Claire Foy calls sex scenes 'the grimmest thing you can do' in acting

• Claire Foy said sex scenes often leave her feeling "exploited."
• "It's grim – it's the grimmest thing you can do," she said of filming sex scenes.

"The Crown" actor Claire Foy has said she is often left feeling "exploited" after filming sex scenes and described the process as the "grimmest thing you can do" during a new interview with BBC Radio 4.

Foy — who is best known for playing Elizabeth II on Netflix's "The Crown" — was discussing the processes of filming her latest role as Margaret Campbell, a former British socialite in the second edition of the BBC drama "A Very British Scandal."

The show will focus on Campbell's 1963 public divorce, during which her husband Ian Campbell accused her of adultery and explicit photographs of her were published.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Foy said the feeling of being exploited was a certainty after filming sex scenes.

"It's a really hard line because basically you do feel exploited when you are a woman and you are having to perform fake sex on screen. You can't help but feel exploited," she said.

"It's grim – it's the grimmest thing you can do. You feel exposed. Everyone can make you try to not feel that way but it's, unfortunately, the reality. But my thing was that I felt very strongly that it had to be in it, but I wanted it to be female. I did not want it to be that sort of awful climactic sexual experience you often see on the cinema screen."

Later during the interview, Foy was asked whether she believed Campbell had been the first woman to be publicly "slut-shamed" — that is, to be stigmatized for engaging in behavior considered promiscuous or sexually provocative — by the media. In response, Foy dismissed the term and pointed to larger, historic gender inequalities.

"I hate the phrase slut-shaming, I absolutely hate it. But I think that women have basically been slut-shamed forever. Eve was probably slut-shamed," Foy said.

"There is something about it that I just hate, the rephrasing of the ownership of that title and it being used in a way that justifies it even more. Just the word 'slut', probably shouldn't exist."

Campbell, who was the Duchess of Argyll, a British county, was criticized by the judge who presided over her divorce who described her as a "highly sexed woman" that was not "satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite," according to reports in The Guardian.

"Wandavision" star Paul Bettany will feature as Foy's husband in "A Very British Scandal." The three-part series will air on the BBC across consecutive evenings from Boxing Day. The show will stream on Amazon Prime Video in the US.