For the most part, viewers of Netflix’s new series “Marco Polo” are going to get what they’re expecting. There are gorgeous international backdrops from scenes shot in Malaysia, Kazakstan and Italy, there’s plenty of political intrigue to earn the show its “Game of Thrones” comparisons. All in all, it is a very entertaining version of the tale of Marco Polo.
Then there is a trippy, drug-induced, dream-state orgy sequence.
Lucky Marco Polo (Lorenzo Richelmy) gets plenty of action with the ladies, as does Emperor Kublai Khan (Benedict Wong). But there’s one sequence in particular in episode 5 that is so jaw-droppingly weird and awesome that it’s already one of the most standout moments of Season 1 — even though members of the press have only been able to watch the first six episodes.
The scene takes place after Marco heads to the desert and an elderly man gets him to smoke something — probably opium — out of a pipe. Cut to the audience experiencing the trip in as bizarre a way as Marco is, with orgy harem sex scenes that fade in and out of one another like a kaleidoscope.
“It was crazy,” Richelmy recalls to Zap2it of shooting the scene. “It was incredible because I was working with this group of dancers. We are all guys, same age, all naked [laughs] dancing — it was art, really. It was an experience of living something else, but I was there and it was crazy.”
The orgy is only one of Marco’s sex scenes, and not even his only scene in a harem, but it was the most extreme of all of the sequences Richelmy shot in the first six episodes. “I’m super open. I don’t feel ashamed of anything, I can be naked in front of the world,” the 24-year-old says. “I didn’t feel ashamed, but I was amazed by the type of thing that comes into your mind when you’re in the middle of a bunch of men and women naked. You just feel lucky to experience something, and oh my God you would never experience in this life.”
Viewers who have watched the likes of “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black” and “Hemlock Grove” know Netflix doesn’t shirk from explicit sex scenes, and “Marco Polo” is no exception. Kublai Khan, like a ruler of his time, has a massive harem of concubines that his wife, Empress Chabi (Joan Chen), curates for him. Expect to see various depictions of those love scenes scattered throughout the series.
“This is probably the first time I’ve had an onscreen wife, let alone to be plunged into an orgy, so it’s quite the challenge,” Wong says. “This is incredible that he had a place like this, you know? That there was this kind of sex factor; that his wife would be choosing the finest women in the land for this Kublai Khan. It was just one of the many facets of him as well, of someone that powerful.”
Chen didn’t find Chabi’s position strange, saying, “Historically and culturally, that was their way of life. They had more wives than one. She secured herself the position of the queen, and the queen is supposed to be responsible for all of the other wives, and she takes that charge. It’s much better to take charge than to let it happen.”
Then there’s the Blue Princess of Cocacine (Zhu Zhu), another member of Kublai’s court who has caught Marco’s eye. Though they never consummate their affection in the first six episodes of the series, the writers still managed to sneak some love scenes in. Zhu says those sequences were a bit bizarre because they take place outside the context of the series.
“According to the storyline, we’re not supposed to be doing anything like that, but we’re doing it, so there is no base,” she says. “We don’t have to have any restrictions of the reality because we can imagine each other loving each other passionately without thinking, ‘Oh, we’re going to be caught, and there’s this and that.’ It really doesn’t have a lot to do with the scenes of reality. It’s quite surreal. It’s like in an ideal world that’s what two young lovers would do, but not in reality — and yet, we don’t really have to worry about reality. It’s quite weird, but fun.”
“Marco Polo’s” 10-episode Season 1 premieres in its entirety on Dec. 12 on Netflix.
