Sean Bean has suggested that intimacy coordinators “spoil the spontaneity” of sex scenes.
The Time actor has filmed many intimate scenes throughout his career, most famously opposite Joely Richardson in a 1993 adaptation of DH Lawrence’s raunchy novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
In a new interview, Bean discussed the impact intimacy coordinators – specialists who work on film and TV sets to choreograph and allow actors to feel comfortable while filming sex scenes – would have had on the show.
“I should imagine it slows down the thrust of it. Ha, not the thrust, that’s the wrong word,” he told The Times, adding: “It would spoil the spontaneity.
“It would inhibit me more because it’s drawing attention to things. Somebody saying, ‘Do this, put your hand there, while you touch his thing…’ I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise.”
He continued: “Lady Chatterley was spontaneous. It was joy. We had a good chemistry between us, and we knew what we were doing was unusual. Because she was married, I was married. But we were following the story. We were trying to portray the truth of what DH Lawrence wrote.”
The intimacy coordinator became a standard figure on mainstream film sets in the wake of #MeToo in order to protect female actors.
Acknowledging this, Bean said: “I suppose it depends on the actress.”
Discussing a never-aired scene from the Netflix series Snowpiercer in which he was naked with a female actor, he added: “This one had a musical cabaret background, so she was up for anything.”
