‘Make It Look Real’ Should Be Required Watching for All of Hollywood’s Intimacy Coordinator Haters
"The fact is, when actors feel confident, empowered, secure, and respected, they do their best work," Claire Warden, renowned intimacy coordinator and the subject of the film, told Jezebel.
In 2018, as MeToo allegations roiled Hollywood, Emily Meade made a request. At 30 years old, the actor had a starring role as the beleaguered sex-worker-turned-porn-star, Lori Madison, on HBO’s The Deuce. Since she began acting fifteen years earlier, Meade felt typecast as hyper-sexualized—and hyper-traumatized—characters. Though playing yet another woman in various states of undress, under duress, or both had initially given her pause, she took the risk. Then, less than a year after it premiered, Meade’s co-star James Franco was accused of sexual misconduct by five women (he denied the claims at the time) and HBO and The Deuce’s leadership—namely, creator David Simon—rushed to his defense. When Meade threatened to walk, the network asked what could get her to stay. Her answer was an on-set advocate.
Leadership listened and hired Alicia Rodis, a performer now credited with pioneering the role of intimacy coordinators on sets, who’s since become a consultant on HBO productions. Meade couldn’t have known then that her request would not only indelibly alter the industry and ignite the discourse about consent and on-set safety for working actors, but also capture the attention of documentary filmmaker, Kate Blackmore, and producer, Bethany Bruce. The pair was already disturbed by the number of actors who had stories similar to Meade’s (and that the culture didn’t seem to treat them with much seriousness) and they were intrigued by the then-emerging presence of intimacy coordinators.
“I was listening to all of these YouTube interviews where actors were talking about really harrowing scenes and situations that felt really exploitative, manipulative or coercive, and the host is just laughing along and the audience is loving it,” Blackmore told Jezebel during a conversation on Zoom. The documentary includes a reel of these casual confessions—from Emilia Clarke’s experience filming Game of Thrones to Emmy Rossum’s painful memories of a strip-search scene in Shameless. “I was like, these women are actually talking about abuse and exploitation. Then I thought, maybe there’s a film in this.”
The result is Make It Look Real—which premiered Friday at SXSW in Austin, Texas—a poignant procedural that makes plain the importance of intimacy coordinators. You’d think an on-set advocate for actors during intimate scenes (including, but not limited to, sex) would be a no-brainer. If there was one lesson to take from Me Too, it’s that an industry that allowed predators like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and innumerable others to thrive undeniably needs oversight and supervision to ensure its players are safe and supported. Yet, a startling population of Hollywood is still either opposed or ill-informed about the role’s importance.
Kim Basinger, for instance, recently told Variety that she didn’t “see all of this need for supervised visits.” Meanwhile, a recurring headline during the 2024 award show season was that Mikey Madison, who won an Oscar for her role in Anora, refused an intimacy coordinator during production. Then there’s Jennifer Aniston, Sean Bean, Michael Douglas, and scores of others who have cast doubt on intimacy coordinators in the last several years.
Make It Look Real takes a step-by-step approach to demystifying the role’s purpose for the remaining skeptics while depicting the many ways intimacy coordinators challenge centuries-old patriarchal practices on sets. Blackmore and Bruce found their subject in Claire Warden, an intimacy coordinator whose previous credits include Three Women, Mrs. Fletcher, Billions, Gossip Girl, and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Specifically, the doc follows the making of Tightrope, a fake film written so Warden could—in essence—effectively introduce audiences to their process. There’s the making of modesty garments, close reads of the script with the director, and multiple candid discussions with the actors as to what they feel comfortable doing and how much they feel comfortable showing (right down to the inch) to establish active consent.
The scenes in the film—which follows a married couple on a weekend getaway—call for passionate kissing, simulation of penetrative and oral sex, and alcohol and drug use. Warden’s there at every turn. One memorable intervention comes during a scene where the actors flirt with a threesome. When the director wonders if one actor should remove their shirt, Warden reminds him that that wasn’t previously agreed upon…before the shirt is even touched.
“Times Up was a really important part of change in Me Too, but I feel Claire’s role—that of an intimacy coordinator—is probably one of the only lasting structural changes in Hollywood after Me Too,” Bruce told Jezebel. Warden, who is an actor herself, takes a holistic approach to her job. It’s her belief that the safest, most authentic depictions of intimacy on film are less the physical, but rather, the psychological.
“The fact is, when actors feel confident, empowered, secure, and respected, they do their best work,” Warden told Jezebel. “These are not only the most vulnerable scenes just as a human being showing your body, but also considering the historical background and the precedent of harm and lack of care being shown. If their brains and their bodies are prepped, embraced, and anchored to deal with all of that in case it comes up, then those parts of them are free to do their work. When you can achieve that, you’re taking care of their basic human needs but you’re giving them the opportunity to do their best.”
Another fact that seems lost in the intimacy coordinator discourse is that actor can always change their mind. As seen via one actor’s perspective in the film, what felt safe one day, might not feel quite the same the next due to a director’s choices, or a personal trigger. During one table read, Sarah Roberts, the only female actor in the film, changes her mind regarding participating in a third scene that called for simulated sex. “The other day, I went home after I spoke about my levels of consent and I actually had a nightmare,” Roberts tells the director, Warden at her side. “When I did say yes to doing this project, I didn’t have a third scene to read, so I wasn’t aware that I would have to do a third scene simulating sex again. It makes me feel like I’m having sex in every single scene for the sake of having sex. That’s just not something I want to put my name to.” Before the film’s end, Roberts tears up with gratitude for Warden’s encouragement which empowered her to initiate the conversation.
So, who’s responsible for intimacy coordinators not being fixtures on set? And what’s the cause for all the reticence? Misogyny? Money? Internalized trauma? The fact that male executives remain the overwhelming majority in the industry? According to Warden, there are multiple answers. “First of all, the people at the top of the power dynamic don’t have a personal experience of needing advocating for, or not having the power to advocate for their needs themselves,” Warden said. “I think that change is hard for everybody and, in this instance, when I deal with a lot of resistance, what I believe is that underneath it is either fear or hurt and it behooves us to engage with the fear and the hurt rather than meet it with more resistance.”
“In the case of an established actress like Kim Basinger, an attractive woman with the career that she has, you’ve built such a strong armor to protect yourself. The perception is that what we’re [intimacy coordinators] asking you to do is let that armor down and trust somebody else with your safety. And the fact is, for the last 30-40, years, no one has taken care of your safety.”
“And then it’s money,” she added matter-of-factly. “It’s always money. It’s a producer’s job to get as much as you can for the least amount.”
In Make It Look Real‘s final moments, as the actors watch the final cut, it’s obvious that Warden’s presence made a difference—in their confidence to be sure, but in preventing any potential misstep that would say, give way to heavily-contested situations like this scene in It Ends With Us, perhaps. But if those wielding the cash and a platform aren’t on board, is it difficult to be hopeful in a post-Me Too society? That’s something they hope Make it Look Real can help with by offering unprecedented insight—one that even Warden said her family, who has long known of her work, gleaned from watching the film.
“They finally understood. That’s what Kate and Beth’s film can do…actually bring that education in a way that we individually just could not do on a mass scale.”
