Becoming a staple of Scottish culture despite being written by an American, Outlander debuted back in 2014 to a widely-excited audience, ready to watch hunk Sam Heughan take on the time-travelling fictional world. Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) is a 20th century time traveller who sent herself back to 18th century Scotland and fell in love with Highlander man Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan).
Throughout all six seasons of Outlander, the more intimate scenes have played a massive part in the storyline. As reported by the Daily Express, these raunchy moments underpin the enduring love between Jamie and Claire.
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However, when the first five seasons aired onto our screens, Outlander was without an intimacy co-ordinator, meaning the actors and crew were left without support when filming the cheekier scenes.
Season six of the show was the first in it's history to bring an intimacy co-ordinator onto the scene. Main Scottish actor, and co-producer Sam Heughan approached Vanessa Coffey to come on board.
Sam has previously said that he feels a "great responsibility" onto the younger actors and actresses. He also added that he wanted them to have "extra support" when shooting the racier moments.
Coffey, whose previous credits include Sky series I Hate Suzie, BBC’s Rules of the Game, and Netflix’s fantasy teen drama Fate: The Winx Saga, coordinated all of the intimate moments in the most recent outing.
Many moments were discussed by Coffey before they were put into actions: from scenes of a sexual nature, to even the moment where Malva (Jessica Reynolds) was struck by her Christian father (Mark Lewis Jones) in her nether region's for disobeying him.
Coffey described the long process that was behind the majority of these scenes, stating that it took a long time for them to move from script to screen. Vanessa said: "I read through the script and then I would always speak with the show runners and then with the directors.
“We’re really getting an artistic vision for how the particular intimate scene will be shot and then with that information, I will then go to the actors and talk with each of them separately about their views on the scene and also how to the director and show runners see the scene, and whether they have a different perspective.
“We then generally come together to have a conversation at the finish as a group, so that we’re all on the same page. From that point, we go into rehearsals, physical rehearsals, so it’s very much about the choreography of the piece, the literal - what’s going to happen?
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“That’s everything from a discussion about whether the characters go through to orgasm; what we think that might sound like; what the particular movements might be; the length of the scene we’re trying to film; what the overall story arc is; [and] making sure we hit all over that within the choreography.”
Once this stage is complete, Coffey is on set to help with "minor adjustments", and make sure the actors and actresses are comfortable. She added: "The process is one, I guess, that’s is very choreographic. It starts out about something about the protection and a piece of open communication between everybody and ends up in a state of, ‘Okay, what is the physicality? What is the literal stuff that we’re doing?’.”
Coffey said it was lengthy process with the conversations taking place weeks before even the rehearsals, followed by the rehearsals themselves. This would be followed by another rehearsal on the day of the shoot to make sure the performance was “still hitting the beats”.
Finally, shooting the scene itself could take anywhere between two to six hours. Vanessa was originally trained as a lawyer, actor and dancer, but is fully invested in her job on Outlander.
Outlander season seven is currently in production, and will be released in 2023.
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