Gillian Anderson has admitted that the increased prevalence of intimacy co-ordinators on TV and film sets is something she has complicated feelings about.
In recent years, the Emmy winner has appeared in numerous projects that have made use of intimacy co-ordinators – industry professionals employed to help actors and directors more comfortable while shooting sex scenes or on-screen nudity – perhaps most notably the Netflix series Sex Education.
While promoting her new movie Teenage Sex And Death In Camp Miasma, which contains graphic scenes of both sex and violence, Gillian told The Times that she has mixed feelings about these behind-the-scenes roles.
“It depends on the co-ordinator,” she explained, with the outlet suggesting she is “not a particular fan” of them.
She continued: “I did a Netflix show where one wanted a Zoom because I was tucking my son’s shirt into his trousers.”
“Did I want to meet with him so that we could talk it through, that kind of stuff,” she recalled with an apparent eye roll.
Teenage Sex And Death In Camp Miasma’s on-set intimacy co-ordinator Aryn Mott wrote on Instagram earlier this week: “The work of an intimacy co-ordinator often starts long before the cameras roll.
“On Camp Miasma, that meant research, conversations, rehearsals, choreography, consent work, and building enough trust for everyone involved, performers, director, camera, and crew, to step into something incredibly vulnerable.
“Jane Schoenbrun [the film’s director] described the process as one where we were all consenting to doing something ‘really vulnerable and scary’. And once everyone understood that shared desire, communicated clearly, and trusted the process… the scary became exciting. Then we closed the set. And all that preparation gave the work room to come to life.”
They added: “Great art and good care don’t have to compete with each other.”
Gillian’s latest remarks echo similar comments made by former Game Of Thrones actor Lena Headey during a recent interview with HuffPost UK.
“Like anything, if they’re great at their job, it’s wonderful, and it adds value,” Lena said of intimacy co-ordinators last month. “I think you can have terrible ones who just make you feel more awkward.”
Others, including Sir Ian McKellen and Lena’s fellow Game Of Thrones alum Sean Bean, have previously ruffled feathers when they questioned whether the use of an intimacy co-ordinator “spoiled” the spontaneity between two actors while shooting love scenes.
Toni Collette and Oscar winner Mikey Madison are among those who have turned down the chance to work with intimacy co-ordinators in recent projects, while Gwyneth Paltrow controversially claimed last year that she’d told one on the set of Marty Supreme: “Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on. I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back.”
“I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but… if someone is like, ’OK, and then he’s going to put his hand here’… I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that,” she added during an interview with Vanity Fair, prompting It’s A Sin creator Russell T Davies to brand her comments “disgraceful”.
Meanwhile, Jane Fonda, Kate Winslet and even Florence Pugh have all voiced that they wish there’d been intimacy co-ordinators on film sets when they were starting out in their careers.
Similarly, Dame Emma Thompson has become a staunch defender of intimacy co-ordinators in the last few years, insisting it was “absolutely essential” that young women starting out in their acting careers should have “someone there to protect them”.
