Speaking at Vulture Festival in New York this weekend, Maggie Gyllenhaal discussed the performances of her career and experience of the entertainment industry - including the difficulty of filming so many sex scenes in The Deuce, the HBO show from The Wire creator David Simon in which she plays prostitute-turned-porn star Eileen 'Candy' Merrell.

The event begun with a 10-minute montage of five of Gyllenhaal’s performances including scenes from Secretary, Sherry Baby and Crazy Heart. The clips from The Deuce showed her bent over a desk being spanked, and in another, sobbing.

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“There’s so much transactional sex,” Gyllenhaal said. “I was a part of so many scenes where I would like, meet an actor who had one scene, we would have a sex scene together, and then they would leave and that would be it. And it felt very much like what Candy’s doing, it was like a transaction and then you’re on to the next thing. I did get a little tired of it by the end of The Deuce to be completely honest. And I think part of that is how Candy felt. By the end of The Deuce, she was like, ‘I’m fucking over it.’ ”

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Gyllenhaal at the Vulture Festival

She went on to explain how that feeling informed her performance, which won her a Golden Globe nomination.

“I put [it] into the work. Whereas Candy is [at first] like, ‘I’m cool, I’m fine, it’s all good,’ and by episode five she’s like, ‘Actually I cannot function anymore like this or I will die.’ That’s different stakes than I had. And then there’s still episode six, seven and eight, and she’s still having to trick and she’s still having to make porn and it’s not what she wants. So, I guess my feelings about it changed as her feelings about it changed, and maybe her feelings about it changed because I was getting a little tired of it.”

Speaking of season 2 she commented that, “the circumstances are very different” which suggests her character moves on.

Earlier this year the writer of the series confirmed that actor James Franco would return to the show despite allegations of sexual harassment which arose from the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.