As many times as we’ve all seen Julianne Nicholson naked, she has this sort of air around her of being a part of very few nude scenes in film and television. I don’t believe this is just some bizarre perception on my part. I think it’s to do with the way the nude scenes she’s in are shot and edited. To illustrate, let me start with one of her earlier nude scenes – Flannel Pajamas. I remember seeing the Julianne Nicholson nude scene in Flannel Pajamas not long after it came out back in 2006, and sweet Lord in heaven, I was blown away. It was one of my favorite nude scenes of all time back then and continues to be. The difference then was that we didn’t have so many blu rays and 4K streaming services to contend with, so it didn’t stick out that it didn’t have an HD release. It sure as hell sticks out now.
The nude scene itself was amazing, though. We got to see full frontal nudity from Julianne Nicholson, and it was glorious. The whole thing was well lit, of course. There were no objects in the way and the camera was steady too. Absolutely legendary. Compare that to her nude scenes in Her Name Is Carla – yet another film with no HD release as I write. In that one, we do get some great shots of her tits that last a long time and are decently enough lit, but it’s not quite the glory of Flannel Pajamas. And now that we’ve gotten those two out of the way, there’s everything else, and everything else leaves a lot of magic to be desired.
We saw Julianne Nicholson nude in Kinsey, William Vincent, Boardwalk Empire, Sophie and the Rising Sun, and Initials SG, and every single one of those nude scenes failed to hit the mark. Yes, we did technically get to see some pieces of Julianne Nicholson naked, but “some pieces” really is the key to what went wrong. Quick shots, close zooms with no face in the same shot, low lighting, and pretty much every other trick in the book to have a nude scene that does genuinely have nudity but to have it be unsatisfying nonetheless. It’s like the worst of both worlds. Absolutely shameful, especially since we got a taste of that majestic ginger bush in Flannel Pajamas.
But then all was made right when we got to see Julianne Nicholson topless in this year’s Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde. The 51-year-old Massachusetts native doesn’t play Marilyn Monroe – that role and all the nude scenes it comes with goes to the beautiful Ana De Armas – but our Detective Megan Wheeler does play Norma Jeane’s mother Gladys, a role she spends a good while naked in. First we see her topless as she’s trying to drown her daughter in a bathtub, then sitting on the floor while wet and crying and still topless, and then her grand finale offers us full frontal nudity as she closes the door of her home, flashing her bush to the neighbors in the process. And because this is a new Netflix production, we get it in crystal clear 4K Ultra HD resolution (albeit with an unusual 4:3 aspect ratio). So after more than a decade and a half of waiting, here’s Julianne Nicholson naked in Blonde.
