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It Was a Hard Pass From Thandie Newton About Wearing Westworld’s Merkins

The saloon-y costumes Thandie Newton got to wear in the first season of Westworld — swoon, those lace gloves! —might’ve been lovely to look at, but underneath, Newton was serving some what? no! sass when it came to an extra accessory that didn’t exactly, well, mirror a fan or jewel necklace. As she explained on Graham Norton this week, for practical purposes, she rejected wearing a merkin in her scenes that required nudity, mostly because she didn’t actually need one.

“One of the reasons why they provided them is that a lot women do things to alter what’s going on down there, so I didn’t need the merkin because I don’t alter anything. Because it was a period piece, you couldn’t have any alterations down there,” she explained, much to an intruiged Jeff Goldblum. “The prairie, the wide-open prairie! They weren’t waxing and stripping and plucking!” Plus, she wanted to go home and see her kids at the end of the day, and not wait an additional 45 minutes for someone to remove the glue from her labia.

Why Westworld’s Thandie Newton Refused the Show’s Merkins