Let’s talk about sex (on screen) – and why it’s getting so much better

Published

4 years ago

June 9, 2021

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Punch-ups, car chases, window leaps – for years, film and TV sets have employed stunt co-ordinators to oversee potentially dangerous scenes to make sure everyone involved is safe and feels comfortable.

So why is this such a relatively new thing for sex and intimacy?

While filming these sequences may not leave stars physically hurt, from Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct to Maria Schneider in Last Tango In Paris, there are well-publicised stories of the emotional scars some famous scenes have left on their stars. And earlier in 2021, Keira Knightley said she would no longer shoot intimate scenes for films or shows directed by a man and that she is not interested in “scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting”.

Following her leading actress win at the BAFTA TV Awards, for her portrayal of rape victim Arabella in the groundbreaking I May Destroy You, it was the unsung role of intimacy co-ordinator that Michaela Coel praised in her speech. For a show exploring issues of consent, Ita O’Brien’s presence on set, Coel said, was “essential”.

The role of intimacy co-ordinator has really come to the fore as a result of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in 2017 and the subsequent #MeToo movement, with directors and producers now paying a lot more attention to the way scenes of a sexual nature are shot and handled. And the issue has been highlighted again in recent weeks following allegations of misconduct made against actor and director Noel Clarke – which he “vehemently denies”.

“It seems crazy now that we’ve had stunt co-ordinators overseeing fights but we didn’t have a co-ordinator overseeing scenes that have intimacy, where people are just as likely to be mentally injured as physically if they’re not handled correctly,” intimacy co-ordinator Vanessa Coffey tells Sky News.

Her job is to speak to producers and directors about what they’re looking for, and actors about what they’re comfortable doing, and make sure everyone on set has an understanding of what is needed. Because, she says, “if you have the power to hire or fire somebody, you might not be getting a real answer from them as to whether or not they are happy… a lot of actors are worried that they’ll lose a job if they say no”.

Coffey has worked on series including Wolfe, War Of The Worlds, and I Hate Suzie, the comedy starring Billie Piper that was also up for several BAFTAs alongside I May Destroy You. One episode of the series is almost entirely focused on Piper’s character masturbating; with the wrong person in charge, it could have been incredibly uncomfortable to film.

Piper, she says, was “a wonderful person to work with because she comes with a lot of her own thoughts and ideas”, and they were all able to “have a bit of a laugh between takes, which certainly eases tension”.

Sex on screen in 2021

From Bridgerton and Adult Material to It’s A Sin and Normal People, there has been a lot of sex on screen in the past year or so. And it’s in no small part down to intimacy co-ordinators that we’re seeing less of the “male gaze” and porn-style sex, and it’s becoming more realistic.

“I do think it is changing,” says Coffey, of portrayals of sex on screen. “Because [intimacy co-ordinators] just work on intimate scenes… we start to really have an eye to how to craft these moments and think about what position will tell a particular story as well. Whereas, if you’ve just left actors to it in the past, to ‘go for it’, you end up seeing a little bit maybe inside the actors’ personal lives rather than, ‘what is the story of the characters we’re telling in this moment?'”

Coffey, who previously worked as a lawyer before training to be an actor, has been in the role officially since 2018, but was also working unofficially before that after being asked to look over a nudity rider – a contract between an actor and the production they are hired by that defines what will happen on set when filming nude – for a colleague.

She is now one of about 20 intimacy co-ordinators in the UK, but numbers look set to rise; following Coel’s speech, Time’s Up UK, a charity set up following the Weinstein scandal, has called for the creation of an independent standards authority, and for intimacy co-ordinators to become mandatory on film and TV sets.

The importance of intimacy co-ordinators

So why is the role so vital? BECTU (the broadcasting, entertainment, communications and theatre union) says there is a higher risk of bullying, emotional manipulation and sexual harassment on set in scenes with intimacy, and someone co-ordinating the scenes can help prevent this.

“We’ve seen some really powerful examples historically,” says Coffey, of scenes that have affected actors long after release. “One of the classics to talk about is Last Tango In Paris, the [Bernardo] Bertolucci film.

“Obviously that was in the ’70s, so we’re talking about well before the concept of intimacy co-ordinators was ever considered. But you had a performer in that [Schneider] who says afterwards that she felt raped, having done a scene where she didn’t consent to a lubricant being used. She didn’t know that that was what was going to be happening within the scene with the other performer.”

