Michael Douglas Says Intimacy Coordinators Are Another Way for Executives to Take ‘Control Away from Filmmakers’
Michael Douglas is joining the on-going discussion about the use of intimacy coordinators on set, terming them another tool employed by Hollywood executives to limit their filmmakers. The “Basic Instinct” and “Fatal Attraction” icon told the Radio Times during a recent interview (via The Telegraph) that the role of intimacy coordinators “feels like executives taking control away from filmmakers” on set.
“It’s interesting with all the intimacy coordinators,” Douglas said during the interview. “It feels like executives taking control away from filmmakers — but there have been some terrible faux pas and harassment.”
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The “Franklin” actor joked that he’s “past the age where I’ve got to worry about that” in terms of filming sex scenes, but he did note that the manner in which intimate sequences are staged have vastly differed across Douglas’ decades in Hollywood.
“Sex scenes are like fight scenes, it’s all choreographed,” Douglas said. “In my experience, you take responsibility as the man to make sure the woman is comfortable, you talk it through. You say, ‘OK, I’m going to touch you here if that’s all right.’ It’s very slow but looks like it’s happening organically, which is hopefully what good acting looks like.”
Douglas added that he has reached out to past co-stars to contemplate what their films would have been like if intimacy coordinators had been employed during their production. “I’m sure there were people that overstepped their boundaries, but before, we seemed to take care of that ourselves,” Douglas said. “They would get a reputation and that would take care of them. But I talked to the ladies, [because] I did a few of those sex movies — sexual movies — and we joke about it now, what it would have been like to have an intimacy coordinator working with us…”
As the usage of intimacy coordinators has ticked up in Hollywood, many stars have offered their own take on their roles. Recently, Kate Winslet reflected on her own career, telling The New York Times that she would have wanted to have an intimacy coordinator on set for “every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene.”
The actress added during that recent interview, “When you’re young, you’re so afraid of pissing people off or coming across as rude or pathetic because you might need those things. So learning to have a voice for oneself in those environments was very, very hard. … It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner, because I always had to stand up for myself.”
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