‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ Star Taylor Zakhar Perez Asked If He Should Shave His Butt Before Filming Any Nude Scenes: Bring Your “Hairy Butt To Set”

Red, White & Royal Blue star Taylor Zakhar Perez had a very important question to ask director Matthew López before they filmed any nude scenes for the film: when he checked to see if he had to shave his butt.

The director recalled the moment during a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show.

He said Karen Hartley, the film’s hair and makeup coordinator, called him and asked him to meet her in Perez’s trailer. “I’m like, ‘Uh-oh, uh-oh, oh shit. Oh God. What’s going on?’“ he said. “And I go into Taylor’s trailer — we’ve been making this movie for like, five, six weeks at this point — and Karen looks at Taylor and says, ‘Alright, tell him what you told me.’”

Perez reportedly told López, “I don’t know if I should shave or not.”

When López realized the actor wasn’t talking about his face, Perez told him to “just look,” before removing his pants.

López joked that Hartley stayed in the trailer to act “as the chaperone, because I didn’t want my career to end before it began.”

He continued, “Taylor lowers his pants and [he says], ‘Look at my ass,’ and I’m like: ‘You’re fine, you’re fine, you look great!’ And he’s like, ‘Okay, good, that’s what we thought.'”

“I go to set, and after that I walk over to my first [assistant director] and I was like, ‘You can’t believe how my day just started,'” he said.

The director later wondered why Hollywood “can’t just change that definition of what is beautiful.”

“Hardly anybody is going to argue that these two young men aren’t beautiful,” he said. “But a body itself, as it is naturally, is a gorgeous thing. Yeah, I told Taylor, ‘Please, yeah, just bring your hairy butt to set.'”

The steamy rom-com features a number of intimate scenes between Perez and his co-star and love interest, Nicholas Galitzine, who credit their success to the “trust and respect” they had for each other.

“Making intimacy super serious can be a bad thing because you get really in your head about it,” Galitzine told People after filming wrapped. “Taylor and I, we have enough trust and respect in each other that it was all about always feeling comfort and being able to communicate.”

Red, White & Royal Blue premiered on Prime Video on Aug. 11 to largely positive reviews. It now boasts a 93 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Red, White & Royal Blue is now streaming on Prime Video.