Intimacy coordinators embrace their next chapter in Hollywood

0:00It's a recent Sunday in Los Angeles, and I'm watching an R-rated scene unfold in front of me. Two people are writhing on a mattress having fake sex. Take one. Action. All right, we've got two actors on the bed. One's on all fours. The other is coming up from behind. Now, these actors are fully clothed. They're wearing face masks that cover their mouths when they kiss. And then, after a few moments, they use their go-to word in this training session to pretend that they're climaxing. Vocal. Vocal. Vocal. Cut. Obviously, this is not a real film set. It's a simulated film set taping simulated sex.

0:47We're at a training workshop for intimacy coordinators. These are people who choreograph sex scenes. We're going to take your pants off seductively, and then you're going to take off your shirt seductively. Intimacy coordinators make on-screen sex look more authentic. And they also help actors feel safer during filming. Like right here, in this scene, there's actually a small deflated Pilates ball between the two actors' pelvises to provide a barrier between them. Part of the art here is to make sure that you don't see the artifice. We could see through his legs and see the ball, but if you get up just a little bit, yeah, that's great.

1:26After the Me Too movement took off in 2017, intimacy coordinators became prominent on sets as one answer to Hollywood's problem was sexual harassment and abuse, a problem that trainee Marta Gotts saw firsthand. And of course, as a female, if I see another female who's 22 starting out in the industry that's very rough on women, I step in. Seven years ago, she was first assistant director on a film. And she says she saw a crew member plying a young actress with tequila shots to loosen her up for her first ever sex scene. She felt very pressured to be topless. She didn't feel comfortable. She's like, I don't want to.

2:08She was kind of on the fence. There's a million ways to shoot a scene. So we found a compromise when we just saw just, you know, the top of the mound, no nipples. But she was willing to work with that. Consider this. Intimacy coordinators wear many hats. Fake sex choreographer, advocate for actors' boundaries. They're a fixture in Hollywood. But they haven't always been welcomed with open arms.

2:42From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.

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4:20It's Consider This from NPR. Almost a decade after the height of the Me Too movement, you'll find intimacy coordinators on lots of sets. And as of February, the job is now covered by SAG AFTRA, the labor union that represents actors. It's also offering new opportunities for trainees like Joel Harrison. He told me that before learning how to choreograph fake sex on screen, he was having real sex on screen. I pivoted to OnlyFans and porn and did pretty well for about five years of that. So I'm kind of transitioning out of that now. But I started hearing about intimacy coordination like last year.

5:01And I was like, wow, this really seems like something that my life experiences have actually equipped me really well for. Still, even if you have had plenty of real sex on screen, how do you make fake sex look real? I asked Jacqueline Chantel that, one of the intimacy coordinators who co-founded Syntema, this training organization. People know when something looks real on camera. Right there on set. You can see it on camera. And then you can shift a chin angle. You can shift a leg and then it all changes. And you're like, ooh, that's it. How much does cultural competency play in your role? Because I imagine when we're talking about seduction, like the dance of it, or intimacy, sex, a lot of that depends on culturally specific things, right?

5:54Whether we're talking about race, sexual orientation, age. Yeah. I mean, for me as a Black woman, it's very simple that I might wake up with a bonnet and be having an intimate moment. And so if there is a white person who hasn't had that experience, then that is going to impact whether that story is told to the extent that it could be told. One of the reasons why we built our training program is we wanted to really bring more diversity into the field of intimacy coordination. And so when we train, we really teach the spectrum of sexuality. This is Yehuda Duenas, the lead instructor and another co-founder of Sintima.

6:37He's been doing this work for decades, and so he has seen the role of intimacy coordinator fall in and out of favor with some of the most powerful people in Hollywood. I'm very curious what happens when actors you're working with don't want to cooperate. Because over the years, there has been some backlash. Like Gwyneth Paltrow said, she would feel stifled by intimacy coordinators. Jennifer Lawrence mentioned that she didn't use one with Robert Pattinson because she said, these are her words, he's not pervy. And these actors sometimes worry that an intimacy coordinator can interfere with the spontaneity, the organicness of a sex scene.

7:16What do you think of that concern? I think we're here to make these scenes more professional. You know, those concerns are valid, especially with a new department and a new field that people haven't worked with. It's like a touchy subject, intimacy and sex. And people don't want to be told how to do that necessarily. necessarily. And so I think at best what we do is we come in, we can actually get in there and help choreograph. But if an actor feels like they got it and they know what they're doing, there's still a lot of scaffolding and structure that we bring to the process. And there's a lot of legal stuff that we do.

7:52Well, not only that, there's a power dynamic. Like I just mentioned two A-listers who probably have a fair amount of clout on set. Absolutely. And intimacy coordination involves people who don't necessarily have that power on a set. Absolutely. And so, you know, when you're working with two A-listers, they might be perfectly comfortable, but when the A-lister is working with a day player that's coming in, there's a much different power dynamic there. And you're there to make that person feel safe. We're there to make that person also feel safe or looked out for it. Acting does not necessarily need to feel safe, but they need to know that there's a structure around it and that a producer is not going to come in and say, you know what, this isn't hot enough.

8:33Take your shirt off. Do you feel though this pushback, this backlash that I'm describing has been building in recent years? I feel like it's been getting easier, actually. I feel like people are starting to learn how to work with intimacy coordinators. What we do, a good intimacy coordinator is not going to be in the way. I want to talk about the amount of sex that we are seeing on screens these days because I saw this report in The Economist by a film analyst who found that the amount of sexual content in top Hollywood movies has declined by nearly 40 % since 2000. Do you have any idea why that might be the case?

9:10I'm seeing more lately. I mean, just heated rivalry alone has really like turned up the heat. There are 10 films at Sundance were all erotically charged. So I'm really seeing an intimacy boom right now. A sex comeback. Yeah. And I think it's wonderful. Why do you think there is this boom? What's happening? You know, I'm actually hoping that it's because of what we do. I feel like people can now not be so afraid to tell these stories. And like, there's all of these new examples of projects that have come out recently that are really about how humans are navigating their own desire, their own need for connection, their own need to express their humanity, and, and their own intimacies.

9:53And I think that people really want to see that. I think there's so much disconnection in our culture and society that I think people are dying to connect. Braving that now. Braving connection. And I think that if we can get that through our media and through the stories that we tell each other, I think that's a huge win. Thank you so much, Ehuda. It's so nice to speak with you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Catherine Fink and Karen Zamora. It was edited by Christopher Intagliata. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

10:30It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. This message comes from NPR sponsor CFP, certified financial planner professionals committed to acting in their clients' best interests. Learn more at letsmakeaplan.org. This message comes from Takeoff by IXL, the K-5 core math curriculum that continuously differentiates learning. Everything teachers need to personalize instruction is on Takeoff's digital platform. Learn more at takeoffbyixl.com.