Sean Bean says intimacy coordinators ‘ruin’ process of filming sex scenes: ‘It would spoil the spontaneity’

Sean Bean has suggested that intimacy coordinators “spoil the spontaneity” of sex scenes.

The Time actor has filmed many intimate scenes throughout his career, most famously opposite Joely Richardson in a 1993 adaptation of DH Lawrence’s raunchy novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

In a new interview, Bean discussed the impact intimacy coordinators – specialists who work on film and TV sets to choreograph and allow actors to feel comfortable while filming sex scenes – would have had on the show.

“I should imagine it slows down the thrust of it. Ha, not the thrust, that’s the wrong word,” he told The Times, adding: “It would spoil the spontaneity.

“It would inhibit me more because it’s drawing attention to things. Somebody saying, ‘Do this, put your hand there, while you touch his thing…’ I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise.”

He continued: “Lady Chatterley was spontaneous. It was joy. We had a good chemistry between us, and we knew what we were doing was unusual. Because she was married, I was married. But we were following the story. We were trying to portray the truth of what DH Lawrence wrote.”

The intimacy coordinator became a standard figure on mainstream film sets in the wake of #MeToo in order to protect female actors.

Acknowledging this, Bean said: “I suppose it depends on the actress.”

Discussing a never-aired scene from the Netflix series Snowpiercer in which he was naked with a female actor, he added: “This one had a musical cabaret background, so she was up for anything.”