Betty Gilpin Was Worried About Smelling 'Like Diapers' for Three Women Sex Scenes — but Instead Wound Up Smelling Like Pickles

It's safe to say Betty Gilpin had some nerves before shooting Three Women.

Gilpin, 38, stars as Lina in the Starz series, which tells the story of three women — Lina, Sloane (DeWanda Wise) and Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy), all of whom intersect with Gia (Shailene Woodley) and tell her their stories.

The story is about "female sexuality," among other things, as Gilpin told Seth Meyers on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Oct. 29 — which meant there were quite a few sex scenes involved.

"I had done plenty of sex scenes before," Gilpin said, as she joked of her six-month-old and 3-year-old. "I want my daughters to be proud when they Google me in the future."

These sex scenes — all of which are with Austin Stowell — felt different, though, as it was her "first time as a mom."

Telling Meyers, 50, she "became really self-conscious," she shared the roundabout way she solved her problem — though, in hindsight, it might have only compounded things.

"I was like, 'Oh my god I'm gonna smell like diapers and cheddar bunnies.' So I was like, I'll get a new perfume," Gilpin said. "And Seth, when I tell you I doused myself with this perfume — like waterboarded myself with this perfume... Looking back, it wasn't great."

At the time, she thought, "It smells amazing," but an interaction with a makeup artist months later changed her perspective entirely.

"Cut to, like, months after we wrapped production. I worked with a new makeup artist who — I was wearing the perfume — she leaned in to do my makeup, she went [gag]. 'Are you wearing?' — and said the perfume's name. I don't wanna blow them up," Gilpin continued.

"And I was like, 'Yes.' And she was like, 'Do you know this particular perfume — do you know some people taste soap with cilantro?' and I was like, 'Mhm.' And she was like, 'Some people smell pickles with this perfume. So I need you to wash it off right now.'"

The revelation made Gilpin spiral, naturally, and she joked that at the time, she thought Stowell, 38, was "having the artistic feminist experience of his life."

"Meanwhile, he was like, [gag], 'I'm having sex with a pickle.'"

Sex scenes aside, Three Women, which is based on Lisa Taddeo's 2019 bestselling novel of the same name, "finds three women on a crash course to radically overturn their lives," per the official synopsis.

Gilpin's character Lina is "a homemaker in suburban Indiana" who "is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life" (enter: Stowell).

Wise plays "glamorous entrepreneur" Sloane, who is in a "committed open marriage with Richard (Blair Underwood), until two sexy new strangers threaten their aspirational love story."

Creevy plays young Maggie, a student in North Dakota who "weathers an intense storm after accusing her married English teacher (Jason Ralph) of an inappropriate relationship."

Woodley's character Gia was added for the show and is modeled off Taddeo's own life during the process of writing the book and meeting the women. Gia "persuades each of these three spectacular 'ordinary' women to tell her their stories, and her relationships with them change the course of her life forever."

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Three Women is now streaming on Starz.