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Keep Sex Weird: An Intimacy Coordinator Roundtable
In Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex (2026), a wallflower Gen Z gallery assistant, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), enters into a dom-sub relationship with his much older boss, art-world provocateur Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde). For Elliot, intimacy is a gateway to self-exploration, and through messy experience, he grows more attuned to his own curiosities, likes, and dislikes. He also discovers that good sex is a dialogue—and that Erika, whose persona as a sexual explorer directly feeds her art, is maybe not the best role model for healthy consent practices.These themes of communication are central to the art and craft of intimacy coordination. Cultural debates around screen intimacy tend to question whether sex scenes move the plot forward on a very utilitarian level, but an intimacy coordinator’s primary goal is to help a production unlock new dimensions of the story. In preproduction, they meet with actors for wide-ranging discussions about character, then choreograph expressive onscreen action to match. On set, they’re marshaling all departments, from safety to special effects, to ensure the smoothest possible day, whether it’s a love scene between two people or a 200-person orgy (but more on Westworld later).
For this feature, we invited Yehuda Duenyas, the intimacy coordinator on I Want Your Sex, to assemble a roundtable with other intimacy coordinators defining the field. He is the founder of the SAG-AFTRA–accredited training organization CINTIMA; some of his credits include I Love LA (2025-present), Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022), and American Gigolo (2022). He’s joined by three ICs with experience across film, theater, and television, each of whom has developed training and educational initiatives: Rachel Lee Flesher, founder of the Intimacy Professionals Education Collective and an experienced stunt and fight choreographer; Mam Smith, a choreographer and stuntwoman with intimacy directing credits on Westworld (2016–22), Euphoria (2019–26), and Challengers (2024); and Erin Tillman, a consent and connection empowerment coach who currently serves on the National SAG-AFTRA Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee. — Eds.
Yehuda Duenyas: For years, the public conversation around intimacy coordination has been stuck on whether the role should exist. I’m feeling like intimacy on screen has gotten much better in the last few years—not just safer, but more specific and emotionally complicated. Do you agree? And if you do, what changed?
Rachel Lee Flesher: I totally agree. Filmmakers have always been interested in the emotional elements of character, but now there are more opportunities to layer in the practicalities of sex: the specificity of those body movements; their emotional impact. There are specific beats—the moment of first touch, the moment of the insertion. Until recently, I think there has been a taboo about asking for specificity around sex. Having someone on set whose job it is to ask those questions gives this storytelling a whole new layer of life.
Mam Smith: That was one reason I initially came into this. I’ve been on camera as an actress and a stuntwoman, and I know what it’s like to be in those scenes: super uncomfortable, the director throwing things at you, like, You guys figure it out. There was no direction. As a stunt performer, you’re used to specific direction and choreography, and you’re keeping people safe through communication and transparency.
I trained in intimacy directing with Ita O’Brien at the Irish Film Institute, and this was before “intimacy coordinating” existed in its current form. It was profound for me to learn how to anchor intention in sexual scenes. Putting a hand on a shoulder: What is the intention of that action? Is this a controlling position, a power move, a soothing move? We would make sure the sequence was not only choreographed intentionally but also directed intentionally; knowing the characters, why they’re there. The scene may involve sex, but we will handle it in a way that is similar to a scene with a stunt. We’ll ensure that we address safety issues and boundaries and clarify the intention through the action.
Erin Tillman: I don’t know if onscreen intimacy is better today, but there are new stories being told. There were a lot of amazing storylines with intimacy in the past, but—question mark—how did they get the actors to that point? We all know some horror stories about consent from back in the day. I agree that the filming of these scenes is way more intentional and way safer, allowing actors to be empowered in the scenes and be more collaborative.
RLF: Representation has been more diverse recently, too. Heated Rivalry [2025–] being a cultural phenomenon is such an impactful moment for the queer community. It’s very mainstream, and it’s exciting that we’re watching a sex story that’s not centering a hetero couple.
ET: Or trauma.
