Kate Winslet Had to Explain Why Intimacy Coordinators Are Crucial

Kate Winslet has long been beloved for her candor—especially about the female experience. She’s repeatedly denounced body-shamers and hilariously copped to suffering from symptoms of a weakened pelvic floor post-childbirth. Now the Oscar-winning actress isn’t mincing words on a hot topic in Hollywood that a lot of her peers have mocked: the importance of intimacy coordinators.

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an interview where Winslet—who stars in the new HBO series, The Regime—recalled feeling hesitant while filming intimate scenes early on in her career. “I would have benefited from an intimacy coordinator every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene,” Winslet told the outlet. “It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner, because I always had to stand up for myself.”

Winslet didn’t name the films in which an intimacy coordinator might’ve been helpful but emphasized that she wished she’d known how better to advocate for herself as a young actor—not just in terms of nudity but also the logistical parameters of the shoot: “I don’t like that camera angle. I don’t want to stand here full-frontal nude. I don’t want this many people in the room. I want my dressing gown to be closer.”

“Just little things like that,” Winslet continued “When you’re young, you’re so afraid of pissing people off or coming across as rude or pathetic because you might need those things. So learning to have a voice for oneself in those environments was very, very hard.” Relatable, as ever!

A number of actors—many of them male—like Penn Badgley and Sean Bean have discounted the need for intimacy coordinators on set. “It would inhibit me more because it’s drawing attention to things,” Bean said of having an intimacy coordinator in the room in 2022. “Somebody saying, ‘Do this, put your hands 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.” Jennifer Aniston also balked at intimacy coordinators after being offered one on The Morning Show. “I’m from the olden days, so I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ They said, ‘Where someone asks you if you’re OK,’ and I’m like, ‘Please, this is awkward enough!’” Aniston said in December. “We’re seasoned—we can figure this one out.”

Thanks to the on-set advocacy of actor Emily Meade in 2018—who was then starring in the HBO series, The Deuce—the network hired Alicia Rodis, a performer now credited with pioneering the role of intimacy coordinators on sets, who’s since become a consultant on the network’s productions.

“I said to them, ‘I want there to be somebody on the set of this show—and all HBO shows—that is solely there to facilitate, protect, and to advocate in sex scenes, much like a stunt coordinator when dealing with physical violence,’” Meade recalled in an interview with Jezebel last year. “I thought there should be someone there who didn’t have any motives other than their job.”

The concept of an intimacy coordinator is hardly difficult to understand…and yet, Winslet is just one female-identifying actor who’s still explaining why they’re necessary in the press. Bleak!