Thursday, November 5, 2026

Boardwalk Empire (HBO) Sex Scenes: Paz de la Huerta, Gretchen Mol and More

Aleksa Palladino and Lisa Joyce in Angela and Mary’s bedroom scene from Boardwalk Empire (3:20). The other 12 scenes from the series are further down the page.

Boardwalk Empire is Terence Winter’s HBO crime drama about Atlantic City during Prohibition, with Steve Buscemi as the political boss Enoch “Nucky” Thompson. It ran for five seasons from 2010 to 2014, Martin Scorsese directed the pilot, and the show never pretended the boardwalk was wholesome. Alongside the bootlegging and the killings there was a lot of sex: Nucky’s girlfriends Lucy and Billie, Jimmy’s wife Angela, Gillian Darmody running the Artemis Club, Daughter Maitland in Harlem. I have picked out every worthwhile willing scene and put them here: 13 clips in HD, each with its length and what actually happens.

Angela and Mary (3:20)

Season 1 | With: Aleksa Palladino, Lisa Joyce

Season 1. Angela Darmody, Jimmy’s artist wife played by Aleksa Palladino, has been lonely while Jimmy is away at war and then wrapped up in Nucky’s business. She finds comfort with Mary, a photographer played by Lisa Joyce, and this is the two of them in Angela’s bedroom: a warm lamp, white sheets, Mary’s robe slipping open as they kiss and undress. It runs over three minutes and it is one of the most tender scenes the show ever shot. No fights, no deals, just two women who want each other.

Why this one first? Most sex on Boardwalk Empire is transactional or lonely. Angela and Mary’s scene is the opposite: long, warm and genuinely romantic, shot as if the rest of Atlantic City had stopped mattering for a few minutes.

Every Other Sex and Nude Scene in Boardwalk Empire

Here is the rest, roughly grouped by character. Lucy and Billie cover Nucky’s private life, Gillian has the most scenes of anyone, Angela gets her mornings alone, and Daughter Maitland closes the list in season 4.

Lucy and Nucky in Bed (0:57)

Season 1, episode 1, “Boardwalk” | With: Paz de la Huerta, Steve Buscemi

The pilot introduces Nucky Thompson’s girlfriend Lucy Danziger, played by Paz de la Huerta, in the most Boardwalk Empire way possible: the two of them in his big wooden bed while he takes a phone call. Lucy sits up topless on top of him, restless and impatient, while Nucky tries to run Atlantic City from under the sheets. It is short, funny and exactly how the show announced it was not going to be shy.

Lucy in The Emerald City (1:34)

Season 1, episode 10, “The Emerald City” | With: Paz de la Huerta, Steve Buscemi

By mid-season Lucy is still hanging around Nucky’s suite even as Margaret is taking her place. This clip finds her naked in his bed again, stretching and arguing and refusing to be ignored. Paz de la Huerta plays Lucy as pure appetite, and this is one of her longest nude scenes in the season.

Lucy: Family Limitation (1:27)

Season 1, episode 6, “Family Limitation” | With: Paz de la Huerta

Another night in Nucky’s world. Lucy is in bed, fully nude, waiting for a man who is increasingly somewhere else. The episode is about birth control and who gets to decide what happens to a woman’s body, and Lucy’s scene sits right in the middle of that argument.

Angela in The Ivory Tower (1:27)

Season 1, episode 2, “The Ivory Tower” | With: Aleksa Palladino

Early in the series Angela wakes up alone in the little house she shares with Jimmy. She gets out of bed naked, pads around the room in the morning light and for a moment looks like someone who still believes the war is over and life will be simple. Aleksa Palladino does the whole walk without fuss, and it is one of her cleanest nude scenes on the show.

Gillian: Family Limitation (2:46)

Season 1, episode 6, “Family Limitation” | With: Gretchen Mol

Gillian Darmody, Jimmy’s mother and a former Cafe Beaux-Arts showgirl, still knows how to work a room. In this episode Gretchen Mol is naked in bed in a long, unhurried scene that shows why every man in Atlantic City still looks at her twice. Gillian is in her thirties here and very much in control of the moment.

Gillian in Bed (2:17)

Season 1 | With: Gretchen Mol

Another of Gillian’s bedroom scenes from the first season. Soft light, a metal bed frame, and Gretchen Mol lying back naked while a lover leans over her. The show always treated Gillian’s adult sexuality as something she owned, separate from the terrible thing that happened to her as a girl.

