I’m an intimacy coordinator – how Hollywood sex scenes are really made, including what happens when stars get ‘excited’
FOR TV fans, a good sex scene is can’t-look-away, maybe-I-should-have-watched-this-alone viewing — but for intimacy coordinators, it’s all in a day’s work.
Jessica Steinrock, who coordinated scenes for shows like Yellowjackets and Little Fires Everywhere, revealed that there’s a ton of technical knowledge that goes into making these interludes just right.
“Intimacy coordinator” is a new-ish job in Hollywood, but Steinrock, 29, of Chicago, told The U.S. Sun that much of the work they do already existed.
Directors have long choreographed sex scenes to make them look steamy — and real, since unsimulated sex is against SAG-AFTRA union rules.
Costume departments have doled out modesty garments so actors can get faux-freaky without unnecessary touching, and to prevent hard — uh, tough — problems.
But since around 2018, consent has also taken center stage, and people like Steinrock have been hired to cover all the moving pieces.
Steinrock — who also worked on Never Have I Ever — has become one of the top names in her field after getting in at the ground floor.
She’s certainly collected some eyebrow-raising experiences, like when she was responsible for a 40-person sex party on the set of Claws on her very first day as an intimacy coordinator.
“It was just the most intense day of work ever,” she admitted.
“I was like, great! This is the job I signed up for, for sure. It was so much fun, though. What an amazing set. What an amazing experience.”
Now she has 783,000 followers on TikTok, where she shares tricks of the trade including different types of modesty garments — think strapless thongs, nipple covers, and silicone genital cups.
She also dishes on her own favorite on-screen sex scenes — and her least favorite, like in a certain Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde flick.
FIVE PILLARS OF INTIMACY
Steinrock found her way to sex scenes through improv, where she was used to people grabbing, kissing, and licking her but wanted to maintain her boundaries and personal autonomy.
After working with two of the biggest pioneers of intimacy work, Tonia Sina and Alicia Rodis, Steinrock co-created Intimacy Directors and Coordinators and now trains others for the job.
On any production, she focuses on the Five Pillars of Intimacy: context, consent, communication, choreography, and closure.
“We start with: What’s the story? What’s the context? Are we all on the same page?” she said.
“Because if one person thinks it’s a tiny peck and the other person thinks it’s a tongue-in-your-face makeout sesh, we’re going to have a little bit of a challenge.
“[Then] we set up pathways for communication, so we know how to take breaks, we know how to talk about the characters, we talk about our boundaries.
“We talked about consent, making sure that everybody knows just what’s going to happen.
Our bodies are actually really bad at telling the difference between real and imaginary. Our brains are fine with it, but our bodies aren’t.
Jessica Steinrock
“Then consent and choreography kind of go hand in hand.
“Choreography is really there to make the story look good, but also to give us a road map so we can consent to what’s about to happen to our bodies.
“And then at the end of the day, we work with something called closure, which is just a tool to help actors leave behind the emotional work that they’re doing.”
This is so they “don’t accidentally fall in love” — see Brangelina, or Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson — or take home “trauma or emotional weight” from the story.
“Our bodies are actually really bad at telling the difference between real and imaginary. Our brains are fine with it, but our bodies aren’t.”
A LITTLE MODESTY
Then there’s all the technical stuff, like dealing with nudity and contact.
“The guideline that I like to follow, in general, is that if we’re not seeing it on camera, we’re covering it up,” Steinrock said.
That’s where modesty garments come in, and they’ve come a long way since when costume designers might have needed to “Frankenstein” something together.
Steinrock recalled how a friend once made a genital barrier out of a fluffy dinosaur costume.
“Can you imagine doing a sex scene and knowing there’s, like, a dinosaur costume attached to your groin? How much more vulnerable can you get?” she said.
Now there are companies that make specially-designed pieces for upwards of $60 each, including skin-tone strapless thongs with built-in padding that are stuck on with matching tape.
