Lena Headey has claimed she was “thrown to the wolves” when she was starting out as an actor Over the last decade, intimacy co-ordinators have become increasingly commonplace on the sets of TV shows and films, helping actors and directors navigate scenes involving sex or nudity, which might put them in vulnerable situations. These co-ordinators became more prevalent in the 2010s, in light of the Me Too movement, which saw women calling out the industry-wide harassment, misconduct and abuse that had gone unchecked for decades prior. While these are crew members who traditionally stay in the background, in Lena Headey’s new series Intimacy, she’s dragging the subject right to the forefront. In the eight-part BBC Sounds audio drama – which she also directed and wrote – Lena portrays Liza Simmons, a former actor who has taken a step back from the industry after a troubling experience, to retrain as a therapist and, later, an intimacy co-ordinator. However, when working on a new project, Liza is unexpectedly reunited with a figure from her past, causing her to spiral over big questions about herself, her beliefs and her own integrity. Speaking to HuffPost UK ahead of the series’ release, Lena admits that her own experience with intimacy co-ordinators had been rather limited before she began work on the show. Or, as she puts it: “I’m so ancient that I never experienced one in my sort of heyday, when people wanted to see me naked. So, now they don’t anymore, I’m safe. “Back in the day, there weren’t any. And there was no talk of any – so you just got on with it.” “Looking back,” she says, “we’re like, ‘what?!’. I mean, I was thrown to the wolves. But it’s given me a resolve to get through most things at work. Now, I just think, ‘oh fuck off’, and I speak my mind.” She laments: “But when you’re young and vulnerable and kind of new, you just say ‘yes’ most of the time.” Lena Headey is getting ready to unveil her new BBC Sounds series, Intimacy Perhaps surprisingly, given their work is primarily intended to keep performers safe in their workplace, not all actors have been on board with the presence of intimacy co-ordinators since the role became more widespread in the industry. Sir Ian McKellen and Lena’s fellow Game Of Thrones alum Sean Bean both raised eyebrows when they questioned whether the use of an intimacy co-ordinator “spoiled” the spontaneity between two actors while shooting love scenes, with Toni Collette, Mikey Madison and Gwyneth Paltrow among those who have turned down the chance to work with one in their recent projects. Gwyneth controversially claimed last year that she’d told one such co-ordinator on the set of Marty Supreme: “Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on. I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back.” “I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but… if someone is like, ’OK, and then he’s going to put his hand here’... I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that,” she claimed during an interview with Vanity Fair. On the other hand, Jane Fonda, Kate Winslet and Florence Pugh have all voiced that they wish there’d been intimacy co-ordinators on film sets when they were starting out in their careers. Dame Emma Thompson has also become a staunch defender of them in the last few years, insisting it was “absolutely essential” that young women starting out in their acting careers should have “someone there to protect them”. For Lena – who, as she puts it, is “straddling two generations” of actors – she admits the debate is an “interesting one”. “I appreciate the value of a co-ordinator,” she insists, pointing out that in the early stages of her career, she mostly just went along with whatever she was told when it came to intimate scenes. “Now, if I have a scene – which, as I say, is rare, because everyone is like ‘keep your clothes on’ – I’m kind of like a big bad wolf,” she quips. “I know what I want, I know what I want to do, I know how to speak to other actors and to get a director to listen to what we need.” Lena Headey says her past experiences have made her like a “big bad wolf” on film sets now. “Like anything, if they’re great at their job, it’s wonderful, and it adds value,” she says of intimacy co-ordinators. “I think you can have terrible ones who just make you feel more awkward. “If you have two actors who are in their 50s or 60s, who are comfortable, who know each other, and there’s no kind of weirdness, then you can kind of dance it yourself.” She notes: “It’s even kind of a language thing. If you’ve got a director who just like… doesn’t have a handle on kind of intimate language or emotional language, if a co-ordinator is great at their job, they kind of translate, gently, what somebody is after.” The main benefit of an intimacy