RLF: Or trauma, yeah. It allows for a more nuanced conversation around sex. It’s not all vanilla and heteronormative. Recently, I’ve seen more specific representations of BDSM, kink, medical intimacy, breastfeeding, childbirth: all of these scenes now have intimacy coordinators to provide support. It’s important for the actors to know that someone has got their backs.
Boundaries can provide opportunities for creativity. I think about this metaphor that intimacy director Eli Lynn shared with me of a jungle gym: someone says you can play on it, but a couple of these rungs are broken, and you don’t know which ones they are because they’re not marked. That is going to make you play a little more gently than if there’s big red tape on those broken bars, so you can swing as hard as you want on the ones that are not broken.
YD: Growing up in the late 1980s and through the ’90s, intimacy onscreen—particularly on cable—was about the shock factor of seeing nude bodies. But the best intimate scenes go beyond sex. It’s like the characters—not the actors—stop performing. We learn about personality, internal conflicts, shame, and power dynamics. What can an intimate scene reveal that a conversation usually can’t?
ET: I worked on this scene recently on one of my shows. It was the first time I’d worked with these two actors—it was their first intimate scene together, a guy-girl pairing. There were a lot of giggles. It was cute; they were kind of nervous, but they had a playfulness with each other. For me, that’s great because then we can use that energy in the scene: these unintentional, visceral reactions they were having to the vulnerability of what we were doing with crew around.
RLF: There’s also an infinite amount of play space when boundaries are clear. The actors can say, I’ve asked you if I can bite your ear, and you’ve said yes; fantastic. Then, new ideas can come up: Can I also stick my tongue in your ear? Then, either, Yes, great, or, Oh, you know what? That might be too ticklish for me. By opening the door to that conversation, there are even more strange, beautiful, true-to-life options than there were before. Sometimes, we play characters who can only reveal pieces of themselves during intimacy.
YD: I’ve been thinking about boundaries as less about what’s off-limits and more about creating a permission structure. Erin, you come from sex education and consent work: you’re not only thinking about what bodies can do on camera, but you’re also thinking about how people understand and communicate about desire. What does that background let you see in an intimate scene?
ET: Before filming, if I ask an actor to tell me how they feel about a scene that’s coming up, and they say, “Ummmm. . .”—that “um” means so much to me. Tell me what that means for you. The general public isn’t trained to look at these “ums” or to look at the pauses and spaces in our partners, in our friends, the people in our lives. General society is also really bad at this. There’s no training for having healthy conversations about intimacy. I’m sure you’ve all experienced this: we’ll be on set, and people will come up to us between takes or during lunch to ask, “Hey, can I ask you a question about my personal life?” A lot of people don’t have anyone in their life that they can share that with. I think my training makes people feel more comfortable, and it gives crew people permission to not be ashamed of who they are. I am very humbled by that.
YD: Mam, you were one of the early pioneers of this field in film and television. We are all building on the work that you and people like Michael Arnold, who was doing intimacy-related work on The Wolf of Wall Street in 2012, were doing before the field had the protocols and the shared language it has now. The first time I remember hearing about intimacy coordination in television was around The Deuce [2017–19], and you, and Rachel, and Alicia Rodis as well, were among the early people bringing this work into episodic production. What were those first experiences like, where Westworld brought you on and said, like, “We’ve got 50 nude people in this orgy scene—”
MS: 200!
YD: How did you come up with the right way to approach that?
MS: I had been working as a New York stunt performer for years and knew of Michael’s work on The Wolf of Wall Street. In 2012, he laid the groundwork for these protocols. When I came back to the States after training with Ita, Alicia Rodis reached out on behalf of HBO, knowing I had done that program and asking if I would be interested in fast-track training. HBO had just mandated the position and didn’t have enough people to cover all its shows. I had done one-on-one training with Ita, and Alicia mentored me through Westworld. So, I came in with a lot of on-set experience and solid basic training in intimacy.
