Why the Hollywood stalwart wishes there were intimacy coordinators on her past films.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]
Words by Bonnie McLaren<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/05\/imago820768933-scaled.jpg” alt=”Jennifer Aniston” title_text=”78. Internationalen Filmfestspiele von Cannes 2025 – Abschlusszeremonie” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] Over the past few years, making films has changed. And we\u2019re 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 \u2013 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<\/em> was released.<\/p>\n For those who don\u2019t know, being an intimacy coordinator is a job where you guide actors through sex scenes, to ensure everyone\u2019s comfortable, and that no boundaries are crossed. Or as intimacy coordinator Louise Kempton says \u2018the easiest thing to equate us to is stunt coordinators\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018We have an understanding of the body, choreography and how people work together, and we are there to mitigate risk,\u2019 she told Hana.<\/p>\n And recently screen icon Jane Fonda reflected on her time in the industry, saying she wished they existed earlier. \u2018Every time you begin a movie, you have training. What to do if there\u2019s a problem. That never happened,\u2019 the 87-year-old told Women\u2019s Wear Daily<\/em> when attending the Cannes Film Festival. \u2018The other thing, they\u2019re called intimacy coordinators. I wish we had them while I was doing sex scenes because it\u2019s hard.\u2019 In 2023, she expressed a similar sentiment, telling The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>: \u2018It\u2019s hard even to describe the difference when you\u2019re the only [woman] on a set, literally the only.\u2019<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] 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 <\/em>magazine last year she would have liked an intimacy coordinator \u2018every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner,\u2019 she added, \u2018because I always had to stand up for myself.\u2019 Winslet recalled some of the times she wished she\u2019d had help from a coordinator on set, including times she didn\u2019t like camera angles, when she didn\u2019t want to be fully nude, or when she would have preferred less people to be in the room when intimate scenes were being filmed.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s film of the summer Challengers<\/em>, calling their work on the tennis flick \u2018fantastic and very helpful, because it was important that we felt safe\u2019. ‘I spoke with my colleagues so that we could find a way to feel at ease,\u2019 she added. \u2018We played tennis together, we went out together, we rehearsed together. We got to bond and feel good with each other.’<\/p>\n After filming Good Luck To You, Leo Grande<\/em> \u2013 which is about a widowed woman hiring a young male escort \u2013 Emma Thompson also supported the use of intimacy coordinators, after some famous (funnily enough, male) actors criticised their use. \u2018Intimacy coordinators are the most fantastic introduction in our work,\u2019 she said. \u2018And no, you can\u2019t just \u2018let it flow\u2019.\u201d \u2018There\u2019s a camera there and a crew \u2013 it\u2019s not on your own in a hotel room,\u2019 she added. \u2018You\u2019re surrounded by a bunch of blokes carrying things. So it\u2019s not a comfortable situation, full stop.\u2019<\/p>\n Perhaps most poignantly, Michaela Coel dedicated her BAFTA to I May Destroy You<\/em>\u2019s 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 \u2018make work about exploitation, loss of respect, about abuse of power, without being exploited or abused in the process\u2019. From Coel’s perspective, it made a huge difference \u2013 as she added: \u2018I know what it’s like to shoot without an intimacy director \u2013 the messy, embarrassing feeling for the crew, the internal devastation for the actor.\u2019<\/p>\n O’Brien is a huge name in the industry, and has worked on sex scenes in Normal People<\/em> and Sex Education<\/em>. But she\u2019s also helped put together Intimacy On Set guidelines, which have been used by HBO, Netflix and the BBC. She\u2019s spoken about the importance of her work before to Elle<\/em>, saying many people are astounded it\u2019s only become commonplace in the last few years.<\/p>\n \u2018The amount of times people ask, \u201cHow come it\u2019s taken so long for this role to be there?\u201d\u2019 she said. \u2018It\u2019s so lovely putting the process in place and working with actors who perhaps are really nervous, but then having them say, \u201cWe\u2019ve had a really great day. I know I\u2019ve done something really good, and I feel really proud.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n Hopefully now, unlike Fonda and Winslet, less actors will look back at their careers and wish they were more comfortable on set.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] Photo: <\/b>IMAGO<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why the Hollywood stalwart wishes there were intimacy coordinators on her past films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10350,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10349"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10360,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10349\/revisions\/10360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘I wish we had them when I was doing sex scenes’ \u2013 Jane Fonda<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]