Making Sense of That 'American Gods' Sex Scene

While premium cable networks have always been a place of rampant violence and sex (because they can!), American Gods didn't take long to make a statement in its first episode: Sex on this show will be weird, and it will be largely symbolic. It happened 25 minutes into the first episode with one of the craziest sex scenes in TV history. The character Bilquis (played by Yetide Badaki) has sex with a stranger she found on the internet. While they're in bed, Bilquis asks the man to worship her, and, as she orgasms, she then devours him into her vagina. It's one of the most famous scenes in American Gods, known to readers as the Orgasm of Death.

The scene plays out a little differently in Neil Gaiman's original novel, however. The man is a scumbag named John, and Bilquis is a prostitute.

Read the rest of this story at Esquire.

Yetide Badaki has also appeared in Masters of Sex and Lost.