“I’m used to being a chameleon but this was absurd,” Cara Delevingne told a Mipcom Cannes panel this afternoon as she discussed the many experiments she embarked on while making upcoming Hulu and BBC Three doc Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne, which has sold to 90 territories.
Planet Sex, which is one of distributor Fremantle’s flagship shows being shopped at Mipcom, features the model, actress and LGBTQ+ advocate attending masturbation seminars, going to a porn library and being given a blood test during an orgasm.
She described herself as a “prude” who had been taken aback initially by her resistance to these experiments, before giving in to them.
“I’m used to being a chameleon but this was absurd,” she added. “I used to think of myself as hip, young and cool but felt like such a prude. But I ended up doing everything I felt comfortable doing.”
Across six episodes, Planet Sex sees Delevingne embark on a global journey to explore issues of sexuality and gender. On her quest to achieve a deeper understanding of both the cultural and natural forces that shape our identity, she immerses herself in communities who experience gender and sex differently and meets scientists at the forefront of research.
Episodes are themed in areas such as sexual orientation, gender and monogamy and Delevingne said discovering “the terrifying effect porn has on young people” was the thing she was most disturbed by.
The show launches on November 29 on Hulu and November 30non the BBC and Fremantle CEO UK Simon Andreae revealed in the session that it has sold in 92 territories, including to SBS in Australia, Prime Video Canada and RTL in Germany. Other buyers include Viaplay (all Nordic and Baltic countries and the Netherlands), M6 (France), Vodafone (Greece), RTL (Hungary), YesDBS and Channel HOT8 (Israel), TV3 Group (Latvia), Canal+ Poland (Poland), Showmax (South Africa), BluTV (Turkey) and PCCW (Hong Kong, Macao). NHK has also boarded as co-producer of the series in Japan.
Delevingne said she made the show to “connect people in the most authentic way I could.”
“My journey has been lucky and privileged and some people have been through much harder experiences,” she added. “Given my platform, I wanted to connect people in the most authentic way I could.”
The 30-year-old said she had wished shows like Planet Sex had been around when she was younger, and making the show “made me realize how much I need to repair stuff in my life.”
“Kids are more grown up and mature to this conversation now than I was,” she went on to say. “This has been a prevalent and necessary topic for a long time.”
The Mipcom audience was given a 15-minute preview of Planet Sex prior to Delevingne’s talk. She was preceded by Fremantle bosses Andrea Scrosati and Jennifer Mullin, who dissected the producer-distributor’s Angelina Jolie deal.