Intimacy coordinators have become a key part of making actors feel comfortable filming nude and sex scenes in the wake of the #MeToo movement. But Outlander didn't start using intimacy coordinators until this season. "Those things just weren't available," Caitriona Balfe tells EW of when they first began shooting the series. "Or if it was available, it just wasn't commonplace." It was Sam Heughan who introduced intimacy coordinator Vanessa Coffey to production. He points out that the show has employed fight directors and choreographers, so why not an intimacy coordinator? "I realized how much we were thrown into the deep end," he says. "There was a lot of pressure on us as less experienced actors to get it right. Each year as it went past or each season, I felt the pressure. It landed on us. (Vanessa) has given us the tools to explore those scenes, to take out the actor and take us out of it and approach it through a character way. But also to facilitate the scenes, because they are awkward to shoot."
TOPICS: Outlander, Starz, Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan, Vanessa Coffey