Mikey Madison opted not to use an intimacy coordinator for Anora

As the role of an intimacy coordinator (and in fact, the role of intimacy scenes at large) becomes more defined in the entertainment industry, filmmakers and actors are still learning to navigate how to navigate the subject. On Anora, star Mikey Madison says she was offered an intimacy coordinator but declined. Speaking with Pamela Anderson for Variety's Actors on Actors series, Madison says that she and co-star Mark Eydelshteyn "decided that it would be best to just keep it small with us, and then Sean Baker the director and Sammy Kwan, his producing partner and his wife."

In this way, Madison feels they were "able to just really streamline" the process and "shoot it super quickly." She quotes Baker in saying "They're less sex scenes, more sex shots." Further, because the scenes were humorous, that made it even more of a "positive experience" for Madison. "I had seen Sean’s films and I know his dedication to authenticity. I also wanted to immerse myself in that, so I was ready for it," Madison says, noting that her character is a sex worker, so "It requires a lot of her body and her skin. I think that—I've said it before—but I think she wears her nudity more like a costume in a way. She presents herself in this sort of hypersexualized way because it's how she makes a living, and it's just what she as to do. And so I think I also, as an actress, I approached it in a way of like, it being a job. So I was very comfortable."

Madison previously told The New York Times that because her character was comfortable in that environment, it made her comfortable: "To me it was never a thought in my head to be nervous or anything." Baker, meanwhile, told the Associated Press that his stance on intimacy coordinators is that it's a "case by case basis, a film by film basis. And it's always should be offered to the actors, and if they want one, then yes of course. But as producers, all three of us, our priority is safety and comfort of our actors on set. And I've directed many over my career, so I was actually very comfortable with it, it was just if Mikey and Mark were as well, and yes, they were."

For The Hollywood Reporter, the director added that "by the time we got to shooting, I think we were so comfortable that it was approached in such an incredibly clinical way. There was no improv. We like to call them sex shots, not sex scenes, because they’re blocked, they’re calculated." Madison agreed, "We talked at length about each scene, what it would look like. And Sean and his wife and producing partner Sammy [Samantha Quan] would even block out what it would look like [on screen]." Their efforts certainly paid off, as Anora (and particularly Madison as its lead) is one of the most critically acclaimed films on the awards circuit at the moment.