In Hollywood, the procedure of filming sex scenes and nudity has changed quite a lot in the last decade. It is now standard operating procedure for studio productions to hire an intimacy coordinator, and it’s their responsibility to ensure everyone’s comfort and keep lines of communication open. The idea is that their presence will help protect performers, and Kate Winslet is among the veteran stars who wishes that the on-set role existed earlier in her career.
Winslet is now starring in the new HBO series The Regime, and she spoke about the value of intimacy coordinators when the subject came up during an interview with the New York Times. The Academy Award-winning star has performed in a number of sex scenes over the course of her career – perhaps the most famous being in James Cameron’s Titanic – and she regrets that she didn’t have someone advocating for her comfort in the filming of those scenes when she was younger. She explained,
I would have benefited from an intimacy coordinator every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene. It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner, because I always had to stand up for myself.
As recently expressed by Drive-Away Dolls star Margaret Qualley, sex scenes can be fun, but unless an actor is also an exhibitionist, it’s perfectly understandable that they might feel uncomfortable taking off their clothes in a crowded room with a camera pointing at them. The goal for everyone is to make the best movie possible, but an intimacy coordinator ensures that everyone is feeling safe and protected in the process. In the interview, Kate Winslet expressed some of the things she wishes could have been said on her behalf by someone looking out for her on set earlier in her career:
‘I don’t like that camera angle.’ ‘I don’t want to stand here full-frontal nude.’ ‘I don’t want this many people in the room.’ ‘I want my dressing gown to be closer.’ Just little things like that. When you’re young, you’re so afraid of pissing people off or coming across as rude or pathetic because you might need those things. So learning to have a voice for oneself in those environments was very, very hard.
There is a horrible history in Hollywood of performers who advocate for themselves being labeled as “difficult,” and that has regularly rendered filming sex scenes as minefields – but specific efforts toward progress in the industry have been made in the last 10 years – most notably in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s arrest and conviction. Hopefully it will continue to create better working environments on sets and ensure that everyone has their voices and concerns heard.