straight actor resonated with the show's erotic frankness.

IndieWire wrote that the Ryan Murphy-produced miniseries "isn't afraid to swing big in the opening episode, showing some very cheeky and primal gay sex within the first 10 minutes."

In addressing an audience at this year's Provincetown Film Festival, "Halston" creator Dan Minahan recalled that he and McGregor "talked about that."

"'How do you feel about the sex scenes?'" Minahan recalled asking McGregor. "And he said, 'Well, that's a part of this character.'"

Minahan remembered that McGregor was so enthused that he "wanted to include a scene where Halston was arrested for indecent exposure because he was cruising in Central Park."

As IndieWire recalled, "Halston" executive producer Christine Vachon had previously worked with McGregor "on Todd Haynes' 1998 queer classic 'Velvet Goldmine.'" She also shared that McGregor "had no idea who Halston was" and yet, she recounted, "He was like, 'I wanna play this guy.'"

"We needed somebody remarkable because it was this larger-than-life character, who could do the dialect, who was not afraid of being unsympathetic, who could do the sex scenes," Minahan explained. "And Ewan was that guy. He was so well-suited to it."

Vachon had previously defended McGregor's casting as a gay man, telling Business Insider that he was "absolutely the right person to play Halston" and that she could not "imagine anyone else in the role" of the iconic gay designer.

That assessment, Vachon added, came from a deep well of experience. "As somebody who's been telling these stories for many, many years, I think a lot about representation and gender and what makes a film a gay film, as opposed to a non-gay film or simply a film that has gay people in it – all of that nuance that we've been wrestling with as a community for years," she explained. "I believe we made the right decision, creatively, for our show."

Murphy, who serves as executive producer and co-writer for the miniseries, also addressed that issue, telling Vogue, "The thing that Ewan got about Halston was that Halston had a vision in his mind of who he wanted to be in life."

Murphy added: "Ewan really connected with the pain of Halston and the longing of Halston, and how confusing it is to have to be an artist and a businessman at the same time."