Intimacy coordinator revealed how actors stop themselves from getting aroused during sex scenes
Intimacy coordinator, Brooke M. Haney, has lifted the lid on exactly how actors keep things under control while filming sex scenes.
Haney, whose credits include Elsbeth, Mayor of Kingstown and Harlem, and who published The Intimacy Coordinator’s Guidebook: Specialities for Stage and Screen, has outlined that the reality of filming X-rated scenes is actually far less steamy than it looks.
"Here’s the thing," Haney told Us Weekly back in 2024. "This isn’t actually very common. We’re at work, right? With the lights bearing down, microphones, a couple of cameras in your face, director, DP [director of photography] and other necessary crew watching on monitors, it’s just not that sexy.
"However, sometimes bodies have physiological responses that are outside of our control. When that does happen, I tell the actor to do a few push-ups or some jumping jacks. That moves the blood to a different location and we’re all good."
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While on-set sparks do sometimes spill into real life, Haney says their role is to keep things professional, whatever happens off camera.
"One of the jobs of an intimacy coordinator is to make sure that we are making everything on set be work, and part of that can be ‘closure practices,’ particularly when I work with younger actors. If I’m working at a college or something, I’ll do some sort of closure practice or de-roletechnique," they explain.
Such techniques can help actors step out of character, drawing a clear line between performance and personal feeling.
"I’m not going to be in charge of controlling what actors do on their own time, that’s their business," they say. "But when we’re at work, it should never be about their personal relationship. It should be about the characters."
However convincing a scene looks, it is still simulated.
"It’s always fake," Haney says. "So any real sexual act is a no-no. And we close the set for scenes of intimacy, so only anyone that is required to be either on set or on monitor in order to get the shot can be around for those. So we might take a crew of 50 or 100 down to eight or 10 for those scenes, and that’s for the privacy of the actors and also for the protection of the crew. "Most of us don’t go to work and see our coworkers walking around naked. So it’s about everyone’s professional work environment."
And Haney emphasises that those electric moments on screen are rarely down to the actors alone.
"The audience should think it’s real, and the actors should feel like it’s fake," they share. "That’s what the choreography is there. A lot of credit goes to the editor, the director and the editor.
"Film and TV is such an editor’s medium, and the DP, how that shot is taken is telling the story. But a lot of it’s the choreography as well. If we’re trying to tell a comedy, how much bounce do we put in it, or what’s the wildest position I can get your body in with legs flying in the air?
"As opposed to if it’s a series and we’ve been waiting for these two characters to connect for so long and the audience is just dying to see their chemistry, then where’s the eye contact? How slow is the touch? How does it build and get more intense? It’s really about the choreography."
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Explained, TV And Film, Celebrity
Rhiannon Ingle