Toni Collette: Intimacy coordinators aren’t helpful

The Australian actor says that their presence on set makes her ‘anxious’.

Toni Collette in X-rated BBC drama Wanderlust. Picture: BBC

Australian actor Toni Collette says she has asked intimacy co-­ordinators to leave the set while staging on-camera sex scenes.

Since #MeToo, intimacy co-ordinators are found in all corners of the ­entertainment industry. Their job is to facilitate simulated sex and nudity in film, television and theatre – which they may do through discussing consent, choreo­graphing sex scenes, or even supplying physical barriers that sit between naked bodies.

Collette, who stars in The Power,coming to Prime Video on March 31, said in an interview that the presence of intimacy co-ordinators on set made her anxious.

“I think it’s only been a couple of times where they’ve been brought in, and I have very much trusted and felt at ease with the people I was working with,” ­Collette said.

“It just felt like those people who were brought in to make me feel more at ease were actually making me feel more anxious. They weren’t helping, so I asked them to leave.”

When asked whether intimacy co-ordinators would have been welcome earlier in her career, ­Collette – who got her start more than three decades ago as the breakout star in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding– replied: “It depends.”

“Every single job is different. Because it’s a bunch of new people it’s a new energy; everyone brings their whole life with them, and it’s all thrown in the pot,” she said.

She added that she had been very fortunate that she’d worked with only a “few arseholes” in the decades that she had “managed to keep this boat afloat”.

Elsewhere in the interview with The Times, Collette admitted that she doesn’t quite understand so-called cancel culture, and admired the way comedian Ricky Gervais confronted it directly.

“We don’t want people who are offensive swinging their stuff around with freedom,” she said.

“But people who are authentic and have something within them to share in life, feeling stifled? Doesn’t feel so good, does it?”