Gwyneth Paltrow has got it wrong – intimacy coordinators can help in more ways than one

Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent snub of intimacy coordinators while promoting her latest film with Timothée Chalamet shows that she has a profound misunderstanding of their role on set– and how it is changing and evolving all the time, writes Anna Hart

This week Gwyneth Paltrow revealed she asked the intimacy coordinator to “step back a little bit” during her sex scenes with Timothée Chalamet on the set of Marty Supreme. “I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on,” she said. The White Lotus star Aimee Lee Wood, meanwhile, says intimacy coordinator Miriam Lucia helped her “design” sex scenes with onscreen partner Walton Goggins.

“I love intimacy coordinators, and I think they’re absolutely essential,” Wood told Elle magazine. “She didn’t work in a way that is heavy or formal, instead she would say, ‘you tell me your vision for this scene, and I will make sure that we can execute that in a safe way where everyone’s happy,’” Wood explained.

Seven years ago, the job title “intimacy coordinator” didn’t exist. Today, it features prominently in the credits of the most successful films and TV shows – although some people in the entertainment industry still roll their eyes at the words.

Defined by SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) as “liaisons between actors and production, and movement coaches and/or choreographers on scenes that involve nudity, simulated sex and other hyper-exposed scenes” intimacy coordinators recently unionised with the guild, bringing this new field decisively into the entertainment industry establishment.

It’s a newly minted job that is as misunderstood as it is multifaceted, involving everything from handling “modesty garments”, breath mints and hand sanitiser to choreographing a simulated rape scene and ensuring everyone on set – including wardrobe and camera assistants – are fully prepared for shoots and comfortable asking for a break, or a support session with a psychotherapist.

“There’s no question that the relatively swift adoption of intimacy coordinators has been primarily driven by a fear of lawsuits in the wake of the #MeToo movement,” says Ita O’Brien, a movement director and pioneering intimacy co-ordinator, who in 2017 shared her “Intimacy On Set Guidelines” with Equity, Britain’s performing arts and entertainment trade union. Among her many intimacy coordinator credits are Netflix’s Sex Education, the BBC’s Normal People and the movie We Live In Time, starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.

While O’Brien was developing her guidelines for Equity in the UK, in America Alicia Rodis founded Intimacy Directors International. An experienced actor, director and fight director for the New York Shakespeare Exchange, Rodis runs the largest organisation training intimacy professionals worldwide.

In 2018, she was hired by HBO as an intimacy coordinator for Season 2 of The Deuce, the first time a mainstream network had hired an IC, making it network policy. Other networks – Netflix, Hulu and Amazon – swiftly followed suit, and in January 2019 Netflix released Sex Education, its first production using intimacy coordinators, including O’Brien and David Thackeray. Sex Education was a pop cultural phenomenon, primarily because the intimate scenes were so brilliantly executed.

Protecting cast and crew from trauma – and, more cynically, protecting networks from social media storms and lawsuits – might be the main impetus for hiring an intimacy coordinator. “But a stunt coordinator isn’t just hired to keep everyone physically safe, they’re on set to deliver incredible action sequences,” says O’Brien.

“I’ll never forget the time a producer said to me, ‘You’re here for the girl, right?’ I replied, ‘That’s like suggesting the stunt coordinator is just on set to protect the goodie.’” (In fact, it’s frequently male actors playing the role of perpetrators in abusive intimate scenes who require the most support.) “My job is to bring the director’s vision to reality and get the best performance from cast and crew, while ensuring everyone is comfortable and nobody is harmed physically or psychologically on set.”

Gwyneth Paltrow, pictured here in 2023, has come under fire for her comments on intimacy coordinators (AFP/Getty)

Until the 1960s, actors were expected to perform their own stunts, and, like with intimacy coodinators, there was some initial resistance to hiring stunt doubles. But that just meant most fight and stunt scenes in the 1950s were terrible. I ask O’Brien if we’ve been watching the sexual equivalent of these clumsy, unconvincing and riskily obtained fight scenes on our screens for years – and why it took us seven decades longer to take sex scenes as seriously as stunts.

“I can see three main reasons. The first is that people were just too embarrassed or prudish to openly discuss sexual or intimate scenes,” she says. “Secondly, there was this flawed idea that everyone should automatically know how to simulate dramatic sex on stage or screen simply because we all have sex in our private lives.”

And the third? “The injuries from intimate content being mishandled don’t show right away,” says O’Brien. “A sprained ankle or black eye from a fight scene is an immediate sign that things are not OK on set. With emotional and psychological damage, it can take much longer to come out.”

The injuries from intimate content being mishandled don’t show right away. A sprained ankle or black eye from a fight scene is an immediate sign that things are not OK on set. With emotional and psychological damage, it can take much longer to come out

Ita O’Brien

There are countless examples emerging of on-set abuse around intimate scenes, perhaps the most notorious being Last Tango In Paris (1972). While filming, director Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando (then aged 48) conspired to keep details of a rape scene from Brando’s 19-year-old co-star, Maria Schneider. “I didn’t tell her what was going on, because I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress,”

Bertolucci later said. “I wanted Maria to feel, not to act, the rage and the humiliation.” In a 2007 interview with the Daily Mail, Schneider said the film damaged her. “I was crying real tears,” she said. “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. Thankfully, there was just one take.”

Jenefer Odell is a Manchester-based intimacy coordinator who has worked on Sex Education, Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, How To Have Sex, and Blue Jean. “Almost everyone has a story about intimate scenes being mishandled,” says Jen. “But there is always a way to get what a production needs without making anyone uneasy. In fact, you can’t achieve a good scene if cast and crew are put in positions they don’t want to be in.”

As Odell points out, the definition of “intimate” content has evolved, alongside the role of coordinator. “An intimate scene can be a medical scene – for example childbirth – a state-of-undress scene, going to the bathroom, or being physically restrained, for example with handcuffs,” she says. “Any scene where the actors are physically exposed or vulnerable.”

Aimee Lou Wood in ‘The White Lotus’ (HBO)

Odell trained with Amanda Blumenthal, founder of the Intimacy Professionals Association in LA and I ask Odell what makes someone right for the role of intimacy coordinator. “My background is in dance and theatre arts, and I’ve always been very sex-positive, and good at helping people feel comfortable,” she says. “But the important thing to note is that as the field of intimacy coordination evolves, different approaches are going to emerge. Some people prefer to be tightly choreographed; other performers and directors might want the freedom to improvise within a pre-agreed set of boundaries.

“I’m very interested in the work that Ann James [the founder of Intimacy Coordinators Of Colour] is doing, and how intimacy coordination is taking shape in different places, because intimate scenes look very different in different cultural contexts.”

It’s a rapidly evolving and diversifying field, but until very recently was met with resistance. In 2022, the actor Sean Bean told The Sunday Times, “I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise.” O’Brien worked with a famous female actor who told her about her time on set with a director who bellowed, “OK, go for it” as his only direction for a sex scene. When she asked for more clarity on what was about to happen, if they could break it down into a series of movements – she was labelled “unprofessional” and “difficult”.

“For me, the most exciting idea is that we’ll have more diverse, interesting and accurate representations of human intimacy on our screens,” says Odell. Art is intended to imitate life, after all, but life also imitates art, and perhaps we’ll finally get the onscreen intimacy we need.