‘Sanditon’ Star Ben Lloyd-Hughes Says They Worked to Make Charlotte and Colbourne’s Hand Moment “Magnificent” and “Sexy”

Sanditon Season 3 Episode 2 largely puts the focus on Miss Georgiana Lambe (Crystal Clarke) and her impending fight in court, but the Masterpiece on PBS show still makes time to push Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams) and Alexander Colbourne (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) ever so closer together. While the two former lovers find themselves stymied by Charlotte’s impending nuptials, fate seats them next together during a concert. And guess what? At one point, their hands tenderly touch. THEIR HANDS TOUCH!

Because PBS’s Sanditon is a prim and proper Regency romance, this small, slightest of grazes packs a steamy wallop. There’s something sensual about two star-crossed lovers unable to communicate their passion through words finding a stealth way to do so in public with a physical touch.

It’s a sensationally sexy moment that Sanditon star Ben Lloyd-Hughes put a lot of thought into. He revealed that although there was often an intimacy director on set, he couldn’t recall if production asked one to choreograph this particular physical moment for Charlotte and Colbourne.

“I think that one [scene], because it was quite subtle, I think we didn’t have one,” Lloyd-Hughes said. “I do remember it being a kind of night shoot on the promenade set and it was great to have quite a few takes of really working out what the movement was.”

“Because it has to be subtle enough to not play the end of the series. It has to be subtle enough for it to be only Episode 2. But also magnificent enough and sexy enough and poignant enough for it to capture both the characters’ attention and the audience’s attention. So it was that fine line between coming on too strong, so to speak. Too hard, too ‘pokey pokey.’ But I loved it.”

The experience actually sent Lloyd-Hughes back to his drama school days when students — pre-intimacy coordinators — had to romance each others’ hands.

“At the drama school I went to, Guildhall, they’d always do this project on Restoration comedy and they’d always do an evening where the girls and the boys would get dressed up in restoration outfits and you would spend the whole evening devoted to your partner’s hand,” he said.

“And I think they probably don’t do it anymore. This was a pre-intimacy directing time. But you would essentially spend an hour kissing a hand because at that period it was, that was the most erotic thing you could do.”

Sanditon may be set centuries after the Restoration, but Lloyd-Hughes felt a similarity between how both historic eras saw hands as a “kind of gateway” for lovers to share passion with oneanother.

“It wasn’t a generation, an era of hugging people hello and high-fiving and outward shows of intimacy; kind of making out on promenades,” Lloyd-Hughes said. “So that was probably the closest you could get to an illicit love affair and it was really exciting to do. Yeah, I loved it.”

So if Lloyd-Hughes sees touching hands as tantamount to Colbourne and Charlotte embarking on an “illicit love affair,” what does that mean for Charlotte’s betrothed, Ralph (Cai Bridgen)?

The full season of Sanditon Season 3 is now streaming on PBS Passport. New episodes of Sanditon premiere on Masterpiece on PBS on Sundays at 9/8c.