Every week, more news drops from the legal battle surrounding the nightmare production of the blockbuster rom-dram It Ends With Us. The film’s star Blake Lively has sued the film’s director Justin Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios for sexual harassment and retaliation. Baldoni and Wayfarer have denied the claims and have countersued Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds for defamation, extortion and breach of contract. Many of Lively’s on-set complaints around sexual harassment stemmed from feeling “uncomfortable” with things her director and co-star Baldoni said and did during filming, including adding sex scenes and improvising moves that were not in the original script. Baldoni has countered that an intimacy coordinator was made available to Lively before production began and Lively declined to meet with the IC, leaving him to meet with the IC alone and recap what they coordinated to Lively later on set.
While the case won’t be heard in court until March 2026, this is truly a worst-case scenario production that artists should be invested in learning from—not for the sake of tabloid salaciousness, but to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.
Yet, there still seems to be a prevalent backlash to the profession in general among top stars.
Just yesterday, a clip from a Vanity Fair interview with Gwyneth Paltrow (52) went viral after she said she felt “stifled” by the presence of an intimacy coordinator during sex scenes with her co-star Timothee Chalamet (29) on the set of their new film. Paltrow—who was infamously victimized by Harvey Weinstein and spoke out against him during the #MeToo movement—stopped the intimacy coordinator from choreographing a sex scene, saying: “I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on.’” She told the intimacy coordinator “We [Chalamet and I] said, ‘I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back.”
Anora star Mikey Madison (25) also came under fire when she admitted in an interview that filmmaker Sean Baker gave her the option of an intimacy coordinator and she declined because she felt comfortable with Baker (54).
Paltrow and Madison aren’t alone; Sean Bean, Toni Collette, Michael Douglas, Kim Basinger are just a few more who have spoken against the present of intimacy coordinators on set. But in an industry that’s infamously unsafe, it’s paramount that we start doing things in a different way.
In the new world that artists build, I believe intimacy coordinators are essential to a safe and liberating production. But I had no idea just how radical the profession could be until I met up with Veronica Burt, an intimacy coordinator and my colleague in the WIF 2024 fellowship. At an afternoon tea for WIF fellows, Veronica introduced herself and what she does and her approach totally blew me away. I had to interview her and find out more. Here’s what she had to say about the future of her profession and the “consent-forward” world we could have:
This interview has been edited and condensed. Paid subscribers can listen to the full audio interview on the BGW podcast Another Possible World below:
BLACK GIRL WATCHING: When we were all introducing ourselves at the tea for Women in Film Fellows for 2024, and you were introducing yourself as an intimacy coordinator—the only one in our program—and what it is that you do, I was just so impressed and excited about it, because I do think there are some misconceptions about what it means to be an intimacy coordinator. So I would love it if you would just start off by saying what it is that you do as an intimacy coordinator. What is an intimacy coordinator?
VERONICA BURT: Totally. I explain it as someone that works to ensure an actor’s boundaries are being maintained on set. That’s one part of the job. A second part of the job is liaisoning that information to all the parties that need to know that, whether that be a producer, a director, a DP. And then the third component is choreographing said intimacy. So, those are kind of the three branches of work that I do. Working with actors to maintain boundaries, liaisoning with departments to make sure that everyone has that information, and then choreographing.
So there’s a lot of real technical parts to that, right? Like the choreographing is very specific. Working with wardrobe on modesty garments is very specific. And then there’s also this like emotional social component to it as well, which is a lot of the work with actors and a lot of the work to navigating, sharing that information with other people on set and navigating the power dynamics of that.
BGW: That’s really, really important. And I loved hearing about your background too, like how, like all of the different parts of your experiences and how they came into you becoming an intimacy coordinator. So can you talk a little bit about that and how you decided that intimacy coordination was the path for you?
VB: Yeah, it’s one of my favorite things about the community as a whole because everyone comes to it from such different backgrounds. So any intimacy coordinator you talk to is going to have such a unique story, which obviously is the case with all artists, but it’s because it has such a different set of skill sets that you need. But for me, I started in the entertainment business as a dancer in theater. So almost exclusively a live performance. And while I was a dancer, I was back in New York doing it, I sometimes felt like just a body, like there was no one behind that. I was just something to be used and manipulated in space. And I started to get really sick and tired of that.