co-ordinator, she believes, is for the “younger” generation of actors, who she admits feeling “very protective towards”. “Now we have [intimacy co-ordinators], so… unless your director is a hideous knob, then you’re kind of covered,” Lena suggests. “Most directors will ask for more than they need, in terms of nudity – so, to have someone who’s like, ‘nah, you don’t need that’, is great.” “Listen,” she continues. “I got my whole back tattooed at one point, because I was like, ‘at least then they’re going to have to ask me to go to makeup [before doing a sex scene]’, and I’ll say, ‘that’s going to be eight hours’.” “That was quite a drastic measure,” she acknowledges. “But there weren’t any co-ordinators. So I used ink.” Lena quickly clarifies that she did already want her tattoos, and “enjoys getting them” (“that’s another story,” she claims). “But yes,” she recalls. “I was like, ’at least if I do this, and they go, ‘can we see a full nude back?’, I could say, ‘you can, but I don’t think in the 19th century they would have had these’.” Lena Headey – pictured here in 2014 – has opened up about the origins of some of her tattoos As part of her research while writing Intimacy, Lena says she interviewed multiple co-ordinators, including one who would eventually become the series’ own go-to for sex scenes. “We had some kind of sex scenes in the podcast, so we had to have somebody there,” Lena explains. “Even though it was all audio – and no one was touching anybody – we were making noises and kind of thrusting ourselves around a studio. So, you know, we were covered.” Of course, the role that Lena is most recognisable for is her eight-season stint in Game Of Thrones, the award-winning fantasy series that was infamous for pushing the boundaries when it came to graphic content, whether that was murder or, indeed, sex and nudity. While intimacy co-ordinators are now part of the team on the Game Of Thrones spin-off House Of The Dragon, the original show concluded at a time when the roles were not yet popular. Asked whether an intimacy co-ordinator might have changed things behind the scenes of Game Of Thrones, Lena notes: “There were three girls on that and it was their first job. And there was a lot of sex, and a lot of nudity. I don’t know their personal experiences on that, I’m sure some of it was really fucking rough. “So, I think yes, that would have helped greatly – to just have this kind of interpreter who can walk the line between an actor and a director, and listen, and take things [to a director] that an actor may not be comfortable saying, because you don’t want to lose your job, and you don’t want to be judged, and you want to appear to be willing and able and happy to do the things. “You know, you’re not necessarily going to want to say that to the person who holds your life in their hands.” Lena Headey as Cersei in Game Of Thrones During her stint playing Cersei in Game Of Thrones, Lena was involved in numerous explicit scenes. One in particular, the infamous “walk of shame”, saw her character being paraded through the streets nude while being pelted and verbally assaulted by those she passed. She recalls the “outrage” that came about when it emerged that she’d used a body double to convey Cersei’s nudity, saying: “It was three days of me walking naked, shooting this emotional scene, with extras who had seen the show, and loved the show. It was just weird. It was like walking through ravenous fans. “Doing that naked would have just made me so aware of people, rather than being in my performance. Having the two of us [herself and a nude body double] do it was obviously just a smarter, more emotional, and easier way for me to do it as an actor.” “Maybe having somebody there” might have changed things, she claims, but adds that body double Rebecca Van Cleave was “fully on board”, “committed” and “brilliant”. “We talked about everything, I was there for her, she was there for me,” she notes. “You’d have to speak to her, I guess, about her experience.” For the most part, though, she looks back fondly at Game Of Thrones – and, in particular, her time as Cersei. “I loved playing her,” she beams. “It was such a joy to get to play somebody that deep, I guess. They wrote for her wonderfully. Such juicy dialogue and intention throughout the show.” “I’m just proud to have been a part of that show,” Lena continues, noting that it now feels like it was “a million years ago”. “Obviously, it wasn’t perfect, but what is? We just keep learning. But I think it was beautifully written, and we all dug each other, so it worked.” She adds, knowingly: “I think everyone wants dirt on it, but actually, it was pretty wonderful – for the most part.” Naturally, any conversation about Game Of Thrones inevitably turns to its infamous finale, which