‘Hightown’ and ‘Sex Education’ Intimacy Coordinators Talk Ensuring Comfort and Care for Actors

variety.com:

Selome Hailu Marci Liroff wants you to know one thing for certain: “This is not porn. This is make-believe.”Liroff worked as the intimacy coordinator on Season 2 of the Starz drama “Hightown,” which features plenty of sex and stripping — but did not have anyone to coach those scenes in the first season.“I thought they did a terrific and convincing job in the first season without an intimacy coordinator,” she tells Variety. “But I knew I could make it better.”Intimacy coordinators started to be more in demand after #MeToo era conversations about sexual misconduct on film and TV sets expanded to include the ethics and protocol surrounding on-screen sex.

Notably, “The Deuce” star Emily Meade approached HBO in 2018 about needing someone to help manage the physical demands of acting in a show about sex work.

This led to the well-publicized hiring of intimacy coordinator Alicia Rodis. Liroff worked in film and TV for decades as a casting director, until she went looking for what she calls her “second act,” a chance to use her skills for something new, when she read about Rodis.“I just started digging deeper and deeper,” Liroff says. “And it led me to a woman named Amanda Blumenthal, who was the first intimacy coordinator in Los Angeles.

Her first job was ‘Euphoria’ — they threw her into the deep end of the swimming pool.”Riveted by how Blumenthal managed to facilitate such intense sexual content while maintaining safety and comfort for the actors on set, Liroff decided that intimacy coordination was the job for her.