Featured Image Credit: ITV
Topics: Film and TV, This Morning
Jess Hardiman
A Hollywood prosthetic penis maker has explained why actors need them, having worked with the likes of Will Ferrell, Chris Hemsworth and Sebastian Stan.
Special effects makeup artist Matthew Mundle appeared on This Morning today (Monday 16 May) to speak to Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield about his unusual career.
The penises are sculpted from scratch as production are 'usually very specific about what they want', with Mundle saying they’ll 'ask for a certain length' before he sends them a picture of what he has.
"If they want it longer or shorter I can always do that," he said.
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Speaking from his workshop in Texas, Mundle continued to go into detail about why actors might want to opt for a prosthetic member.
"Once the penis goes on, or they have a prosthetic penis that fits on to their own penis, then they don’t have to worry about that and they can concentrate on acting, you know?" he said.
In other instances, however, it's simply a case of going bigger - sometimes for comic effect, in Chris Hemsworth's case, having used one of Mundle's fake penises for a scene in 2015 road comedy Vacation.
He recalled: “It was through underwear, so we had to decide how big the penis was and how it was going to be attached to him. I think the scene is just funnier than funny.”
Mundle said the production team gifted the actor the fake penis in a shadow box, and that the star put in on a mantelpiece in his home - right next to his mjolnir hammer from the Thor films.
“So he’s got both hammers together,” he joked, before Willoughby quipped: “You don’t want to mix those two up.”
Mundle also shared the details behind the process, saying: "First the director or producer will call me, they want a penis for a certain project.
"I say 'Ok, what's the length of it? What's the girth? How big are the testicles?' I go from there. Sometimes I have stock moulds, sometimes I sculpt it and make a mould from there."
The penises don't come cheap, of course, with Mundle revealing they can cost thousands.
"Well, it’s usually around $850 to $1000. If it’s from scratch it’s usually from $1400 to $2500," he told Willoughby and Schofield - who couldn't stop giggling throughout the segment.
When he tried to explain the sudden demand for prosthetic penises, Mundle said: "Your guess is as good as mine. I think people are just getting lax about seeing male genitals. I think it's also just a fad maybe we're going through. Maybe at one point it will just relax and we'll see it everywhere."