As I was starting to feel that exhaustion really, I began a doula training. I truly was just like listening to a podcast and in it, they were [discussing the] horrific Black maternal mortality rates in this country. And I was like, what is going on? And so started to get involved in some like local doula groups that were doing amazing things to reverse some of those rates. And in those doula trainings, I was learning about trauma-informed advocacy, somatic work, community care work. Like I just started to understand the ways in which we can disrupt hierarchy by using collectivity and somatic trauma-informed awareness to disrupt that.
I started to bring some of those tools into rehearsals as a dancer. So, someone would say something, someone was concerned with something, there was some language that was being used—I had the tools now for non-violent communication from one of my classes I had to take for my doula training. So, I started to use that in the [performance] space and began to realize not only was it really needed in those spaces, this was a job, like people were doing that already. And so I really took the pandemic to train up properly, try things out, build my own practice.
I made the decision in 2022 to move back to Los Angeles and then started to creep my way into the film business. What was really helpful was I started off as a COVID monitor. And so, I learned how to honestly code switch between departments, trying to get people to follow the rules for this collective idea of safety. And I will say, my COVID monitoring really, really, really has informed my intimacy coordinating. Sometimes I will have to use language like, ‘I know it’s just the rules, right?’ [to get people to comply non-defensively.] You’re not the bad guy. you’re just trying to bring people in to this common thing that we all have to do together. So yeah, that was kind of my journey.
BGW: Okay, this is all really, really amazing. I wanna get into all this, but like just the overlap between the resistance to COVID cautiousness and resistance to intimacy coordinators—like I do think that it’s getting at like a common root and the doula training and intimacy coordination connection, like I feel like that also has a common root, as well. There is a separation between us and our bodies, and I feel like that comes probably from our capitalistic training [to disassociate]. When you were talking about being a dancer and feeling just like a body that’s being used, that’s what capitalism has trained all of us to do. So, the work that you’re doing is so revolutionary on so many different levels, like between the doulaing, between being the COVID monitor on set, [your job is really] putting us back into our bodies. That is probably the most anti-capitalist thing that you could be doing, which is really amazing.
VB: I’ve said this before already, but somatic community care work is really what I call it; that’s what all these jobs are, right? That’s what it all is and what it all comes down to. And oftentimes when I’m talking to a producer, because some people come to this work as fight directors or advocates for survivors of sexual assault, right? Like there’s a lot of different pathways to this. And so producers are like, ‘What’s your kind of niche or how did you enter?’ And I often am like, ‘Well, I come to this work as a dancer and doula. So I approached this job as somatic community care work.’ That’s like literally my pitch line for myself.
BGW: One of the things that you said in our tea that was it’s not your job to stop things from being sexy, but your job is to say, ‘let’s make it as filthy as possible, but within the bounds of like what’s comfortable for people. What are the things that you say to reframe people’s thinking about these things? Like, ‘This is not necessarily an indictment of who the people are, but maybe we could think about this in a different way and see how this is actually you being a person who is caring about your community on set’?
VB: Okay, there’s so many like pillars to this question, but yes, I think what I do first is try to educate producers on the scope of the job itself, right? Because some people do think that you’re an on-set therapist, right? That’s actually a different job in our industry. I have mental health first aid training, but I’m actually not equipped to offer that sort of support, right? So being clear about that. I am not a fight director, right? Sometimes people really think that intimacy coordinators automatically do fight direction as well. Some do, but it’s really important that producers don’t think that because I don’t have that skill set, right? And that’s putting actors in great danger, actually, if you have someone that doesn’t quite have those tools. So it’s communicating with them what the scope is, how this is going to go. What is the process of this?
