Watch Viola Davis Describe How She Threw Her Back Out in a Sex Scene

Like laws and sausages, sex scenes are much easier to enjoy if you don’t know how they’re made. Viola Davis told Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday that one scene on How to Get Away with Murder was not only decidedly unsexy, it actually injured her.

“I said, ‘Listen, I’m always playing these maids, I always gotta gain 40 pounds for a role, I want to be sexy, I’m pulling out all the stops,’ so I went for it,” Davis said. “And threw my back out.”

The scene was between Davis and Billy Brown, but lots of crew members were also involved in one way or another.

“The director said, ‘Slam her up against the wall, and then really go for it, pull your pants down,’ and I said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna go for it,’ ” Davis recalled. “He slams me up against the wall. Six people are behind the wall, holding it up. That thing is shaking. It sounds sexy, it really wasn’t.”

Kimmel then asked how Davis conveyed this injury to her husband; after all, “My back’s killing me from all the sex I had at work today” isn’t the most sympathetic story.

“I hid that injury like you would not believe,” Davis said.

This article originally appeared on ew.com