Kate Winslet says she insisted a ‘bulgy bit of belly’ wasn’t edited out of ‘Mare of Easttown’

The British actress told the New York Times that the show’s director said he would remove a shot of her stomach during the scene in the HBO miniseries, to which Winslet replied: “Don’t you dare!”

Winslet also said she sent back a poster for the series twice after noticing that her skin had been airbrushed, arguing that audiences relate more strongly to characters who look real.

Kate Winslet attends Haute Couture Paris Fashion Week on July 4, 2017. Credit: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images

“They were like ‘Kate, really, you can’t,’ and I’m like ‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the side of my eye, please put them all back,'” she said in the interview, published on Monday.

The series, in which Winslet plays a small-town detective investigating a murder, was warmly received and aired its final episode on Sunday. (HBO and CNN share a parent company, WarnerMedia.)

The Oscar-winning actress told the newspaper that viewers have been “starved” of shows that accurately portray female bodies. She suggested that people have connected to her character in part because she is “a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from.”

Winslet, 45, has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning once in 2009 for her role in “The Reader.”

Kate Winslet arrives at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 15, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California. Credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

The “Titanic” star has frequently spoken out about the pressures on actresses to maintain a certain appearance throughout their careers, after her rise to stardom in the 1990s prompted repeated discussions about her weight in tabloid media.

In April, she said her daughter Mia Threapleton had begun an acting career “under the radar” by using her father’s name.