\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always having sex in everything I do,\u201d Russell Tovey<\/strong> says, cheekily. He\u2019s not wrong. Ever since his breakout role as Kevin, Jonathan Groff<\/strong>\u2019s sweet boyfriend with a wandering eye on HBO\u2019s Looking,<\/em> the British actor has often been asked to engage in queer carnal pleasures onscreen, whether it\u2019s playing a closeted cop on American Horror Story: NYC<\/em> or Truman Capote\u2019s closeted lover, John O\u2019Shea, on Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.<\/em> And there\u2019s more where that came from in his latest project, Plainclothes,<\/em> premiering at Sundance Film Festival on Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was like choreography, but it was so poetic,\u201d Tovey says of his intimate scenes in Plainclothes.<\/em> \u201cIt\u2019s a lot to ask of actors to do. The stuff that we are doing in it is so graphic\u2014you know what\u2019s happening. It\u2019s beautifully filmed and it\u2019s romantic.\u201d<\/p>\n Plainclothes<\/em> isn\u2019t simply about sex. Inspired by true events, Carmen Emmi<\/strong>\u2019s film follows Lucas, an undercover cop played by Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes<\/em> star Tom Blyth,<\/strong> who\u2019s wrestling with his sexuality while simultaneously leading the police effort to entrap and arrest gay men for public indecency in \u201990s-era Syracuse, New York. Against his better judgment, Lucas falls for Tovey\u2019s Andrew, a\u2014you guessed it\u2014closeted, sensitive man and an unwitting target of Lucas\u2019s sting operation.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of trust needed to create the dynamic that me and Tom have, and I think we both really committed to that straight away,\u201d Tovey says on a video call from his home in London. He praises the \u201cphenomenal\u201d intimacy coordinator, Joey Massa,<\/strong> for their work in crafting the love scenes. At 43, Tovey is old enough to remember a time before the proliferation of intimacy coordinators, noting that he\u2019s only worked with them for the last six or seven years of his career.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout Looking<\/em> we didn\u2019t have anything\u2014we all loved each other and trusted each other,\u201d he says. \u201cBut in so many things I\u2019ve done, I\u2019ve literally just turned up and I\u2019m in a room and suddenly I\u2019m fucking someone in a bed. And you\u2019re like, Oh, okay. You just get on with it and you have to look at the other person and go, \u2018Are you okay? I\u2019m okay. Right, let\u2019s keep going.\u2019\u201d The use of intimacy coordinators on set can be a source of debate<\/a>, but Tovey, for one, is fully on board. \u201cIt can actually make something a hundred times better, which I think Joey was able to do with us,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n