They’re the new, and very fashionable, requirement on every film and TV production set, and recognised for helping particularly young actors navigate sex scenes without fear, but intimacy coordinators aren’t for everyone, it appears.
Toni Collette has revealed she feels happier working on intimate scenes without one, and has on occasion asked them to leave the set.
Collette, who stars in The Power, coming to Prime Video on March 31, told the London Times newspaper:
“I think it’s only been a couple of times where they’ve been brought in, and I have very much trusted and felt at ease with the people I was working with. It just felt like those people who were brought in to make me feel more at ease were actually making me feel more anxious. They weren’t helping, so I asked them to leave.”
Collette has enjoyed a solid three-decade career of more than 70 films and more than a dozen TV shows since her breakout role in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding, and she was asked if intimacy coaches would have made life easier when she was younger.
She replied:
“I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve only worked with a few arseholes over the several decades that I’ve managed to keep this boat afloat.”
Collette appears in The Power – adapted by Amazon from Naomi Alderman’s 2016 bestselling book – as Margot Cleary-Lopez, the mayor of Seattle, in a futuristic society where women have developed the ability to conduct electric shocks through their hands.
Leslie Mann was originally slated for the role, but schedules changed, and Collette came late to the production. She told The Times:
“I kind of slipped in at the last minute and shot the entire season in five weeks, which was a complete headf***.”
