'Bridgerton's Intimacy Coordinator Discusses the Art of Onscreen Sex
She describes the tension in Season 2 as “a slow burn of intensity and longing.”
Bridgerton has never shied away from a good sex scene and for that very reason, the Netflix series has garnered a loyal following. W Magazine spoke with the show’s intimacy coordinator, Elizabeth Talbot, to dissect her art form.
“There’s so much tension in Season 2, it’s a very different type of intimacy than we see in Season 1. It’s a slow burn of intensity and longing,” Talbot tells the publication.
The show doesn’t have a shortage of theatrics, from a clearly growing costume budget to sex scenes that would make your mother cover your eyes mid-series. However, Talbot makes it clear that her role as an intimacy coordinator doesn’t start and end with sex. There are many moments that lead up to those noteworthy scenes. Any moments of vulnerability and intimacy, from when an actor receives help from staff as they’re being dressed in a corset to when they enter a bath scene, Talbot is there to make sure everything’s consensual — and of course, to make sure it’ll look great onscreen.
To prepare for intimate sex scenes, Talbot goes through the script and extracts all moments of intimacy. She then meets with the directors and actors that will be involved in each scene to gauge their vision and level of comfortability. Since actors are expected to follow the script, Talbot shared that it can make intimate scenes quite difficult. Actors are expected to comply when they are both the character and the human tapping into that character, but each has different boundaries. She says that understanding that distinction is tricky, but also one of the pleasures of her job.
“I know Julie Anne Robinson [director of Episodes 1 and 6 of Bridgerton] was very hesitant, she’s spoken about that in interviews. But she was a director who really enjoyed the journey of it,” Talbot adds. She notes one of the most rewarding outcomes is to work with an uncertain director who ends up “convinced [working with an intimacy coordinator] is the only way forward.”
