Intimacy coordination is a new Hollywood buzz word. In addition to being oh-so-trendy, it’s a job that intrigues sex workers, therapists and stunt performers alike — an audience I’m not sure any other job on the planet can claim. To give you a window into a day in the life of an intimacy coordinator, I’m going to use Planned Parenthood’s consent acronym FRIES (Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic and Specific).
“Freely given” consent means that no coercion is taking place. Sets inherently have hierarchies, so my job is to be a neutral third party to mediate that power dynamic. An actor might give consent in a way that seems like it’s freely given, but actors are taught to say “yes” and do whatever the director says. When I call an actor after talking to the director about their vision, my first questions have to do with the actor’s past experience. Have they ever done a sex scene before? What are they nervous about, if anything? Is there anything I should know? If a director would like to see topless nudity, but an actor says they’re not comfortable with any nudity at all, I don’t push them on it. They don’t need to know that the director was interested in toplessness. Telling them that once they’ve firmly told me their comfort level would be pressuring them.
I facilitate a dialogue in which the actors can share boundaries with each other, with my assistance, so they don’t forget anything.
“Reversible” means that you can change your mind. I remind actors that what they agree to ahead of time — what’s written in their riders — is what we can do, it’s not what we’re going to do. Until footage is shot (and then is property of the network or production) an actor can change their mind and they are legally allowed to. Of course, the problem that comes up is that they fear that they could be considered “difficult” and get fired or lose representation.
What many people don’t realize is that an actor might have agreed in the casting room to the very vague “simulated sex and nudity” for the scene and episode that they’re auditioning for, but any number of things could change from there.
They could end up getting written into another episode that has an assault scene, or they could get to basecamp and the assistant director could start verbally harassing them, and then they’re put into the makeup trailer and three people of a different gender are applying body makeup everywhere except up their butt, or they get to set and the director of photography starts hitting on them, and then they no longer feel comfortable getting naked in front of everyone who needs to be on a closed set.
I’ve had this conversation with casting directors who’ve asked me how I handle it if an actor changes their mind, followed by a horror story of getting a middle-of-the-night phone call that an actress won’t take her top off and how they have to go to the set and handle it. It’s important to remember how many variables there are between the casting office and the shoot.
“Informed” is about the information that you need to agree to something. This might be about questions like, “Will there be genital to genital contact?” (“no” is the answer, because this isn’t porn) or “Will the set be closed? Who will be present? Will I get to meet my scene partner beforehand?” See, most often on T.V. sets, sex scenes with day-players or guest stars are scheduled first up in the shoot. The reason for this is that if two actors don’t really like each other, they won’t know that yet at the time that they film the sex scene and can get it out of the way.
“Enthusiastic” is less about a knee-jerk, people-pleasing “Yes!” and more about a carefully considered, “Yes, I can do that.” That pause in which someone really thinks about it can seem like rejection, but I am consistently working on sitting with the person in that pause and respecting it for the consideration that it is. In this line of work, I’ve often heard, “Your ‘yes’ isn’t enthusiastic unless you are equally empowered to say ‘no.’”
“Specific” is about planning. What are we doing, when are we doing it, and how? The planning is the biggest part of being an intimacy coordinator. My job is to eliminate surprises, because surprises rupture trust. Planning is partially getting the director’s vision, partially working out with actors what they will and won’t do, and partially choreography. The plan helps us improvise within a structure.
The most important part of my job is the consent negotiation between the actors on the day of shooting. They’ve told me their boundaries and where they’re okay being touched and in what ways, but hearing it from their scene partner is the most impactful way to hear that information. I facilitate a dialogue in which the actors can share boundaries with each other, with my assistance, so they don’t forget anything. Most of the time, the initial answer from an actor is, “You can touch me anywhere.” The impulse is completely understandable; actors want to be flexible and game for anything. But what I’ve found is that helping the actors build a solid menu so that anything not on that menu is off the table, is the best way to get them to feel free to play. The restraints help them be creative within a container. If an actor says, “I’m fine with whatever,” that can be paralyzing for their scene partner. If they can say, “You can grab my boobs, you can grab my ass, you can pull my hair like this…” the other actor has concrete ideas of what they can do and feels comfortable to explore.
Intimacy coordinators are often mistaken for the “Sex Police” (I’ve been called this to my face), HR or even therapists. We’re not interested in neutering or censoring sex scenes. We love sex scenes! The majority of us are sex nerds who love to think and talk about sex. In our personal lives, we’re mostly the people who our friends have always come to for sex advice. On a set, our job is multifaceted, but the goal is simple: to make sets safer.
Mia Schachter was one of the first few intimacy coordinators in Los Angeles. She returned home to L.A. in 2018 after working in theater in New York City for nearly 10 years. Her background in theater, dance, casting and gender studies informs her work. Some of her credits include “Insecure” (HBO), “Perry Mason” (HBO), “Twenties” (BET), “Grey’s Anatomy” (ABC), “Party of Five” (Freeform) and “Love, Simon” (FOX/Disney).