Because so much of intimacy coordination is like, are these grand sort of ethos about how we keep actors safe, how we promote sustainability. So what does that actually practically look like on set, and it just is a lot of communication. It really, really is. And making it very clear to everyone that although you are there to support the production as a whole, your first job is to support the actor. Of course, I’m also supporting a director in this, which I think a lot of directors think that intimacy coordinators are coming in and taking over their set, when in fact, I’m offering support so that you don’t have to do a lot of that emotional labor. Like you’re free to just enact the vision because I’m taking on a lot of that work.
So yeah, I also just make it very clear to producers that I’m not there to censor anything, right? In fact, I’m really interested in the most daring, the most vulnerable version. And I’m a great believer if we have those protections in place, we have a clear understanding of what we’re doing. Actors are able to go that much further then because they have that, the boundaries are set and in place.
If you know what the parameters are, you’re able to execute the job a lot more clearly, smoothly, efficiently. So I think people get this idea that having an intimacy coordinator on set is going to disrupt efficiency. And in fact, I’m a big believer that it promotes efficiency.
BGW: That kind of leads like perfectly into the next thing that I wanted to talk about. So I don’t know if you saw Mikey Madison, the star of the movie, Anora, did an interview, Actors on Actors, with Pamela Anderson, and Pamela was asking Mikey about intimacy coordinators and if they had any on set, because, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, Anora is a sex worker, and so there is quite a bit of explicit sex scenes and nudity and all of that throughout the film. And so she was basically saying no. She felt really comfortable with her director. So she did not feel the need to have an intimacy coordinator. So when you like see interviews or actors, especially young actresses, like Mikey Madison like saying things like this, like what goes through your mind?
VB: Yeah, I mean, I always wanna advocate for an actor, which means that I’m not placing any of my own feelings onto the situation for them. Whatever they feel like their needs are, that’s great. The thing about this is that it’s not just her, right? That’s also her scene partner. It’s also the DP [director of photography]. It’s also the rest of your crew. Yes, it is a role that primarily prioritizes the safety of actors, but it’s also ensuring the professionalism of these sort of scenes so that everyone is safe on these sets. So, I think one of the issues here is the lack of specificity in the SAG [Screen Actors Guild] guidelines around intimacy coordinators. There’s been a lot of work lately as intimacy coordinators are beginning to unionize with SAG. I think that those will really change those guidelines, but right now they’re very loose. And so it’s really up to the discretion of producers if they want to have this position on set or not. So I’m hoping that there’ll be a bit more regulation there. And so then there’s just an intimacy coordinator on set. And if they are not used, right, if a director doesn’t want to use them or an actor doesn’t want to use them, fine.
They can just sit there and watch, but there’s eyes and ears out for everyone there. There’s a resource for everyone from number one on the call sheet to crafty for someone to go to should they have any issues with closed-set protocols, nudity protocols, maybe wardrobe needs some support, right? So we’ll see, but yeah, I know that she got a lot of flack and I think that’s really unfair, right?
She knows how to do her job best, right? Like she knows her character best. It’s one of the first things I always say to actors. You know your character best. I’m just here to help facilitate all the other parts around that. I’m not here to tell you how to act your role. I’m here to offer suggestions, to ask questions. I’m not here to do that. So I think, you know, she did her job beautifully. We know that. But I wish that it was just a set standard so that some of these power dynamics weren’t there so that everyone just has the resource if they need it.
BGW: I’m with you, I believe it should be a mandatory position. I feel like we’re having the same kind of situation with an opposite outcome with It Ends with Us because you have Justin Baldoni, the director of that movie, saying that, ‘Well, we offered Blake Lively an intimacy coordinator. She said she didn’t want to meet with them in advance, that she felt comfortable, she felt good.’ He’s releasing his side of the text messages saying this is what she said. So, I mean, just to go back to your point about the way that your role actually collaborates with directors as well— it would have ended with an intimacy coordinator. Like, none of this would have happened, you know? If there had been an intimacy coordinator there, just all of the problems that they were talking about would just kind of not really exist.
VB: That’s if this set had producers that were also collaborating with the intimacy coordinator, right? There’s only so much you can do if you don’t have the support of a producer on set, right? You can start to have some of these conversations, especially at this high level, where you’re working with big names, stars, and all of what comes with all of that. I think there’s a lot of mitigation and conversation and parameters that you can set, but unless you have the backup of producers being like, yes, this is what we’re doing, or yes, we’re following through with this complaint or allegation, it’s like your hands are kind of tied.
