If you feel awkward meeting new people, take a deep breath.
On Friday’s episode of “The Tonight Show,” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau told Jimmy Fallon about the first time he met Jennifer Garner, and the experience was a bit more sensual ― or should we say scent-sual ― than either expected.
Coster-Waldau and Garner are co-stars on the new Apple TV+ mystery series “The Last Thing He Told Me.” Before filming began, he learned the first time he’d meet his TV wife would be with an intimacy coach ― a professional usually hired to assist with coordinating sex scenes. That struck Coster-Waldau as strange because, as far as he knew, there were no sex scenes planned for him.
“I was like, ‘Did they rewrite the script?’” the “Game of Thrones” star told Fallon.
But the session with the intimacy coach was less sexy and more strangely intimate than he expected.
“So the first time we really meet ... [the intimacy coach] tells us, ‘Now you stand up, get really close,’” Coster-Waldau recalled, speaking in a soothing voice to imitate the coach. “And then you have to get really really close with a person you don’t know, and then close your eyes.”
Slipping back into his impression of the coach, he continued, “‘And now smell each other.’”
The Danish actor comically pantomimed the mutual sniff fest before admitting that “it was actually the perfect way to start.”
He explained, “In that moment, we realized we had the same sense of humor because we both started laughing.”
The pair also recounted their aromatic first acquaintance in an Interview Magazine piece published on Wednesday.
“I was so dreading this whole thing and so nervous to meet you this way,” Garner told her costar. “And there we were, and she had us stand right up against each other, kind of facing each other, close our eyes and sniff, right? And the moment we sniffed, I knew we were OK because we had the same sense of humor. And we both just said, ‘All right, we are doing it.’”