Hollywood's top intimacy coordinator reveals the unexpected reality of A-list sex scenes

[In the] early days, coming from theatre, I called the role 'movement intimacy director', and then very quickly directors are going, 'Whoa, I'm the director', particularly in TV and film, who weren't so used to collaborating with a movement practitioner.

What used to happen, in the void of the intimacy guidelines, was several things. 

One, people are ashamed or embarrassed, and that's still part of what we're navigating as intimacy coordinators.  

The whole issue around intimate content is [related to] where someone might have come from regarding religion, culture, how open their family were, what their connections are, and how easily they feel OK to talk about sex, intimacy, and nudity. We're asking actors to call their boundaries - that aspect wasn't there.

[There wasn't] a professional structure to talk about it professionally. On the day, it's just like, 'Right, this is what I want'. The director very often would say to the cast, 'You go away and work it out for yourselves'. Historically, actors would say [of intimate scenes], 'They're always awkward', or they might say 'I felt a bit harassed during it'.

All of that is an injury that our society knew about, but it was turning a blind eye until the tipping point of the Weinstein allegations.

That's a big part of why producers have said, 'Yes, let's bring you in'. In that period of the 'Times Up #MeToo' movement, it's listening and going, 'Actually, yes, this injury we need to mitigate against', and how we can do that.

Then I was there to offer the intimacy on set guidelines.

We're called the coordinator, and that's the fundamental of the role: coordinating the open, professional and creative conversation across the board, right from the get-go.

You take that conversation to the actors [and directors] way before the day on set.

If there's a shower scene with kissing in the shower, that's a physical storytelling. What are your requirements? The actor says they are happy for the character to be that character, 'But my requirements are, I've just had a baby, I don't want my naked breasts or my wobbly belly to be seen'. 

So I'll talk to the costume department. We'll get a lovely halter neck swimming costume that's low on the buttocks, and she'll go, 'Yeah, I'm happy for all of my back down to the small of my back [to be shown], then the camera jumps to the top of my thighs.' We'll see that. The storytelling of nakedness is told, but the actors are completely supported. The directors are getting exactly what they want.

These people aren't really in love. They don't really know each other. If there's nakedness, it brings in an agreement and consent so that everybody is personally listened to.

That's such a shift in the industry - from the idea of boundaries, and I've turned it on its head and said, 'Tell me your requirements. What do you require regarding nakedness, regarding touch, regarding simulated sexual content?'

In the early days, if you said 'No' in any way, shape or form, you were considered either a diva or a troublemaker, and people lost jobs when they called their boundaries in the past.

So now, the day on set is supported by all of that work done before.

I share back to the costume department what the actors' requirements are. When we rehearse, we incorporate the clothes into the choreography.

If there's water, we work with a special effects team. I'm checking with the cast, 'How do you like your water, how hot do you like it?' I'll share that back with the special effects team. Then I'll be talking to the location [team] saying, 'We've got a shower scene, so that'll be someone stepping in and out of water. Please can we have a hot tent right next to the set.'

Then I'll check in with the costume department to make sure there's loads of towels.

We also put in a 'time out' word, so in the intimate content - both in rehearsals and on set - those actors have the autonomy to stop the action, no questions asked, so that they know they don't need to continue.

I don't know the actual statistics, but there's so many intimacy practitioners now, and almost every single job does have an intimacy coordinator.

What isn't quite understood is how the role should be on a production. Sometimes I'll have a production call me up and go, 'Oh, we've got a kissing scene tomorrow. We've realised that we need an intimacy coordinator'.

If you're calling me the day before, you're not understanding. The bottom line is you're here to work creatively, artistically, with an embedded time to prepare, to teach techniques, to listen to the directors, to be more creative, to be edgy, and to create a brilliant product. It's getting the industry as a whole to understand that's our skill.

A lot of what the intimacy coordinator is managing is listening to each person, listening to producers and director, so that on set, they can both walk on, knowing that they're listened to and heard. They're personally taken care of so artistically they can both fly and do the best.

When I very first read the novel, before I had anything to do with working on it, I was already bowled over by Sally Rooney, her groundedness and writing of a female experience.

That Marianne (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) is the one that says, 'Can we take our clothes off now?' She's the one that's saying, 'Can we have a condom?' That empowerment from her character throughout is really wonderful. That scene is such a beautiful depiction of sexual awakening, with explicit consent being sought throughout. He's saying, 'If you want to stop anytime, you can stop'.

I've been told several times that it's been used in secondary schools as part of their positive sex education. Those kind of depictions show that continuous consent is more sexy, because you're listening and go, 'Oh, I'm being taken care of'. 

Well, they were unknowns. The lovely Daisy had worked on the sitcom that one of my friends had directed, Cold Feet (from 2016-2020). She had been a child actor through that.

It was an incredible experience and, and I said to [the director] Lenny Abrahamson one morning, 'You know, this is groundbreaking intimate content'.  It was a privilege to support both of those people and rightly they have risen to megastars.

The same with the whole of the cast of Sex Education; that was my very first time on set as an intimacy coordinator.

It's the story of Siegfried and Roy (legendary Las Vegas illusionists], they're two incredible characters, two incredible people. Look at what they created in Vegas and their inspiration. They just saw outside the box.

For me, researching Siegfried and Roy has been amazing. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it comes out.

I'm saying, if it's important to you, lift the lid on your intimate lives. Consider, what do you want? How do you want it? If you got together with your partner in your early 20s, and you've now had two children and you're mid-40s, what still works for you? What doesn't work for you?

Start with listening to yourself. The next thing is just actually being present in your body and then seeing ourselves. Recognising that what's sold to us in the entertainment industry is wonderful, but it's a distortion - extreme thinness or extreme, every man having a six pack, we don't need that.

Then, calling our boundaries, giving consent and the power of no is so important

I've been working with educators who have developed what are called 'active consent' - flipping the way our sex education is taught in secondary schools to [focus on] positive sexual awakening, instead of fear based. 

That's on my agenda for the next arc of my life: working on getting better sex education into all of our schools.