Claire Foy has revealed that filming sex scenes has left her feeling exposed and exploited, ahead of the premiere of the newest production of A Very British Scandal.

It is based on the Duchess of Argyll’s high-profile divorce in the 1960s, which included graphic images and graced the front pages of newspapers on a daily basis.

Margaret Campbell is played by Claire, who previously played the Queen in the Crown series.

The duchess’s sex life was a major focus of the 1963 divorce hearing, with her husband Ian Campbell publicly estimating the number of men with whom she had intercourse and offering obscene images purporting to show her in the act.

Foy discussed why she finds filming sex scenes difficult on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

She Said: “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. 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.”

Foy said, “My decision to do the scenes for A Very British Scandal was rooted in the fact that it was pivotal for the subject matter.” But she didn’t want it to be the kind of sex onscreen that people are used to seeing.

“My thing was that I felt very strongly that it had to be in it, but I wanted it to be female,” she explained, “I did not want it be that sort of awful climactic sexual experience you often see on the cinema screen.”

Forgery, theft, assault, drug use, secret recording, and bribery were all alleged throughout the real-life divorce procedures. The court chastised the duchess, describing her as a “highly sexed woman” who was “unsatisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite”.

Foy has also recorded sex scenes as Erin Matthews in The Promise (2011), Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall (2015), Dawn in Wreckers (2011), and Charlotte in the TV drama White Heat (2012).

On set, the star of The Electrical Life of Louis Wain commended intimacy coordinators for being open and honest about the subject matter of their job.

“It’s sort of amazing the things that they are able to say. It just makes me feel like a 12-year-old. I just start laughing talking about what body parts people have and where you cannot and where you can touch them and the padding that you can use, but it’s really useful,” she remarked. “I don’t even know how you get to the point where you make something like Normal People, for example, which I think was extraordinary in the way it portrayed actual intercourse.”

She added: “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’, I think, probably shouldn’t exist.”

When asked if the duchess was the first woman to be openly “slut-shamed” by the media, Foy ridiculed the term. “I hate the phrase slut-shaming, I absolutely hate it,” she remarked. “But I think that women have basically been slut-shamed forever. I think Eve was probably slut-shamed.”