Tak didn't take it off in Pop Star

The drama Pop Star (ดวงอันตราย, Duang Antarai) may have been a star vehicle for musician Jay Montonn Jira, but the big talk about the movie is a supposedly nude scene for Jay's co-star, actress "Tak" Bongkot Kongmalai (บงกช คงมาลัย).

It's been controversial, because in the extremely conservative Thai entertainment industry, actresses are required to maintain a veneer of respectability, and so while they might model bikinis and strike sexy poses for magazines, they will rarely ever do nude scenes.

And though the trailer for Pop Star seems to show a nude Tak undressing in front of a mirror, Tak insists that it's all movie magic.

The Bangkok Post's Mae Moo Sunday gossip column has more:

She actually wore a flesh-colored stocking over her body as she filmed the scene.

"The special effects people edited it out. They also redrew the line of my breasts and my bottom. I was impressed – my breasts look good and firm."

The screen siren, whose previous films include Ai-Fak, Tom Yum Goong, Chai Lai Angels and Burn, goes on to maintain that the bare breasts glimpsed in Pop Star "are not mine." Those are a body double, another common trick in Thai cinema, so a leading actress can claim her dignity is intact.

Pop Star, meanwhile, practically disappeared from Bangkok cinemas after less than a week since opening on July 15. In my scan of the cinema-listings last week, I saw it was only playing at some, not all, Major Cineplex branches. I didn't get the chance to see it. It didn't make the top 10 at the Thai box office on its opening weekend.

Seems that nudity or not, Pop Star wasn't attracting the crowds.