"These weren't three kinky, freaky people. These were three people that were in love," said Luke Evans, star of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women .

Claire Folger / Annapurna Pictures Elizabeth Marston (Rebecca Hall), Dr. William Marston (Luke Evans), Charles Guyette (JJ Feild), and Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote) in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

This summer, audiences flocked to theaters in record droves to see Gal Gadot slip on Wonder Woman’s kick-ass bracelets. But most of the millions who saw the Patty Jenkins movie probably don't know much about William Moulton Marston, who created the DC Comics character. Marston’s story is often condensed to the fun fact that he also invented the lie detector test, but with Angela Robinson's new movie Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, people are learning that the truly interesting thing about Marston lies in his relationship with the two women who assisted him, inspired him, and loved him — and each other — along the way. At the start of the movie, William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) and his wife, Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall), professors of psychology at Radcliffe College, become infatuated with their student Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote). The Marstons are working on developing the lie detector and employ Olive to assist them, but with every test of their invention comes a new level of intimacy between the three of them. After finally establishing via a lie detector test that they all have feelings for one another, the trio shares a sweeping love scene backstage at the college’s theater, with Olive dressed in Grecian warrior garb, a hint at the origins of Diana of Themyscira. While a threesome may be inherently titillating, Robinson and the cast of Professor Marston were sure to tread carefully in depicting the unorthodox romance. “I really wanted to capture what it felt like to fall in love, and to not otherize their experience at all,” Robinson, who wrote and directed the film, told BuzzFeed News at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. “I wanted to make it accessible, and I didn't want to make it kinky or weird. I wanted to follow organically if three people fell in love with each other and really kind of track that.” Evans noted that he was very aware of the magnitude of getting the scene right. “In the wrong hands, those scenes specifically could have come across in the wrong way,” he said. “These weren't three kinky, freaky people. These were three people that were in love.” Hall added that part of the appeal of joining the project was that “nobody tells stories of relationships that are not the norm” in a “positive, hopeful, wonderful, romantic, beautiful context.”

Claire Folger / Annapurna Pictures Olive and Elizabeth in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

Hall said that in developing the scene in which William, Elizabeth, and Olive have sex for the first time, Robinson explained to her, “I want to shoot eroticism. I don't want to shoot titillation. I'm trying to make the female-gaze version of this. What happens emotionally to these characters as they are finding out what is erotic to them, as they are discovering who they are sexually? What does that mean emotionally for them?” To Hall, the most erotic scenes to shoot were the lie detector scenes. “It's like extended foreplay. That's where every character is saying, 'Do you want to have sex with me? Do you want to have sex with me?' And everyone has to answer honestly,” she explained. As Robinson said: “The lie detector scenes are about sex, and the sex scenes are about Wonder Woman.” Shooting the actual sex scenes involved quite a bit of planning on Robinson's part. She was focused on capturing the actors’ faces and the exchanging of consent through mere looks. “It's about the intellectual and emotional consent per interaction that gives it its emotionality,” Robinson said. “I was very concerned with what they were thinking, which I ultimately found way sexier than what they were physically doing to each other.”

DC Comics A sample from one of Marston's Wonder Woman comics.