Readers of a sensitive disposition look away now. Actor Lara Pulver, whose role as an (occasionally naked) whip-wielding dominatrix in BBC1's Sherlock prompted more than 100 complaints from viewers, has revealed that she filmed the scenes entirely in the buff.

Pulver said there was something "really empowering" about her role as Irene Adler in the New Year's Day episode of the hit BBC1 drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

She revealed the intricacies of filming a nude scene for television in an interview for the new issue of the Radio Times.

"They give you a self-adhesive bra that sticks to you and ... imagine a sanitary towel made of tan Lycra, but with wire through it so it cups the underneath of you. And Louboutin shoes," said Pulver.

"Paul McGuigan [the director] very sweetly said to me, 'OK, the choice is we spend hours shooting it to avoid seeing straps or we take all that off and shoot it quickly.'

"I thought I couldn't put myself through being there all day, practically naked anyway, so I might as well get completely naked and get it done in a few hours."

Asked by her co-star Una Stubbs, who plays Sherlock's landlady Mrs Hudson: "So you took it all off?" Pulver replied: "Yes ... There's nothing to hide behind, no mask, and something really empowering takes over."

Pulver added: "Martin said a few things but they were harmless. They were both supportive and by the end of it I wouldn't move on to the next line until Benedict had stared at my boobs!"

The actress said she bore similarities to her TV alter ego, who flirted with Holmes while wearing only diamond earrings, lipstick and heels, and went on to strike him across the face with a riding crop while perched suggestively on a chair.

"There are huge elements of our characters that are us. But I don't go around whipping people. And I'm not a lesbian," she told the magazine.

The BBC received more than 100 complaints about the pre-watershed scenes in the New Year's Day episode, the first of the second series of Sherlock.

Pulver, whose credits also include True Blood and Spooks, said the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories was a hit because it did not "underestimate people's intelligence".

She added of the detective: "I think he has so much going on in his genius brain that he doesn't even think of women as sexual beings.

"A beautiful woman could walk past him naked – as I did – and it doesn't register."

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