You know, like the people who are there to ensure the well-being of actors and make sure everyone is comfortable when they’re filming super vulnerable moments like sex scenes.
It turns out that for for Sean, intimacy coordinators “spoil the spontaneity” of shooting a sex scene.
“I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise,” Sean explained in an interview with the Times.
He added, “It would inhibit me more because it’s drawing attention to things. Somebody saying, ‘Do this, put your hands there, while you touch his thing…'”
And while I’m pretty sure almost all actors would completely disagree, Sean says things were much better when intimacy coordinators weren’t around — like when he filmed 1993’s Lady Chatterley opposite Joely Richardson.
“Lady Chatterley was spontaneous. It was a joy. We had a good chemistry between us, and we knew what we were doing was unusual,” Sean said, adding that they both were married.
He continued, “But we were following the story. We were trying to portray the truth of what D.H. Lawrence wrote.”
But on top of intimacy coordinators hindering his onset performance, Sean says he also feels that his intimate scenes have been censored during editing.
He cited a particular scene in Snowpiercer opposite Lena Hall where their characters got busy with the help of a mango, explaining he believes “they cut a bit out actually.”
“Often, the best work you do, where you’re trying to push the boundaries, and the very nature of it is experimental, gets censored when TV companies or the advertisers say it’s so much,” Sean shared.
Although he didn’t get into specifics about what “experimental” things got cut, I’m keeping my fingers crossed there was an intimacy coordinator involved.
You can read all that Sean had to say here.
