Intimacy Coordinator Expand Their Role with SAG-AFTRA Guidance

SAG-AFTRA members performing in intimate or hyper-exposed scenes now have advocates who serve as liaisons between actors and a production. Due to the January release of SAG-AFTRA’s Standards and Protocols for the Use of Intimacy Coordinators, these professionals are becoming more common on sets.

Following a collaborative development process with industry partners and a community of working intimacy coordinators, the document provides a framework for the use of these professionals, who help performers and productions navigate highly sensitive scenes that feature nudity and simulated sex.

SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris stressed the importance of an intimacy coordinator to help create comfort on the set during the filming of an intimate scene. While the demand for them has increased in the #MeToo era, it’s a profession that isn’t yet clearly defined.

“Intimacy coordinators play a unique role by advocating for performers’ safety and ensuring that a production’s creative needs are met,” said Carteris. “These protocols and guidelines will help to normalize and encourage the use of intimacy coordinators in productions, ensuring the safety and security of SAG-AFTRA members while they work.”

Carteris also noted that the ongoing fight against sexual harassment and assault in the entertainment industry involves changing the culture on sets, and this is a step toward that goal.

While it is productions that hire intimacy coordinators, SAG-AFTRA sets out the guidelines for their use and qualifications, including the requirement that the hiring process be subject to candidates having successfully acquired a state and federal background check.

Two of the intimacy coordinators who consulted with the union on the development of the protocols were optimistic that the guidelines would spur greater industry adoption of these professions.

Alicia Rodis, executive team, Intimacy Directors and Coordinators and co-founder of Intimacy Directors International, said the protocols are already being field-tested by a growing number of productions and studios.

“It is our hope that this process can be widely adopted for an effective and reasonable path for productions to work with a trained intimacy coordinator,” Rodis said.

Amanda Blumenthal, founder of Intimacy Professionals Association, said the protocols signal that it is possible for producers to improve safety on set and make performers more comfortable during nude or intimate scenes. “These guidelines strike the right balance between describing the roles and responsibilities of intimacy coordinators while still allowing for flexibility from show to show, so that the process can be customized to work with each unique production.”

SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director David White noted that the protocols’ development process was a collaboration between a number of intimacy coordinators.

“We want to make sure that this is something that is well integrated into the production process.”

For more than two years, SAG-AFTRA has led the conversation on the effort to eliminate sexual harassment in the entertainment industry through strategic partnerships with industry allies and by pushing for stronger legislation. In 2018, the union established the Four Pillars of Change initiative and issued its Code of Conduct and Guideline No. 1, the prohibition of meetings in high-risk locations. The purpose is to uphold professional standards and address the potentially toxic culture and power imbalances that contribute to workplace harassment. In 2019, the union collaborated with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation and The Actors Fund to expand existing intervention tools and survivor support services.

As safety standards take shape for getting SAG-AFTRA performers back to work safely, the union is working with intimacy coordinators to appropriately navigate the future of intimate scenes in a post-COVID environment.

This item originally featured in the SAG-AFTRA magazine spring 2019 issue.