GoT Star Explains Why Intimate Scenes on the Show Were a 'Frenzied Mess'
Gemma Whelan, the actress who played Yara Greyjoy in Game of Thrones, gave an unsavory description of the way the show handled sex scenes, and she has a point.
If we take a step back from the way the movie industry is now, we can see just how much it’s changed over the course of the last few years. In many aspects, it’s driven by scandals and public revelations, and when it comes to intimate scenes, the most necessary and reasonable changes are so recent that it almost doesn’t make sense.
Fight choreographers have been a thing for decades now: whenever there’s a fight sequence, these guys make sure every movement is calculated, all the safety precautions are in place, and no one gets hurt in the process. But for some reason, it took all those decades for intimacy coordinators to be normalized in the industry.
Today, intimacy coordinators are common on sets, but it wasn’t long ago that no one was using those guys. Even Game of Thrones was mostly shot without them, and Gemma Whelan, who played Yara Greyjoy, once described the shooting of intimate scenes on the show as a “frenzied mess” when talking to The Guardian.
“They used to just say, ‘When we shout action, go for it!’, and it could be a sort of frenzied mess. But between the actors, there was always an instinct to check in with each other. <...> A director might say, ‘Bit of boob biting, then slap her bum and go!’, but I’d always talk it through with the other actor,” Whelan shared.
Later, when intimacy coordinators were introduced, the situation changed dramatically for the better, and the on-set interactions between the actors improved.
“With intimacy directors, it’s choreography – you move there, I move there, and permission and consent is given before you start. It is a step in the right direction,” the Yara actress confirmed.
Fortunately for the Game of Thrones cast, the actors were always respectful to each other, and despite those early intimate scenes being a “mess,” in most cases, the actors involved were always considerate toward each other. Still, the introduction of intimacy coordinators was a positive change, as Gemma Whelan points out.
Source: The Guardian