Michael Douglas has some thoughts on intimacy coordinators. The Basic Instinct star — who previously called himself an “expert on sex scenes” at a 2023 Cannes Film Festival panel — recently seemed to doubt the necessity of Hollywood’s new trend while speaking with The UK’s The Telegraph.
While Douglas noted that he’s “past the age where [he’s] got to worry about [sex scenes],” he told the outlet, “But it’s interesting with all the intimacy coordinators,” per Variety.
“It feels like executives taking control away from filmmakers – but there have been some terrible faux pas and harassment,” he elaborated.
He compared sex scenes to “fight scenes,” highlighting that “it’s all choreographed.”
“In my experience you take responsibility as the man to make sure the woman is comfortable, you talk it through,” he continued. “You say, ‘OK, I’m gonna touch you here if that’s all right’. It’s very slow but looks like it’s happening organically, which is hopefully what good acting looks like.”
He also said he’s “sure there were people that overstepped their boundaries, but before, we seemed to take care of that ourselves.”
“They would get a reputation and that would take care of them,” he added. “But I talked to the ladies, [because] I did a few of those sex movies – sexual movies – and we joke about it now, what it would have been like to have an intimacy coordinator working with us…”
Other actors who have also broached the subject of intimacy coordinators recently include Jennifer Aniston. When asked about how she prepared to shoot sex scenes with Jon Hamm for The Morning Show in a December 2023 interview alongside Reese Witherspoon for Variety, Aniston recalled feeling “protected” with director Mimi Leder there, and said that Hamm “was such a gentleman,” noting that they didn’t use an intimacy coordinator.
“They asked us if we wanted an intimacy coordinator. I’m from the olden days, so I was like, ‘What does that mean?,’” she shared. “They said, ‘Where someone asks you if you’re OK,’ and I’m like, ‘Please, this is awkward enough!’ We’re seasoned — we can figure this one out. And we had Mimi there.”
Meanwhile, A Gentleman in Moscow co-stars and real-life husband and wife Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead employed an intimacy coordinator while shooting intimate scenes together for the Showtime drama. McGregor explained to Radio Times that intimacy coordinators are “an important part of the work now.”
“It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew,” he said. “And it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera.”
