Over the past few years, making films has changed. And we’re not just talking about better technology, fancier cameras and the controversial use of AI. Since the #MeToo movement made shockwaves in the industry, intimacy coordinators have become more prominently used on film and TV sets – with HBO adopting a policy to use them in 2018. And though they have been used in the theatre industry before, their first credited mention on TV was in 2017, when the first season of The Deuce was released.

For those who don’t know, being an intimacy coordinator is a job where you guide actors through sex scenes, to ensure everyone’s comfortable, and that no boundaries are crossed. Or as intimacy coordinator Louise Kempton says ‘the easiest thing to equate us to is stunt coordinators’.

‘We have an understanding of the body, choreography and how people work together, and we are there to mitigate risk,’ she told Hana.

And recently screen icon Jane Fonda reflected on her time in the industry, saying she wished they existed earlier. ‘Every time you begin a movie, you have training. What to do if there’s a problem. That never happened,’ the 87-year-old told Women’s Wear Daily when attending the Cannes Film Festival. ‘The other thing, they’re called intimacy coordinators. I wish we had them while I was doing sex scenes because it’s hard.’ In 2023, she expressed a similar sentiment, telling The Hollywood Reporter: ‘It’s hard even to describe the difference when you’re the only [woman] on a set, literally the only.’

Understandably, Fonda is not the only actor who has looked back and compared how sex scenes are filmed. Kate Winslet told The New York Times magazine last year she would have liked an intimacy coordinator ‘every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene’.

‘It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner,’ she added, ‘because I always had to stand up for myself.’ Winslet recalled some of the times she wished she’d had help from a coordinator on set, including times she didn’t like camera angles, when she didn’t want to be fully nude, or when she would have preferred less people to be in the room when intimate scenes were being filmed.

And intimacy coordinators do make sets feel more comfortable, as many actors have praised the coordinators they have worked with. Zendaya spoke about the use of an intimacy coordinator on last year’s film of the summer Challengers, calling their work on the tennis flick ‘fantastic and very helpful, because it was important that we felt safe’. ‘I spoke with my colleagues so that we could find a way to feel at ease,’ she added. ‘We played tennis together, we went out together, we rehearsed together. We got to bond and feel good with each other.’

After filming Good Luck To You, Leo Grande – which is about a widowed woman hiring a young male escort – Emma Thompson also supported the use of intimacy coordinators, after some famous (funnily enough, male) actors criticised their use. ‘Intimacy coordinators are the most fantastic introduction in our work,’ she said. ‘And no, you can’t just ‘let it flow’.” ‘There’s a camera there and a crew – it’s not on your own in a hotel room,’ she added. ‘You’re surrounded by a bunch of blokes carrying things. So it’s not a comfortable situation, full stop.’

Perhaps most poignantly, Michaela Coel dedicated her BAFTA to I May Destroy You’s intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien when she won best mini-series in 2021. In her speech, Coel said O’Brien’s work allowed people in the industry to ‘make work about exploitation, loss of respect, about abuse of power, without being exploited or abused in the process’. From Coel’s perspective, it made a huge difference – as she added: ‘I know what it’s like to shoot without an intimacy director – the messy, embarrassing feeling for the crew, the internal devastation for the actor.’

O’Brien is a huge name in the industry, and has worked on sex scenes in Normal People and Sex Education. But she’s also helped put together Intimacy On Set guidelines, which have been used by HBO, Netflix and the BBC. She’s spoken about the importance of her work before to Elle, saying many people are astounded it’s only become commonplace in the last few years.

‘The amount of times people ask, “How come it’s taken so long for this role to be there?”’ she said. ‘It’s so lovely putting the process in place and working with actors who perhaps are really nervous, but then having them say, “We’ve had a really great day. I know I’ve done something really good, and I feel really proud.”’

Hopefully now, unlike Fonda and Winslet, less actors will look back at their careers and wish they were more comfortable on set.