Jason Patel and former EastEnders star Ben Hardy have opened up about going ‘deep’ for their sex scene in queer romance film Unicorns.

Unicorns stars Jason Patel as a gay, Asian drag queen living in south London, with whom straight mechanic Luke (Hardy) falls in love, and has to navigate this curveball to his identity.

Directors James Krishna Floyd and Sally El-Hosaini, the former of whom also wrote the film, shared with PinkNews that the sex scene between the pair was Patel’s first day on set for the film – and Hardy and Patel have expanded on what it was like filming the moment.

Speaking to PinkNews, Patel said of the start to his filming experience: “You’ve got to go in deep!” before laughing.

Continuing, he explained: “You have to. I’m one of those [adrenaline junkies], and it felt like: ‘Oh, of course, let’s go hardcore. Let’s go all in’.

“It’s such a wild experience, but it turned out to be so fun and so electric, and it was great [filming] because it was a nice closed set of people,” Patel continued, with Hardy agreeing.

“We were both in it together; it was [Ben’s] first scene with a guy, and that was just my first scene on camera, so it was both our firsts.”

Hardy also explained that the Unicorns sex scene was informed by their real-life nerves – and that he and Patel hadn’t seen each other since their chemistry read.

“It was good for the scene, you know, they were both nervous in that moment, so we used the nerves.”

Patel added: “God, it was like I was playing for England. And I had won the World Cup. I was like we need this [sex scene] to be the best it could ever be. It was like ‘It’s coming home.’ I did it for England.”