Hello HR fans! There has been so much talk about the intimate scenes in Heated Rivalry that I thought they deserved a post of their own.
Intimacy Coordinator Chala Hunter was interviewed by Toronto Life about her role (which is a combination of director, choreorgrapher and advocate) and what having an Intimacy Coordinator on set can do to support and protect performers.
As an intimacy coordinator, do you prioritize the wants and needs of the performers or staying true to the script?
Definitely the performers. I think of myself as the person on set whose top priority is protecting actors in terms of consent and boundaries. Just by existing on a production, an intimacy coordinator can provide a certain amount of security by letting the actors know there is someone who is their advocate first. When I was acting and doing this kind of hyper-exposure work, I was so motivated to do the part well—to serve the story and even to please the director so that they would feel that the project was succeeding. But there are times when those desires can be in conflict with an actor’s comfort levels and personal boundaries.
What could that harm look like?
There are specific techniques for choreographing simulated sex that are intended to protect the performers involved. If you don’t know them, you may be encouraging unnecessary or inadvertent physical contact. There is also the learning around language that is trauma-informed and recognizes that we can’t know what a performer has been through and what they may experience as triggering.
Let’s talk about a specific scene. Shane and Ilya’s first hotel-room hook-up must have been challenging.
It’s the first time they’re getting together, so the stakes are high. It’s also a really long scene with a lot of different scripted actions. You have the emotional arc, and then there is the physical arc that goes along with it, so that order of the movements is very intentional: how they enter the room, how they come together, who touches whom and where they’re touching each other, when the thumb goes in the mouth—that is intensely choreographed, similar to a complicated dance, so it was a case of running it again and again.
Were there cases on the Heated Rivalry set where an actor’s boundaries meant reworking a scene?
A big part of my code of ethics is confidentiality, so in terms of conversations with specific actors, that’s not something I can discuss. I can say that, in my experience, there is always a workaround—a way to serve the story while also respecting an actor’s comfort level. A concept I learned during my training that I often come back to is that a no is as helpful as a yes. They are both pieces of information that allow us to move forward on the same page.
The whole article is a really interesting look at a role that is often not taken as seriously as it should be. You can read more of Chala Hunter’s interview at the source.
HR_ONTD: What interested you the most about the intimate scenes in Heated Rivalry? Which were your favourites?
