The stomach-churning Jimmy Savile scene BBC were forced to cut from Steve Coogan drama | The Sun

ACTOR Steve Coogan has opened up on the shocking scene he demanded BBC bosses ditch from their controversial new Jimmy Savile drama The Reckoning.

The star has taken on the role of the disgraced DJ and TV star for the highly publicised new BBC drama.

Steve was left requesting a change to the four-part series over his doubts about including a highly-disturbing scene.

BBC chiefs had originally wanted to show a shocking necrophilia scene as part of the the programme before Steve spoke out against its inclusion.

The 57-year-old confessed he felt "uncomfortable" with the scene and took his thoughts to the show's director, Sandra Goldbacher.

Speaking about the scene to The Independent, Steve said: "It was really disturbing, what can you say? It’s as disturbing as it looks.

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"In that morgue scene, there was a certain shot they wanted to do that I didn’t want to do."

The scene in question was set in the mortuary of Leeds Hospital where Savile was a volunteer and saw him place his hand underneath the sheet of a corpse of a woman in her seventies.

Steve was left keen to avoid it being shown, saying: "It was just a detail that I was uncomfortable with, so I had a conversation with the director and we came to an agreement on what was the most appropriate way to depict it."

He went on to add of the decision to play the role and depict his hideous crimes: "There’s a tension between showing too much of Savile’s offences, and it being grotesque, or sugar-coating them, which is also wrong [as we won’t] see the horror of what he did.

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"So you have to strike that balance – you don’t want to upset survivors and you don’t want to anaesthetise the full effect."

Having faced questions over his decision to take on the role and for the BBC to dramatise the events in the first place, Steve previously told the RadioTimes that the Beeb were better to be "damned if they do" and tell the full story.

He said: "It is controversial and I understand that.

"The BBC are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, and I believe the correct choice is to be damned if they do.

"Broadly, it’s better to talk about something than not.

"The team had the right attitude and it was done with the cooperation of survivors."

The Reckoning begins tonight at 9pm on BBC One.

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