There are also silicone nipple covers and genital barriers, thicker pieces that reduce how much the actors can feel.
That can help cut down on awkward moments when a male actor gets aroused — which Steinrock insists happens less often than people think, but it does happen.
We don’t need to say like, ‘Oh, I’m having a vascular reaction!’
Jessica Steinrock
“You know, anybody who has a penis is going to have some kind of vascular reaction,” she said.
“But because we have barriers — the squishy padding that goes between the actors’ genitals, and more often than not, both of them are wearing some kind of barrier — if a vascular reaction occurs, it’s something that we can just take a break for.”
On her sets, actors can say they need a break at any time and don’t need to say why — so there’s no fear of embarrassment.
“We don’t need to say like, ‘Oh, I’m having a vascular reaction!’ We’re not gonna do that,” she said.
Other issues include actors who are concerned about their breath — she has mints for that — or are worried about a visible tampon string or period stain — though she says that rarely happens.
RESPECTING BOUNDARIES
Plenty of her work is also emotional, navigating actors’ nerves and feelings.
She’s shared examples on social media, including how a young star might be nervous about doing a sex scene when they’ve never had sex in real life.
And it’s not just actors whose feelings are considered: Steinrock also makes sure crew members like camera operators are comfortable with what they’re seeing.
All of this is so sex scenes don’t just look good, but so no one walks away with experiences they regret.
Jessica Steinrock's favorite and least-favorite sex scenes
Even though she knows how the sausage gets made, Jessica Steinrock says she can still enjoy sex scenes on TV.
One of her recent favorites is Netflix’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a “beautiful” movie with “amazing” intimacy work.
She’s also a Bridgerton fan and described season two of The Deuce as “iconic.”
But she is more likely to spot a sex scene that just doesn’t make sense, and it bugs her.
One in particular was an oral sex scene in Don’t Worry Darling between Harry Styles and Florence Pugh.
“I didn’t like that scene,” she said, describing it as “unrealistic.”
She also recalled a scene in Orange is the New Black in which a woman was bent over a table and the man behind her held his shirt open around her butt.
“The shirt was covering where you know the penetration otherwise would have been happening. But in my head, I was like, no one would hold their shirt like that,” she said.
On TikTok, she said a scene in The Orville was “the worst” she’d ever seen.
“There are a lot of cliches in Hollywood about, if you won’t do it, there are 100 people behind you who will.
“Or you’re always auditioning, or don’t be the thing that slows it down.
“And all of those basically boiled down to you have to be a ‘yes,’ you have to be okay with whatever is going to happen to you.
“And you don’t get to have any boundaries, and it puts the people in power — even the most well-intentioned people in power — in a spot where coercion can still happen.”
Intimacy coordinators ensure these boundaries are met, even when there’s some pushback.
“I always approach that from a place of empathy, because when they’re resistant to something, they’re protecting something,” Steinrock explained.
“And so I go, well, what are they trying to protect? Are they trying to protect their artistry that they’ve crafted for 30 years?
“Are they trying to protect their sense of personhood as they enter into a new discipline and are maybe 18 years old and going to do a sex scene for the first time?
“Are they trying to protect the movie project that they just got hired to direct that they are so passionate about and want to see their name and say, ‘That’s my piece’? I can have empathy for all of those things and work with all of those things.”
None of those conversations were standard on Hollywood sets even a few years ago, but Steinrock notes how much has changed — and how much further the industry has to go.
“The colloquial language about consent and intimacy is significantly different today than it was 45 years ago,” she said.
“Consent had a very different connotation. It was, if we’re talking about consent, it’s either you’re getting assaulted or it’s fine. There was no middle ground.
“But consent can actually just be about hugs or shoulder touches.
“There is a difference in just the language and the skill set and the ease at which I see upcoming generations approaching conversations about boundaries about consent about sex.
“It makes me hopeful for a future where we can talk more freely about this, and there’s less stigma attached to it, which will ultimately, in my opinion, create better storytelling.”