In an interview that resurfaced in 2016, Bertolucci admitted to conspiring with actor Marlon Brando to add butter without Schneider’s consent, saying: “I wanted her to react humiliated.” Schneider struggled with drug addiction and depression following the film. She died from cancer in 2011, aged 58.

In March, Sharon Stone’s memoir detailed the background of her famous “missing underwear” scene from 1992’s Basic Instinct; in an extract published in Vanity Fair, she claimed she was misled while filming.

“That was how I saw my vagina-shot for the first time, long after I’d been told, ‘We can’t see anything – I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on’,” she said. In the end, Stone said, she agreed to the scene being used “because it was correct for the film and for the character”.

A representative for Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven said he did not want to comment on Stone’s claims.

There are, Coffey says, “some fairly extreme examples out there of people’s boundaries having been quite severely crossed – not just pushed, but absolutely crossed”.

She continues: “People walking away from productions talking about the awkwardness of something that happened… as well as having been on the receiving end of something that might go as far as being called assault.

“I speak to actors all the time who, even in very recent times, have come away from productions feeling that either they or that somebody on the production hadn’t done the right thing and that boundaries had inadvertently been crossed.”

And it is not just women, but men as well. “A lot of the men I’ve spoken to have been so worried about the boundaries they might inadvertently have crossed, too, not having had a really open conversation with, say, a female performer, for example.”

Where can actors and others in the industry go for help and advice?

In 2019, Directors UK issued guidelines for directing nudity and simulated sex in British television and film for the first time. In 2020, BECTU created a specific branch for intimacy co-ordinators. And there is also Time’s Up UK.

Following the allegations made against Clarke, there have been calls for more to be done. In a recent interview with Sky News ahead of the BAFTAs, Time’s Up UK chief executive Dame Heather Rabbatts said the charity had made progress since it was set up in January 2018, but there is always more that can be done.

“I think when we see allegations of any kind in the media about things that have gone on before in our industry, we do sit back and think, ‘how can we make this different going forward’, or ‘what have we already got in place that we’re not using?'” says Coffey.

“Within the [Directors UK] guidance, it says that you should never have to do a naked audition, for example. If you need to see what somebody’s body looks like, at most you should ask them to wear a bikini or trunks, and have a chaperone present. So there are safety precautions that we have in place that I think are worth highlighting.”

As the problems in the industry have come under the spotlight in recent months and years, a lot has been said about power dynamics on film and TV sets.

But it’s not power that’s the problem, says Coffey, it’s about how that authority is used. And that’s where an intimacy co-ordinator can help.

“To me, power is not a bad thing,” she says. “We have power dynamics on set and we have them for a reason and they’re there to keep people safe – it’s the abuse of power that’s a problem.”

Entertainment

Louvre robbery: ‘Matter of time’ before thieves struck, expert says – and UK museums could be next

Published

4 hours ago

October 21, 2025

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Louvre robbery: 'Matter of time' before thieves struck, expert says - and UK museums could be next

A prominent expert in recovering stolen works of art has told Sky News it was “a matter of time” before the Louvre was targeted – and UK museums could be next.

Christopher Marinello says gangs have been emboldened to strike because “law enforcement has been driven into the ground”.

And while headlines have focused on thieves making off with priceless jewellery from an iconic French institution, he warns this problem isn’t confined to Paris.

He said: “There are gangs operating all over Europe and not enough is being done to stop them … this was only a matter of time, they’ve been hitting small museums.

“If they can hit the Louvre successfully, they can hit anything. Do you know how many museums there are in the UK?”

At the start of October, at the St Fagans National Museum of History in Wales, it took just four minutes for audacious thieves to swipe irreplaceable Bronze Age jewellery.

He says gangs are targeting gold “just to melt it down” and diamonds for their value – “with no regard for the integrity of the artworks and the cultural heritage that they are destroying”.

A spokesperson for the museum has said: “We sympathise deeply with our friends at the Louvre … it emphasises the increased risk to organisations like ours … this highlights the dilemma we face between having items on display for people to enjoy and learn from – or keeping them locked away.”

Mr Marinello, who investigates art crimes that the police aren’t pursuing, says institutions and stately homes urgently need to wake up to what’s happening.

“They need to start building vaults for these objects because otherwise they’re going to be taken and melted down and used to buy Lamborghinis or drugs,” he warned.