Gillian: Ging Gang Goolie (1:04)

Season 2, episode 6, “Ging Gang Goolie” | With: Gretchen Mol

Season 2 Gillian, still running her own game. She ends up in bed with a younger partner, smoking afterwards, smiling, completely at ease. It is a quiet little scene and a reminder that Gillian was never only a victim on this show.

Gillian: Sunday Best (1:28)

Season 3, episode 7, “Sunday Best” | With: Gretchen Mol

By season 3 Gillian is running the Artemis Club, and this is her in her element. Gretchen Mol is topless for most of the clip, moving through a private room as if the camera were just another client. Sunday Best is one of the season’s quieter episodes, and her scene is the heat in the middle of it.

Billie Kent: Resolution (1:09)

Season 3, episode 1, “Resolution” | With: Meg Chambers Steedle, Steve Buscemi

Season 3 opens with Nucky’s new girlfriend, the Broadway actress Billie Kent, played by Meg Chambers Steedle. She is naked in his suite, bright and playful, and for a while Nucky looks like a man who has finally picked someone who matches his appetite. Billie would not last the season, but this first scene is the high point of their romance.

Billie Kent: Spaghetti and Coffee (0:58)

Season 3, episode 2, “Spaghetti and Coffee” | With: Meg Chambers Steedle, Steve Buscemi

Billie again, early in season 3. She wanders Nucky’s room naked, kneels on the floor, flops on the bed with a camera, completely comfortable being looked at. Meg Chambers Steedle plays her as a modern girl in a 1923 world, and the nudity is part of that ease.

Sigrid (1:06)

Season 3–4 | With: Christiane Seidel

Sigrid, the young Norwegian woman who crosses paths with the Thompson world, played by Christiane Seidel. She is naked in a private room in a short, bright scene. Seidel has a handful of nude scenes across the middle seasons; this is the clearest of them.

Daughter Maitland (3:00)

Season 4, episode 7, “Friendless Child” | With: Margot Bingham

Daughter Maitland, the Harlem jazz singer played by Margot Bingham, gets one of the longest nude scenes of season 4. She is in bed with Chalky White’s world spinning around her, topless and unhurried for over three minutes. It is a rare quiet stretch in a violent season, and Bingham plays it with real warmth.

What I Left Out

I left out every scene that turns on violence or coercion. That means Gillian’s striptease for the Commodore in “What Does the Bee Do?” (he raped her when she was twelve, and the show never lets you forget it), Pearl’s bed scene that ends with a gun attack, and anything else where the sex and the abuse are the same moment. I also skipped duplicate copies of the same clip, a few very short underwear-only cuts, and low-value extras. What is left is every scene where the nudity is part of a willing adult moment.

Why Boardwalk Empire Still Gets Talked About

Boardwalk Empire won the Golden Globe for Best Television Drama Series in 2011, Scorsese’s pilot set a new bar for HBO crime shows, and the cast — Buscemi, Kelly Macdonald, Michael Shannon, Michael Pitt, Gretchen Mol, Paz de la Huerta — made Atlantic City feel lived in. A big part of that texture was the sex. The show put naked bodies on screen the way it put guns and whiskey: as part of how power worked on the boardwalk. Some of those scenes are ugly on purpose. The ones on this page are the ones worth rewatching.

About Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014)

Boardwalk Empire was created by Terence Winter from Nelson Johnson’s book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, and executive-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mark Wahlberg. It premiered on HBO on September 19, 2010, ran for five seasons and 56 episodes, and ended on October 26, 2014. The whole series streams on HBO Max.

Actor	Character
Steve Buscemi	Enoch “Nucky” Thompson
Kelly Macdonald	Margaret Schroeder / Thompson
Michael Shannon	Nelson Van Alden / George Mueller
Shea Whigham	Eli Thompson
Michael Pitt	Jimmy Darmody
Aleksa Palladino	Angela Darmody
Gretchen Mol	Gillian Darmody
Paz de la Huerta	Lucy Danziger
Meg Chambers Steedle	Billie Kent
Margot Bingham	Daughter Maitland
Christiane Seidel	Sigrid Mueller
Michael K. Williams	Chalky White