Nell Tiger Free Explains ‘The First Omen’ Shot That Was Cut to Avoid NC-17 Rating: “No Plain Vagina Allowed!”

The First Omen, which began streaming on Hulu today, is, like any self-respecting horror movie, rated R. But the movie nearly got hit with the dreaded NC-17 rating—a box office killer—because the Motion Picture Association took issue with a graphic birthing scene. Now, in a recent interview with Decider, The First Omen star Nell Tiger Free revealed, what, exactly, it was that the ratings board found so offensive about the scene: female genitalia.

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson in her feature film debut, The First Omen is the sixth film in the Omen franchise, and a direct prequel to 1976’s The Omen. Free stars as Margaret, a young American nun-in-training sent to an orphanage in Rome, where she uncovers a conspiracy to breed an antichrist child. The First Omen birthing scene in question comes about halfway through the film, when Margaret witnesses another nun, played by Eugenia Delbue, giving birth. The nun screams in pain, but the medical professionals delivering the baby ignore her cries.

Margaret watches in horror, and, for a split second, the camera cuts to a shot of a clawed, demon-like hand reaching out of the pregnant nun’s vagina. It’s a disturbing moment of body horror, to be sure, but it’s over in the blink of an eye. Far more upsetting is the way the nun starts laughing manically after she is drugged, despite the fact that we know she’s in excruciating pain.

Free explained to Decider that, before the MPA requested it be cut it down, the scene was much longer, and included a prolonged shot of the pregnant nun’s vagina.

“Originally, there was a shot where it was just vagina. Vagina, and then the jackal hand comes out of the vagina. The NC-17 was because there was just vagina, before the hand came out,” Free explained. “They wanted to cut the scene where it was just the vagina, and only have the bit where the hand was coming out. The vagina being mutilated was less scary than just a plain old vagina, which I thought was really interesting.”

Free went on to explain that the vagina shot “was originally like two minutes long. So it had to get truncated. There was no plain vagina allowed!”

Despite the censorship, The First Omen was critically praised for its depiction of forced birth and female body horror when it opened in theaters in April. Now that the film is available to buy on digital platforms and streaming on Hulu—as well as on DVD and Blu-ray on July 30th—surely even more viewers will be watching the movie soon. Free hopes those audiences will appreciate the body horror as a conversation starter—especially in the wake of the Roe vs. Wade reversal—without finding it too over-the-top.

“We didn’t want anything to feel gratuitous, because it’s not there for any sort of macabre pleasure,” the 24-year-old British star explained. “We’re not making torture porn. We’re here to tell a story, to tell it well, and to handle it with care and respect.”