How Intimacy Coordinators Became Such a Touchy Subject

The opening scene of I Love LA finds Rachel Sennott’s character, Maia, convincingly mid-coitus, riding her boyfriend, Dylan ( Josh Hutcherson), while the earth beneath them shakes. Scenes like this require smoke and mirrors to make them believable, and intimacy coordinators like Yehuda Duenyas (who says he recently worked on I Love LA but was not involved with that opening) make them happen. He describes his role as, among other things, a cross between choreographer and stunt coordinator. “That’s the magic of what we do,” he says. Intimacy coordinators make intimacy look seamless—“the same way you don’t see the wires when someone is falling off a building, and you don’t see the crash mat…and all the stuff that goes into throwing someone out of a window.”

In 2020—a few years after the #MeToo movement—SAG-AFTRA released a set of industry standards and protocols that called upon productions to use intimacy coordinators (hereafter referred to as ”ICs”) to help ensure safer sets, with defined guidelines and policies for handling nudity and simulated sex scenes, as well as the establishment of acceptable training and vetting qualifications. In the following years, ICs became de rigueur on film and TV sets. But more recently—and amid pushback against “woke” culture from conservatives—a handful of A-listers have expressed skepticism about the role of ICs and the position’s value more generally.

In 2023, Jennifer Aniston told Variety that she had previously been unsure what “intimacy coordinator” meant, because she had come up in the “olden days”; Gwyneth Paltrow said something similar to Vanity Fair in her cover story interview this spring, describing a conversation she had with the IC on Marty Supreme: “I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on.’”

Mikey Madison famously declined to use an IC on Anora because she and costar Mark Eydelshteyn thought it best to “keep it small.” Jennifer Lawrence recently told Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang on Las Culturistas that she didn’t really need one while shooting Die My Love, because costar Robert Pattinson is “not pervy”—though Lawrence also didn’t rule out using one on a hypothetical future movie: “A lot of male actors get offended if you don’t want to fuck them, and then the punishment starts.” She quickly added a seemingly sarcastic clarification: “I’ve just heard of this. I’ve never experienced it.”

Actual ICs say that their job on set amounts to much more than being a sex-scene hall monitor. “There is definitely this implication that intimacy coordinators are there as the consent police or another branch of the HR department, when in reality we are a creative asset on set that also roots into consent and boundaries,” says Jessica Steinrock, a SAG-AFTRA-qualified intimacy coordinator and the CEO of training organization Intimacy Directors and Coordinators.

David Thackeray, a well-known certified IC who teaches the craft and has worked on shows such as Industry, Adolescence, Black Doves, It’s a Sin, and Sex Education, explains how that works in practice. He first meets with the director to discern their vision for intimate scenes, then talks to the actors to gauge their characters’ points of view, what they’re comfortable doing and showing, how they would like to work, and the tools needed to make the scenes convincing. He then consults with the production’s costume department to procure the requisite materials (among them: genitalia covers, thongs, nipple covers, pillows in various shapes and sizes). Riders have to be signed and circulated to agents, editors, and countless others. “I’d say 80% of this job is sitting at a desk and having lots of meetings with different people to get to that point…where there’s no surprises and we all know exactly what we’re doing,” he says.

During a risqué or otherwise intimate shoot (including a breastfeeding or bed scene), an IC helps the director execute their vision while ensuring a closed set and establishing a safe, comfortable space for actors and extras. “You have to shift your process constantly,” Thackeray says. “Just because [an actor] got naked in a scene doesn’t mean they’re going to be comfortable with it the next time.” It’s a job that requires stellar communication skills and a high EQ. “It’s vulnerable to be on set, where you’re supposed to be nude but you’ve got these modesty garments taped to you,” Duenyas says.

At times, issues crop up, necessitating a creative pivot—like a makeout-scene modification Duenyas suggested after one actor involved had an epic fallout with his real-life partner. “They had this moment where, instead, they just touched foreheads and looked in each other’s eyes,” he says. “It was so much better than any kiss could’ve been.” Should there be kissing, mints are an integral part of a veteran IC’s tool kit.

Rachel Sennott and Josh Hutcherson in I Love LA.Courtesy of HBO.

As with any job, there are varying levels of proficiency, and an individual actor’s experience with (or opinion of) ICs seems to depend on which ones they get. Florence Pugh recently said on Louis Theroux’s podcast that she’s had “fantastic” experiences with ICs, including one who helped her better understand “the dance of intimacy, as opposed to just shooting a sex scene.” However, she also mentioned a bad experience with one who “just made it so weird and so awkward and really wasn’t helpful and kind of was just wanting to be a part of the set in a way that wasn’t helpful.” Remaining open-minded about the concept of intimacy coordination, she added, “I think it’s a job that’s still figuring itself out.”

