Ex-Channel 4 drama chief Caroline Hollick has called Gwyneth Paltrow “irresponsible” for her headline-grabbing remarks about intimacy coordinators.
Last week, the Hollywood star kickstarted a debate when she said she would “feel very stifled” by the actions of intimacy coordinators, adding that she had to tell the coordinator on her upcoming Marty Supreme movie to “step a little bit back” in sex scenes with Paltrow and co-star Timothée Chalamet.
Speaking at Series Mania today, Hollick, who now works for Peter Chernin’s North Road, branded Paltrow’s comments “quite an irresponsible thing to say,” which she said prove that intimacy coordinators have “got caught up in the fringes of the culture wars.”
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“Every now and then an actor makes a comment over whether they like intimacy coordinators or not,” said Hollick, who was speaking on a panel titled ‘Let’s Talk About Sex! (And Consent)’. “Gwyneth Paltrow said she grew up in a time when [people in Hollywood] ‘took our kit off and got on with it.’ As a powerful woman in Hollywood acting with a man much younger than her, well I’m sure [Chalamet] is chill but I thought it was quite an irresponsible thing to say.”
Hollick, who commissioned the likes of BAFTA-nominated porn industry drama Adult Material during her Channel 4 tenure, said “you have to think really carefully abut power and power structures” when considering the role of intimacy coordinators, whose use has risen since the #MeToo era began.
“Bringing an intimacy coordinator on set empowers an actor because there is someone on side who is there to fight for them,” said Hollick. “Producers have an agenda, writers have an agenda and directors have an agenda. So having someone to back the performer is important.”
Hollick called for the industry to give sex scenes the same status as stunt performers, which would allow creators to “dig deep into issues and say, ‘These scenes are fun and sexy and that’s OK too’.”
She stressed that she doesn’t want less sex on TV, but quite the opposite.
“It’s important we have more sex on TV, otherwise all people will see in terms of representation is pornography,” she added. “It feels like with the explosion of pornography there is less sex on TV and research shows that Gen-Z don’t like it, they want [traditional] romance.”
Liz Kilgarriff, the ex-Bodyguard producer who runs Firebird Pictures, said “every time we are portraying sex on screen we are thinking about emotion.”
“We think about what we need to show in terms of connecting emotion with the characters but never ever showing anything that is just gratuitous or titillating or shocking,” added Kilgarriff.
Manuel Alduy, who runs cinema, young adult and international fiction for France Télévisions, said modern TV shows needs to be able to demonstrate that “consent is possible,” especially given this is “not even a legal concept in France.”
“So if we don’t start by putting that into practice in our stories then I’m sure we will go nowhere,” he added.
The panel were talking as Series Mania kicked off. Later today, James Norton and Sally Wainwright are set to lead masterclasses. The fest runs from today to Thursday.
The post Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Irresponsible” Intimacy Coordinator Remarks Criticized By North Road’s Caroline Hollick — Series Mania appeared first on Deadline.
