Florence Pugh appeared on the latest episode of “The Louis Theroux Podcast” and spoke openly about her experience with intimacy coordinators on film sets. Intimacy coordinators have become an industry standard, although the job has proven divisive in Hollywood. Pugh described the profession as one that makes sure sex scenes are filmed with the utmost safety for the actors involved, adding, “It’s not to get in the way. It’s not to confuse, it’s not to make things more complicated or make things more awkward. I’ve had good ones and bad ones.”
Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lawrence both made headlines recently for saying they didn’t feel the need to use the intimacy coordinators hired on their sets because they trusted their co-stars to be professional.
“We did not have [an intimacy coordinator], or maybe we did but we didn’t really [use it]… I felt really safe with Rob [Pattinson]. He is not pervy,” Lawrence said about the making of “Die My Love.”
Paltrow said on that the set of “Marty Supreme” she told the intimacy coordinator to “step a little back” when she was filming intimate scenes with Timothée Chalamet, adding: “I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but… if someone is like, ‘Okay, and then he’s going to put his hand here,’ I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that.”
Pugh noted that she filmed many sex scenes without an intimacy coordinator in the past. While she’s always been “quite confident” and “quite happy in my skin,” the Oscar nominee remembered times when someone on set used “completely inappropriate” to direct a sex scene and there wasn’t an intimacy coordinator present to protect her.
“But my view is changing about it as well, because I’m now having fantastic experiences with intimacy coordinators,” Pugh said about filming sex scenes. “However, that being said, I’ve also had a shit example where someone just made it so weird and so awkward and really wasn’t helpful and kind of was just like wanting to be a part of the set in a way that wasn’t helpful, and I think it’s a job that’s still figuring itself out.”
“I will say that I’ve been able to understand better meaning now through working with great ones in sex scenes,” Pugh said about “finding the story of what it is, what kind of sex is it, how do you touch each other, how long have you been having sex for.”
“Everybody’s just kind of working away to chip away at the scene. And I think when I worked with a fantastic coordinator, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been missing, understanding the dance of intimacy as opposed to just shooting a sex scene,’” Pugh said. “There are good ones and bad ones, and it’s through the good ones that I have learned how effective it can really be.”
Pugh credited intimacy coordinators with giving female actors more agency on set. She said, “It’s a bit stickier” being a woman during filming because “you can’t really be a problem because people will say that you’re a nightmare.”
“I remember I was doing a crying scene and there were just all of these specific beats that I needed to get, and specifically on specific lines,” Pugh remembered. “And we did it maybe six times, and each time you have to start with no tears and then gear up. So you have to stay in it. And we got it and the director wanted to go again. And when I’m in that state, I’m a bit mushy, so I’m like, ‘Okay, we’ll do it again.’”
Pugh said that as a woman, she would never speak up on set and tell the director that no more takes were needed of such an emotionally exhausting scene. It took her male co-star to do that on her behalf.
“My co-star went out to the director and said: ‘Don’t do that, man. Don’t put her through that. She’s got it. We got it. You’ve got the close-up, you’ve got the wide, don’t do that,’” Pugh remembered. “And I realized when I was in the tent, I was like, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have been able to have said that because that wouldn’t have been received well.’”
“The Louis Theroux Podcast” is available on Spotify now.
