"It’s right to surprise an audience and keep them on their toes a bit."
Season two of Netflix's Bridgerton landed last week, and while fans are loving the show, many have taken issue with the lack of sex scenes, particularly when compared to the first instalment.
Word has clearly got back to the show's cast as Jonathan Bailey - who plays leading man Anthony Bridgerton - has addressed some his fans' comments.
In an interview with USA Today, the actor said: "What you lose in sex scenes you gain in a deeper human understanding, which hopefully enriches the world so that the future intimacy scenes won’t be the heavy feature, and [you] won’t have to lean on them as much."
He continued: "It’s right to surprise an audience and keep them on their toes a bit.
"It would have been wrong for Kate and Anthony to have got physical any sooner than they did. And I think the payoff is really earned."
Before the show aired, its creator Chris Van Dusen teased a "sexy" and "scandalous" season two, but acknowledged that there are fewer sex scenes than there were in the first season.
At a press conference, he said: "It was never about quantity for us. Our approach to intimacy on the show is the same as season one – we use these intimate scenes to tell a story and to push a story forward.
"We’ve never done a sex scene for the sake of doing a sex scene, and I don’t think we ever will. It all serves as a larger purpose. It's a different story this season. It's different characters. We're with Anthony and Kate for most of the season, and that's very different from Daphne and Simon, it's a different story."
You can watch seasons one and two of Bridgerton on Netflix right now.