On my first day on Westworld, I was given a scene with 200 naked people, and it was like, how do we get these people organized so they can feel safe while they’re being body-painted naked three hours ahead of time? How do they keep warm? We were in the middle of an open-space hangar, and at one point, we had heaters but no power. I was in crisis mode. I was handling physical safety, emotional safety, and coordination.
I also needed to teach people what it meant to be an intimacy coordinator. It was clearly about transparency, creating consent, even communicating with the ad teams. Preproduction is important—I would say about eighty percent of the work I do is prep, if I’m given a chance to do it well. That means facilitating between department heads and making sure that there has been communication about every aspect. If it’s a bathtub scene, have I talked to special effects about water? Is it filtered? What’s the temperature? Will there be bubbles? Have we discussed this with the safety coordinator? Is there anything that may cause an allergic reaction? It was a wonderful production, but it was a huge, unprecedented ask.
YD: You bring up a misunderstood aspect of our craft, which is the amount of administrative work we do in preproduction. I’d love to know what you all are looking for when you read a script for the first time.
RLF: I try to dream to the edges and think of every department’s needs. What might someone have a question about? If I’m reading a script and it starts to feel intimate but it doesn’t say there’s intimacy, I might ask the director if they think there may be kissing or any other intimacy here. I’m not doing it to be prescriptive; I’m doing it to be prepared and collaborative. On Margo’s Got Money Troubles [2026], there were moments where characters were scrolling through OnlyFans content, and we created that content. That is a great example of an element you may find while making a breakdown based off a script. Like Mam said, this is not just a single department thing. If I see the word “bathtub,” well, that means I’ve got a lot of phone calls to make. I’m not just talking to the costume department or SFX; I’m talking to grips about slip mats, and sound about how to mic, and props, and set dec. I’m talking to everyone that I can to make sure that this day is going as easy as possible.
ET: I’ve worked on projects where there’s no script, or there’s a lot of improv, or I’ll just be sent one scene. My decision to work on a project is less dependent on reading the full script; it’s more about what it is, who’s directing, and whether we’re a good match. It’s possible that not all of us are good fits for everybody, and I’m at a place in my career where I’m trying to be very honest about what I’m a good fit for. I love working with directors who like improv—that’s fun for me, especially if I know how the director works. Of course, we still talk about boundaries, but it’s fun because we’re all discovering it together.
YD: At CINTIMA, our training organization, we teach that the creative team has every right to tell whatever story they want to tell, and that’s what artmaking is. How do you all approach talking to a director in a way that protects their vision?
MS: I speak to them with a lot of respect, and to make it profoundly clear that I’m a facilitator and a supporter. We can be fluid and collaborative, but really, my goal is to help them execute their vision in the best way I can. These are challenging stories, and I want to support the production without recreating trauma, helping to bring these stories into the world to help with collective healing. People can watch and realize that they are not alone in these experiences.
I also want to help directors relax; I’m not judging them. If I intuit that someone is watching their words, I’ll speak directly to that—I’ll say all the hard words to make it easier. I have a director I work with regularly, who’s often like, “Mam?” And I’ll say, “Orgasm?” And he’ll say, “Thank you.” Usually, these conversations are around how we’re going to apply modesty garments; I’ll point to the area, and I’ll say “perineum.” It’s like going to the doctor’s office. I have found that using anatomical language can take away the stigma and make people feel more comfortable.
YD: Rachel, you are also a stunt performer, and you were part of an early cohort of intimacy coordinators who came from theater, training people to do this work for film.
RLF: I was always interested in emotionally risky stories, and intimacy felt like a taboo part of that. I grew up in Oklahoma, very Bible Belt; it wasn’t something we talked about. In college in 2009, I took a class with Tonia Sina, who is the godmother of intimacy direction. She coined the term and innovated that field around 2006. She was talking about consent and acting intimacy with personal agency. I was so inspired by her work that I wanted to develop my own practices; that year, I intimacy-directed my first show. I didn’t know that intimacy direction wasn’t more widely practiced because there was a teacher in the room teaching me these types of skills, and I just felt so strongly that this is just like any other safety role on a production.
