Lead actress Michelle Williams was shocked by steamy sex scenes in T.D. Jakes’ Lifetime movie

Entertainment

Apr 15

Michelle Williams and co-star Antonio Cupo in Lifetime’s *Wrath: A Seven Deadly Sins Story* (Credit: Lifetime/A&E Networks)

By Rebecca Johnson // Entertainment // EEW Magazine Online

Some Christians that enter the movie-making business avoid attaching their names to films depicting steamy bedroom and shower sex scenes—but not Bishop T.D. Jakes. He’s keeping it all the way real.

Destiny’s Child singer, Michelle Williams, who landed the lead role in his Lifetime movie, Wrath: A Seven Deadly Sins Story, was shocked by the risqué nature of some the parts she was asked to portray.

“I read the script, and I was like, did he read the same script that I read?” admitted Williams during an interview on Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club. “Because there’s some action that says, ‘writhing in sheets.’”

Michelle Williams and co-star Romeo Miller (Credit: Lifetime/A&E Networks)

The Grammy-winning performer who grew up in the Church of God in Christ, a conservative Pentecostal denomination that preaches hard against fornication and in favor of holiness, likely did not imagine her first role—especially one linked to a gospel preacher—would include simulated sex.

When co-host Angela Yee asked Williams how the “writhing in sheets scenes” were for her, she answered that she knew her mother and family would “have to see this, but I am 42.”

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Despite being a grown woman with freedom to do as she pleases, Williams is not accustomed to sensual roles.

“It’s different on Broadway,” said the entertainer who has in the past starred in musicals Aida, The Color Purple, and Chicago. “Theater seems more innocent.”

But innocent is not always an accurate depiction of the world we live in or the situations we find ourselves in when we give into lust, something that comes across loud and clear in the made-for-television movie.

“How did you prepare for those scenes, though?” asked Yee.

“The very first scene I had to shoot was the shower scene. They didn’t ease me in there,” said the host of the Checking in with Michelle Williams podcast on The Black Effect Network. “They were like, just get it out the way. Me meeting my male co-star for the first time was in the shower.”

As awkward as that was, Williams said of him, “He was very friendly,” adding, “He told jokes and disarmed me, and it was cool.”

Art, which sometimes tackles uncomfortable, scandalous, and even taboo topics, exists to tell stories and occasionally teach lessons. When it comes to “wrath—even lust, envy, greed, sometimes you don’t think of them as being deadly sins,” said Williams.

But, if you give into wrath, she explained, “You harm yourself. You lose everything you work for. Wrath means it’s some vengeance. You want to play God at that point.”

Therefore, the story shows the pitfalls of giving into our baser nature and going against biblical principles.

Based on the series of books by Victoria Christopher Murray, Wrath: A Seven Deadly Sins Story also stars Tina Knowles-Lawson (Profiled: The Black Man), Romeo Miller (Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection), and Antonio Cupo (Blood & Treasure).

Wrath follows single lawyer Chastity Jeffries (Michelle Williams) as she meets Xavier Collins (Antonio Cupo), a fellow lawyer who is handsome and smart and appears to be everything she wants in a partner. But soon, his affection turns to obsession, and Chastity realizes that she was caught up in a whirlwind of passion and abandoned her principles.

In the end, she will have to fight to save herself.

Wrath is directed by Troy Scott from a script written by Richard Blaney and Gregory Small. It premieres on Saturday, April 16 at 8/7c on Lifetime.