Penn Badgley shared last week that he’d requested that the number of intimacy scenes in You Season 4 “go from 100 to zero,” explaining that “fidelity in every relationship, and especially my marriage, is really important to me.” While sex scenes for his character, serial killer Joe Goldberg, remain in the season, there are certainly fewer; the scenes lack close-up shots, and clothes mostly stay on.
. . .
I reached out to Steinrock and another intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, to chat about Badgley’s comments, the surprising backlash they’ve drawn, and the role of intimacy coordinators in building scenes around these kinds of boundaries.
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O’Brien, a UK-based intimacy coordinator who founded Intimacy On Set to train other coordinators and pioneered the role in 2014, told me she’s worked with actors who have different agreements with partners on what they will and won’t do when filming intimate scenes. “I had an actor recently who, in conversation with their wife, said their boundaries were, ‘I don’t want to touch anybody’s breasts or nipples,’” O’Brien said. “He said, ‘This is what my requirements are,’ and because that was so clear, everyone could respect that, we could honor those requirements, and ensure they were honoring their relationship.”
According to O’Brien, it’s not uncommon for actors in relationships to have specific boundaries and conditions for intimacy scenes based on their relationships. She told me the work of fulfilling these needs is about “comfort, consent,” and even “joy.”
“When we’re inviting agreement and consent in all these areas, it means we can all work openly, creatively, feeling empowered,” she said. “That place of feeling safe and thus free creates really beautiful, intimate content.”
More . . .
. . .
I reached out to Steinrock and another intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, to chat about Badgley’s comments, the surprising backlash they’ve drawn, and the role of intimacy coordinators in building scenes around these kinds of boundaries.
. . .
O’Brien, a UK-based intimacy coordinator who founded Intimacy On Set to train other coordinators and pioneered the role in 2014, told me she’s worked with actors who have different agreements with partners on what they will and won’t do when filming intimate scenes. “I had an actor recently who, in conversation with their wife, said their boundaries were, ‘I don’t want to touch anybody’s breasts or nipples,’” O’Brien said. “He said, ‘This is what my requirements are,’ and because that was so clear, everyone could respect that, we could honor those requirements, and ensure they were honoring their relationship.”
According to O’Brien, it’s not uncommon for actors in relationships to have specific boundaries and conditions for intimacy scenes based on their relationships. She told me the work of fulfilling these needs is about “comfort, consent,” and even “joy.”
“When we’re inviting agreement and consent in all these areas, it means we can all work openly, creatively, feeling empowered,” she said. “That place of feeling safe and thus free creates really beautiful, intimate content.”
More . . .
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