“If the smaller museums can’t afford it, perhaps they’re going to have to consolidate collections to museums that can handle it.”

‘You can’t trust anyone’

Mr Marinello went on to warn that gangs are becoming “more brazen” – with the Louvre targeted despite the security measures it had in place.

“The system is not working … the penalties are not strong enough … police are frustrated, prosecutors say the same thing because there’s nowhere to put these people.”

The art recovery expert says he’s concerned how funding cutbacks are making our museums more vulnerable to those who recognise that the obvious rewards outweigh the risks.

“These museums are designed to preserve and protect our cultural heritage, and they need to be properly funded to do that job,” he added. “They need to be able to stay one step ahead of the criminals.”

“This is not the 1950s any more, you can’t trust anyone. These items are so valuable, and gold is at an all-time high.

“[Thieves] don’t care if an item belonged to Napoleon III, it means nothing to them. All they care about is quick cash.”

Entertainment

Harper Lee mystery: Is there a To Kill A Mockingbird prequel and true crime novel ‘waiting to be published’?

Published

10 hours ago

October 20, 2025

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Harper Lee mystery: Is there a To Kill A Mockingbird prequel and true crime novel 'waiting to be published'?

One of Harper Lee’s surviving relatives says it’s possible there could be major unpublished works by the author still to be discovered, following the release of eight of her previously unseen short stories.

Describing the mystery around a manuscript titled The Long Goodbye, which Lee wrote before To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee’s nephew, Dr Edwin Conner, told Sky News: “Even the family doesn’t know everything that remains in her papers. So, it could be there waiting to be published.”

Dr Conner says Lee submitted a 111-page manuscript, titled The Long Goodbye, after writing Go Set A Watchman in 1957.

The retired English professor explains: “It’s not clear to me or to others in the family, to what extent [The Long Goodbye] might have been integrated into To Kill a Mockingbird, which she wrote immediately after, or to what extent it was a freestanding manuscript that is altogether different and that might stand to be published in the future.”

A second mystery exists in the form of a true crime novel, The Reverend, which Lee was known to have begun researching in the late 1970s, about Alabama preacher Reverend Willie Maxwell who was accused of five murders before being murdered himself.

Dr Conner said: “The manuscript of a nonfiction piece, that according to some people doesn’t exist, according to others who claim to have seen it, does [is also a mystery]. We don’t know where it is, or whether it is, really.

“That could be a surprise that has yet to be revealed if we discover it and it’s published, which is a real possibility.”

He believes much of the manuscript was written in his family home and says his mother, Louise, who was Lee’s older sister, saw a “finished version of it” on the dining room table.

Dr Conner says there are “others who just as fiercely say no, it was never completed”.

‘She did want to publish these stories’

There has long been debate over why Lee published just two books in her lifetime.

To Kill a Mockingbird came out in 1960. Selling more than 46 million copies worldwide, translated into more than 40 languages and winning a Pulitzer Prize, it’s arguably the most influential American book of the 20th century.

Fifty-five years later, Lee published a sequel, Go Set A Watchman, written ahead of Mockingbird, but set at a later date.

Then aged 88, and with failing health, there were questions over how much influence Lee had over the decision to publish.

Asked how happy she’d be to see some of her earliest work, containing early outlines for Mockingbird’s narrator Jean Louise Finch and the story’s hero Atticus Finch, now hitting the shelves, Dr Conner says: “I think she’d be delighted.”

He says Lee had presented them to her first agent, Maurice Crane, at their first meeting in 1956, “precisely because she did want to publish these stories”.

And while dubbing them “apprentice stories,” which he admits “don’t represent her at her best as a writer,” he says they show “literary genius of a kind”.

Notoriously private, he says the stories – which were discovered neatly typed out in one of Lee’s New York apartments after her death – offer “deeply enthralling new glimpses into her as a person”.

Never marrying or having children, he says Lee maintained a degree of privacy even with her family: “You never saw her complete personality… We thought we knew her, we thought we’d seen everything, but no, we hadn’t.”

‘That’s it, I’m not giving any more interviews’

While describing her as a “complicated woman,” he insists Lee was far from the recluse she’s frequently painted as.

He says: “In company, she was most of the time delightful. She was a lively personality, she was funny, witty, and you would think she was very outgoing.”

But Lee was known to have struggled with her success.