I went on to train actors alongside Alicia Rodis in the HBO program Mam mentioned earlier. Often, as Yehuda mentioned, actors are left on their own to figure it out. Talking with them makes these scenes more believable. When I was living in Chicago working at Steppenwolf, I was engaging in a practice that Erica Weiss dubbed “traumaturgy”: I shared paperwork with lots of questions for actors to think about with their characters, giving them tools to discuss trauma, trying to avoid personal retraumatization. In 2018, I had the opportunity to work with Erica Weiss again on a TV show called The Red Line, the first Chicago production with an intimacy coordinator. Noah Wyle was one of the stars, and I was recently sent an Instagram post of an interview with Noah where he talks about working with his first-ever IC; that was me. He says that when the position was first described to him, he was upset—that it sounded like an HR thing—but once he talked to me, he realized that ICs are there to support the director’s vision, as well as the actors.
The producers had given me a heads up that he might be wary, and I thought, well, just treat this like every person: center on what they need to make this process a little better. We talked about how we could make the experience on set more efficient and specific, and when we went to set, we had a really clear plan, and we finished early. The actors were able to dig deeper into the story, and that specificity created efficiency. We want actors to be able to share the hardest aspects of the story with the audience, not get harmed in the process before we get to the delicious emotional juiciness.
YD: Somewhere, this line emerged that acting needs to be comfortable. I actually don’t know actors who want to be comfortable. Drama is about poeticizing the most difficult moments of the human condition. Actors are called upon to be vulnerable, and sometimes, actors are put on the spot in ways that they’re not expecting. That’s where we come in: helping to set expectations. How do all of you approach difficult material with actors?
ET: With the actors, it’s specifically, Did you read the scene? In my experiences, on TV, they auditioned for the role, they know there’s some sort of nudity or simulated sexuality happening, but [they] often haven’t seen the script yet. So, once we’re past that, it’s more, How do you feel? There’s a whole range of reactions. I’ve had a lot of actors say, “I’m cool with the nudity as long as it makes sense for the character.” If it feels gratuitous, I get a lot of actors who are more reticent, and we go from there. Sometimes, we’ll get a new version of a script that was different from what we saw in casting, which gets a little bit more complex—intimacy coordinators are not there to convince an actor to do a thing. You might have to circle back to a director.
I think actors just want to do a good job and not get fired, and therein lies why we’re so important, as well. If we weren’t there, an actor could feel like they have to say yes to anything because if they didn’t, they’re going to get replaced. That’s part of our job: to think creatively about how to choreograph the scene in ways that might not be the one way America is taught to be sexual. People think PIV, penis in vagina, but there are all kinds of ways to be sexual.
MS: Our position is never to coddle anyone or make things mundane, but there are times when our role as an intimacy coordinator is crucial to protecting actors’ wishes and mitigating power imbalances on set. I have had situations where even established actors have needed support in being heard. One actress who was also a producer pulled me aside and said, “I said no three times. Why aren’t they listening to what I am saying?” It’s a challenging dynamic, but it is important that they have an advocate on set.
RLF: Fame is an element of our job, and we help point out power dynamics. Like, yes, you are number one on the call sheet, and you’re an executive producer—that offers you a lot of power, but it can also be a very heavy thing to carry, so having someone there to amplify your voice as an actor on the other side, someone who you can look to and say, “I have been advocating for myself and my character all day in all these rooms. Rachel, can you just shut it down?” Yes, I’m happy to. Sometimes, you do get fired, but you do it because you’re doing your job and because you showed up and said you would.
I like to create space to do risky work by asking, “How do you like to work? Would you prefer I come in and check on you, or should I hang back until you tell me?” If I’m behaving in a way that is not serving your process, I can take a note. Everybody is different. We are not a roadblock in your process; we’re a launchpad. And I want to see more stories about sex that are messy, dirty, funny, beautiful, awkward—enriched by the human experience, and about the perfect imperfection of the individual.