I’ve had mentors of mine that have worked at some of these higher levels and it’s like, “Better is better,” is the motto of Chelsea Pace, who’s amazing. She’s just like, you know, we’re chipping away at the thing. And sometimes it can be really hard for an intimacy coordinator when you’re leaving set and you’re like, I could have done better. I could have handled that situation better. You know, someone’s leaving upset. There was harm that was enacted on this set, you know, and it’s like, you have to remember better is better. Because you can’t be a martyr for the work either, right? And I’ve had to learn that the hard way, specifically in theater spaces, which when you’re just around a lot more, that you have to be following the same guidelines that you’re setting for everyone else in terms of taking care of yourself, treating the work in a sustainable way. It means you also have to have closure practices and those sort of things that we gift to actors. It’s important to have that for yourself too.
BGW: I love that. Tell me a little bit more about the closure practices that you do for yourself when you get it when you’re getting off of a set.
VB: Yeah, I mean, I love a voice memo. So I will often kind of do a dump for really close friends of mine, just kind of getting it out of my system, talking out the thing. The drive home is very much the time for me to get it all out of my system if something has happened. And then when I come home, I love a long hot shower. So, I try to kind of tackle both the mind and body aspect of it, Kind of like work through my thoughts, get that out of my system, verbalize the day, and then have a time to really wash that off of my being. I have friends of mine that will light a candle when they get home, when they blow it out, it’s done. The moment of the day is done. It’s over.
I also have an amazing community of intimacy coordinator friends. our group chat name is Bold and Nasty Intimacy Cohort. And because it’s such a solitary job on set—you’re a department of one most of the time—it has been amazing to build this community of other intimacy coordinators to be able to lean on, to ask questions to, because, you know, sometimes we’ll be on set and it’s a scenario that you’ve never been in. It’s the wild west of a job sometimes. And so you need people to kind of talk through situation with or help with language when you’re negotiating. Again, for me, it’s all about community. All about collectivity. And it just proves time and time again that that’s what gets us through things. Like that’s what support is, is when you do things together.
BGW: What are the ways that people in this industry can support and advocate for intimacy coordinators?
VB: A million dollar question. I think I feel really supported on set when a DP wants to actively work with me. When [the sound department] is also practicing consent practices in the way that they’re asking to mic actors and touch their bodies to adjust microphones and whatnot, right? Like when the whole crew has this consent-forward collaborative approach, again, it makes the shoot more efficient. We make our days when everyone works together in this way and it makes for better art because if I’m actually in communication with the DP, we can really mask something well. We can pick up on this detail. We can tell the story that much better. So I just think that folks that are working below-the-line on sets can just support the work by actually speaking to the intimacy coordinator, by saying hello, by welcoming that role. A lot of times ICs are coming in for one or two days on a long shoot, so we don’t have a lot of the relationships or rapport that you build on sets. So when folks just bring us in, we’re able to do our work that much better. So I would say that’s a very small thing that anyone on a set.
I think educators can continue to make sure that young artists understand the role, understand the power that they can gain by having someone on these sets. I think that actors with big platforms can continue to talk about how productive and helpful these positions are. I loved last year hearing about Emma Stone in Poor Things. She was someone that was like, ‘Well, I’ve worked with this director before, so I feel like I’m gonna be fine. I know this DP really well. I’m a producer. I have a lot of title power already on this set.’ And I’m not sure who was the person that pushed—maybe other producers. Someone there said, ‘No, let’s just have an intimacy coordinator on that set.’ And then she spoke about how helpful that was for her, especially as someone who had to navigate multiple roles on that set. Because an intimacy coordinator is helping you process and remove some of that weight so that then she could go do her role. So I loved how she really spoke about how she kind of came around to it. Those sort of conversations really help as well.
I have a lot of hope with the next generation for how things will shift.
Paid subscribers can listen to the full audio interview on the BGW podcast Another Possible World below:
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