Will Sex Scenes Survive the Pandemic?

In a world of social distancing, touching can be a turnoff—even on-screen. With productions being allowed to resume in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and abroad, industry guilds and labor unions have drafted proposals for new on-set safety protocols during the coronavirus pandemic. A common recommendation? Limit the amount of time actors have to closely interact.

That’s an issue for intimacy coordinators, people whose jobs are dependent on, well, intimacy. The role, which involves coaching and facilitating sex scenes and nudity on television and film sets, is relatively new, pioneered in the mid-2010s but growing in demand after the #MeToo movement, in late 2017, inspired the industry to rethink the vulnerability of actors during sex scenes. Despite usually being filmed on closed sets with a limited number of crew members present, such scenes traditionally lacked protocols, traumatizing many performers physically and.