Yet plenty of other actors have only had positive things to say about the experience. While working on Dying for Sex, Michelle Williams understood the IC-choreographer parallel: “The intimacy coordinator can really show you how to give a better blow job,” she told Vanity Fair this spring. “There’s a technique to fake blow jobs in the same way that there’s a technique to time-step.” Similarly, on Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang, ​​Olivia Colman praised Ita O’Brien, the IC she worked with on The Roses, for teaching her how to fake an “O” face on camera by imagining a bask in the sun.

Both Thackeray and Duenyas have also worked as actors and directors, while Steinrock came to intimacy coordination from the world of improvisational comedy and theater. As ICs, they all are certified—Duenyas even consulted with SAG-AFTRA as it sought to define and flesh out the position—and started doing this work long before it was considered an official gig. Thackeray got his start just a few years out of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama; Steinrock’s husband, a stage-combat instructor and director, introduced her to colleagues who were using techniques from stage combat to create intimacy direction. Eventually, she says, she became one of the first three working intimacy coordinators in Los Angeles. Duenyas evolved into a “sex choreographer” during his years in the New York immersive-theater scene, collaborating with casts to develop protocols for performing provocative material. “If we wanted to fight onstage, we would hire a fight choreographer,” he says. “But when it came to incestuous assault situations onstage, it was like, Good luck, figure it out.”

They all teach their craft too. Thackeray holds workshops and talks at drama schools and film festivals all around the world. He feels mentorship helps before someone dives into this particular line of work; he once had a student who backed out of intimacy coordination after realizing how much they’d have to refer to sexual content on a daily basis. Steinrock is the CEO of Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, a SAG-AFTRA-accredited training and certification group; Duenyas cofounded CINTIMA, a comprehensive intimacy-coordination training and advocacy organization that offers lessons covering everything from the technical skills of set workflow, language, script breakdowns, and choreography to trauma awareness and consent frameworks. It takes a year, on average, to get certified as an IC, but it depends on the strength of the student’s previous experience and background in the field.

Both Thackeray and Duenyas say that the art of intimacy coordination has evolved, as have opinions about it. Thackeray, who is based in the UK and has worked on multiple HBO productions, says his role on set is very rarely, if ever, called into question. Stateside, Duenyas is known as a thought leader in the space, but will respectfully step aside when asked: “Some directors are like, ‘I’ve been doing this for 30 years, I know how to do a sex scene.’ That’s fine. As they should…. There’s also times when directors are like, ‘I can’t stand doing sex scenes. Thank God you’re here to do this. Can you choreograph this?’ And we say yes, of course, because we’re also trained in the frame-by-frame language of intimacy and how to translate all of that into clean communication with the directors, the producers, and the legal department.”

Gwyneth Paltrow and Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme.Courtesy of A24.

Both say that the gig isn’t just about appeasing a production’s most famous names. “When you’re dealing with a big star and number 25 on the call sheet…there’s a really big power dynamic between [them]. That’s where we can help bridge a gap, make sure they feel good, and then get out of the way,” Duenyas says.

And even if opinions about them may vary, ICs are here to stay. On December 3, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP announced that they’d “reached a tentative agreement establishing the first-ever collective bargaining agreement covering intimacy coordinators working in scripted, dramatic television, theatrical, and streaming productions.” Details about the agreement were not available at press time, but it will go before the SAG-AFTRA National Board for consideration in the coming weeks.

Years after #MeToo, sets are still experiencing something of a culture shift. “Part of what the intimacy coordinator has brought to the industry is growing awareness of how people have been impacted by nonconsent, by power dynamics, growing conversation and awareness of harassment in the industry,” Steinrock says. “It was kind of just an assumption that if you are going to be in this industry, you can expect to face a certain level of harassment. Now the conversations that are being brought, in many ways thanks to intimacy coordinators and the intimacy-coordination movement, are that these things don’t have to be normalized and there is a different way of operating on set. I’ve seen how that awareness can have a trickle-down effect [on] other scenes, whether or not those scenes are intimacy-related. For example, my husband, who works predominantly in fights and stunts, has dramatically shifted his process to be more consent-forward.”

“I’ve never heard so many people talk about consent and boundaries in real life until a few years ago,” Thackeray says. “That’s really empowering for people and important.” But, taking a wider lens, one can’t help but wonder how nouveau conservatism and studio consolidations might impact the depictions of intimacy we get to see. Thackeray says his full dance card is a good sign, and that he hopes to be respected as a department head on set—but that doesn’t always happen. “What I don’t want to see is that we are unraveling what everybody’s worked so hard to get to,” he says. “That would be a real shame, and it would be quite dangerous, if I’m honest.”