Michelle Williams is adding to the intimacy coordinator debate. The multiple Academy Award nominee detailed her first experience working with a coordinator during limited series “Dying for Sex,” based on Nikki Boyer’s podcast about the sexual awakening of her terminally ill best friend, Molly, as portrayed by Williams.
Williams told Vanity Fair that while it was a “shock” at first to adjust to collaborating with an intimacy coordinator, the profession itself is “extremely worthwhile.”
“It’s just a shock — it’s a change. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s something to get used to,” Williams said. “But whether or not you feel like you need an intimacy coordinator, your scene partner — of which you have many — might really value it. They might need privacy around a sensitivity that they have. That is valid and that is the kind of care that an intimacy coordinator can offer. So if it’s not for you, just think it might actually be for somebody else. That makes it extremely worthwhile.”
Williams explained that while she “hadn’t had experience” with intimacy coordinators before, the process was akin to working with a choreographer — something that the “Fosse/Verdon” alum is very used to.
“What’s great about it is that it’s really working with a choreographer. Like in the dance they’re showing you how to make a more beautiful line or how to land a turn — but the intimacy coordinator can really show you how to give a better blow job,” Williams said. “There’s a technique to fake blow jobs in the same way that there’s a technique to time-step. She taught me that.”
Williams added that she was “super game” to experiment with certain blocking for scenes. “I wasn’t surprised to find myself in a number of different positions,” she said. “Everybody says, ‘Oh, the thing about sex scenes is they’re not really that sexy.’ And it’s true, they’re not. You’re trying to not rub each other’s makeup off and also trying to block that thing that’s not supposed to be seen and work with the camera angle. Unfortunately or fortunately or whatever, it’s as technical as hitting your mark.”
Williams isn’t the only recent Hollywood icon to have their first encounter with an intimacy coordinator: Gwyneth Paltrow told Vanity Fair that she actually had no idea what an intimacy coordinator even was prior to working on A24 film “Marty Supreme.” Paltrow, who returns to acting with the Josh Safdie-helmed film after five years away from the screen, compared the on set experience to her other past films.
“There’s now something called an intimacy coordinator, which I did not know existed,” she said, adding that she told the coordinator at one point, “I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on.’”
