Florence Pugh says bad intimacy coordinator made the whole thing ‘awkward’

Florence Pugh appeared on the latest episode of “The Louis Theroux Podcast” and spoke openly about her experience with intimacy coordinators on film sets. Intimacy coordinators have become an industry norm, although the job has proven divisive in Hollywood. Pugh described the job as one that ensures that sex scenes are filmed as safely as possible for the actors involved, adding: “It’s not about getting in the way. It’s not about confusing, it’s not about making things more complicated or more awkward. I’ve had good ones and bad ones.”

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lawrence both recently made headlines by saying they didn’t feel the need to use hired intimacy coordinators on their sets because they trusted their co-stars to be professional.

“We didn’t have [an intimacy coordinator]or maybe we did, but we didn’t really do it [use it]…I felt really safe with Rob [Pattinson]. He’s not evil,” Lawrence said of making “Die My Love.”

Paltrow said that on the set of “Marty Supreme,” she asked the intimacy coordinator to “take a step back” when she was filming intimate scenes with Timothée Chalamet, adding, “I don’t know what it’s like for kids starting out, but… if someone says, ‘Okay, and then he’s going to put his hand here,’I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that.

Pugh noted that she had filmed many sex scenes without an intimacy coordinator in the past. Although she’s always been “pretty confident” and “pretty happy in my own skin,” the Oscar nominee recalled times when someone on set had been “completely inappropriate” directing a sex scene and there was no intimacy coordinator present to protect her.

“But my perspective is also changing on this, because I’m now having fantastic experiences with intimacy coordinators,” Pugh said of filming sex scenes. “However, that being said, I also had a shitty example where someone had made things so weird and so awkward and really wasn’t helpful and it was kind of like wanting to be part of the set in a way that wasn’t helpful, and I think that’s a job that’s still discovering itself.”

“I will say I’ve been able to understand the meaning better now working with great actors in sex scenes,” Pugh said of “finding the story of what it is, what kind of sex is it, how do you touch each other, how long have you been having sex.”

“Everyone is just working to eat up the scene. And I think when I worked with a fantastic coordinator, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what I was missing, understanding the dance of intimacy rather than just shooting a sex scene,'” Pugh said. “There are good ones and bad ones, and it’s from the good ones that I learned how effective it can be.”

Pugh credited intimacy coordinators with giving actresses more freedom on set. She said: “It’s a little trickier” being a woman while filming because “you can’t really be a problem because people will say you’re a nightmare.”

“I remember I was doing a crying scene and there were just all these specific beats that I needed, and specifically on specific lines,” Pugh recalls. “And we’ve done it maybe six times, and every time you have to start without tears and then prepare yourself. So you have to stay in it. And we got it and the director wanted to go back. And when I’m in that state, I’m a little doughy, so I’m like, ‘Okay, let’s do it again.'”

Pugh said that as a woman, she would never speak up on set and tell the director that no more takes were necessary for such an emotionally draining scene. It took her male partner to do this on her behalf.

“My co-star went to the director and said, ‘Don’t do that, man. Don’t put her through that. She’s got it. We’ve got it. You’ve got the close-up, you’ve got the wide, don’t do that,'” Pugh recalled. “And I realized that when I was in the tent, I was like, ‘Oh, I couldn’t have said that because it wouldn’t have been well received.'”

“The Louis Theroux Podcast” is now available on Spotify.