Dr Conner explains: “She never ever wanted fame or celebrity because she suspected, or knew, that would involve the kind of uncomfortable situations in public situations that she found just no satisfaction or pleasure in”.

He says while in the early years of Mockingbird Lee gave interviews, the wild success of the book soon rendered such promotion unnecessary, leading her to decide: “That’s it, I’m not giving any more interviews”.

While he admits she was subsequently much happier, he goes on: “Not that she was a recluse, as some people thought. She wasn’t at all a recluse, but she didn’t enjoy public appearances and interviews particularly. She wanted the work to speak for itself.”

‘Deeply hurt’ by Truman Capote

Famously close to Truman Capote, one of the pieces in Lee’s newly released collection is a profile of her fellow author.

Dr Conner says that piece – a love-letter of sorts, describing Capote’s literary achievements – is all the more remarkable because at the point Lee wrote it in 1966, when she and Capote “were not even on speaking terms”.

He says Lee “probably knew [Capote] better than any other person alive when that was written”, adding, “she did love him as a friend very much, even when he was not speaking to her”.

Friends since childhood – and the prototype for the character of Dill in Mockingbird – Capote later hired Lee to help him research his 1965 true crime novel In Cold Blood.

Despite his book’s relative success, Dr Conner believes Capote was “bitter” over the fact Mockingbird far eclipsed it in accolades and recognition.

“He had been writing for much longer. He felt that he was at least as good as she was, and he was very envious of her success”.

Dr Conner says Lee was “deeply hurt” at Capote’s rejection of her, never speaking about him in later life.

Recalling his own meeting with Capote many years later, Dr Conner says he “got a personal sense of how [Capote] could charm the socks off of anybody, male or female”.

He says it was noteworthy that while Capote asked about his mother, who he had been fond of, he “never once mentioned” Harper.

Sky News has contacted Lee’s lawyer and the executor of her estate, Tonya Carter, for comment.

The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays, by Harper Lee is on sale from Tuesday

Entertainment

No more investigations into ‘non-crime hate incidents’ after Linehan case, Met Police says

Published

15 hours ago

October 20, 2025

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No more investigations into 'non-crime hate incidents' after Linehan case, Met Police says

Metropolitan Police is to stop investigating “non-crime hate incidents” to “reduce ambiguity” after prosecutors dropped a case against Graham Linehan.

Linehan, 57, will face no further action after being arrested over his social media posts about transgender people.

The Father Ted and IT Crowd creator said his lawyers had been told the case wouldn’t proceed. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed the move.

Linehan, 57, was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence when he landed at Heathrow from his home in the US on 1 September.

The incident drew criticism of the police and government from some politicians and free-speech campaigners.

Met Police said today it would stop investigating “non-crime hate incidents” to “reduce ambiguity” and “provide clearer direction for officers”.

Posting on X, Linehan announced : “After a successful hearing to get my bail conditions lifted (one which the police officer in charge of the case didn’t even bother to attend) the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped the case.

“With the aid of the Free Speech Union, I still aim to hold the police accountable for what is only the latest attempt to silence and suppress gender critical voices on behalf of dangerous and disturbed men.”

The union said it had hired a “top flight team of lawyers to sue the Met for wrongful arrest, among other things”.

“The police need to be taught a lesson that they cannot allow themselves to be continually manipulated by woke activists,” it added.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson confirmed it had reviewed the case file and decided “no further action” would be taken.

In one of his posts, Linehan wrote: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

Another was a photo of a trans-rights protest, with the comment “a photo you can smell”, and a follow-up post saying: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.”

A Met Police statement after the case was dropped acknowledged “concern” around Linehan’s arrest.

It added: “The commissioner has been clear he doesn’t believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates, with current laws and rules on inciting violence online leaving them in an impossible position.

“As a result, the Met will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents.

“We believe this will provide clearer direction for officers, reduce ambiguity and enable them to focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations.”

Linehan said on his blog that his was arrested by five armed officers and had to go to A&E after his blood pressure reached “stroke territory” during his interrogation.

Police said the officers’ guns were never drawn and were only present as Linehan was detained by the aviation unit, which routinely carries firearms.

JK Rowling, who’s regularly shared her views on women’s rights in relation to transgender rights, was among those who had criticised the arrest, calling it “utterly deplorable”.

Reform’s Nigel Farage, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, and ex-foreign secretary Sir James Cleverly also hit out at the treatment of Linehan.