#YouToo, Gwynnie? Intimacy coordinators make sex scenes safe for all, not just A-listers

The film star is among those undermining a role that was created to protect the powerless

- Barbara Ellen

How instructive to hear Gwyneth Paltrow's views on intimacy coordinators, the people hired to supervise intimate scenes in film and television. Talking to Vanity Fair magazine about her big screen comeback, in Josh Safdie’s ping pong film, Marty Supreme, the actor, 52, joked of her sex scenes with 29-year-old Timothée Chalamet: “I was like, ‘I’m 109 years old. You're 14”

Paltrow also said: “There’s now something called an intimacy coordinator (IC), which I did not know existed.” When the IC spoke to her: “I'm like, ‘Girl, I'm from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera's on’... We said, ‘I think we're good. You can step a little bit back.’” She added: “I don’t know how it is for the kids who are starting out, but... if someone is like ‘OK, then he puts his hand here’... I would feel as an artist very stifled by that.”

Well, I also don’t know about kids starting out, but I'd imagine it’s much harder for them when rich, famous, powerful players such as Paltrow undermine intimacy coordinators: people specifically hired to safeguard the welfare of everybody on set — not just big stars.

I'd love to relay more about the Paltrow Vanity Fair article: all the darling details about stealth wealth, raw milk, perimenopause, shearling clogs, and the inside track on the financial status of Paltrow’s wellness empire, Goop.

However, this is about #MeToo. Specifically, the ongoing soft-cancellation of the intimacy coordinator, whose professional presence, lest we forget, is one of the hard-won gains of the #MeToo movement. How it’s becoming a major Hollywood power flex to declare you don’t need one. How it’s starting to be considered rather chic to dispense with their services. And what the trickledown effect of all this A-list privilege could be.