continues to divide opinion to this day, and for which the reaction from fans was particularly out of control when it first aired in 2019. “I mean, the fans’ reactions were always out of control, which was what was delightful about it, the sort of appetite and loyalty,” Lena says. “You know, I think we’ve all spoken about the finale a million times, and I think, when you invest nearly 10 years of your life into something, believing that there is a direction and a path that makes sense emotionally, and then suddenly it’s cut short, and you feel underserved, then yeah, it’s a bummer. But it is what it is. It’s in the past. “It’s an amazing thing to have been a part of, and I don’t just say this as lip service, I am forever grateful for that, to get to play her.” (She is still in her feelings about how things turned out for Cersei, though, admitting: “That’s still rough.”) Lena Headey concedes that Cersei's demise in Game Of Thrones is still a sore spot for her If anyone needed proof that Game Of Thrones still holds a special place in Lena’s heart, they could look no further than the cast of Intimacy, where two of her former co-stars, Hannah Waddingham and Maisie Williams, play key roles. Hannah, who voices the main character’s agent in Intimacy, has ascended to bona fide national treasure status since Game Of Thrones’ ending, which Lena says she’s been “thrilled” to witness. “I loved her from the minute we met,” she enthuses. “We bonded, we’re a similar age, we have similar stories. And she is who she is. That’s why everyone’s in love with her.” Lena adds that it’s been “brilliant” to watch Hannah’s career go from strength to strength off the back of her Emmy-winning work in Ted Lasso, sharing: “It’s funny, the rare occasion we find to meet up now, everyone asks me to take their photo with her, which gives me great joy. And no one really knows [me]! Everyone’s just like, ‘can you just…?’, and I’m like, ‘sure!’. “It just shows you in this business everything [changes]. Nothing’s ever guaranteed or steady. It’s funny, people kind of think, ‘oh you’ve made it’, and you’re like, ‘nah, you just float for a minute, and then you go back down – and then you kind of find some air, and then you go back down again’. That’s the cycle of this mad industry.” Maisie’s character, meanwhile, was written especially for her, with Lena thinking of her co-star to play a young actor in the audio series because “she’s so wonderful and quirky and smart and funny, and her voice just has this thing”. “That was the challenge of [working with] audio,” she admits. “I’m a super visual writer, so this took a year to write, and it was constant. And I had great notes, and annoying notes, and helpful notes that I didn’t want to believe were helpful because they just irritated me. But, you know, creating something only to be ear pleasure, as opposed to just viewing it, it’s really fucking challenging. “So, to have these voices that I love, and to be able to work with people that I love, yeah, of course, that’s part of the joy of creating something.” Lena Headey and her Game Of Thrones co-star Maisie Williams at the 2015 Emmy Awards As she mentions, Intimacy was Lena’s first time creating something specifically to be enjoyed as an audio podcast, admitting that “opportunity” was the main reason it became her medium of choice. “I’m constantly writing, and it is really brutal out there to get anything made right now,” she admits. “Like, the industry is changing, changing. It’s having this shift. Everything is up in the air. So, to create an IP makes the future of something easier. “To have an opportunity to write a podcast was sort of daunting for me as a writer, because you’re just in one realm. You can’t go, ‘oh we’re going to cut to this and see this moment’. It’s all just audio. “It’s kind of gorgeous when you get it right. But the developing of it is like… you want to smash your face against the window.” Helping matters when it came to making Intimacy was the fact that the actors recorded their dialogue together in person wearing head mics, rather than being “stuck” in a recording booth “reading from a bit of paper’. “So, you could really move,” she explains. “It was like theatre, but without anyone watching, so that was really lovely. You could look people in the eye. “And that gives Intimacy this feeling. I think you feel it as a listener. You feel the movement and the kind of interaction between people. It was challenging, and then it became fun and interesting to do.” “But I still prefer filming something,” she confesses. View this post on Instagram Difficult though it might be for anyone to get new projects off the ground in the entertainment industry, it’s even tougher for female creatives, as Lena chose to explicitly acknowledge in Industry’s script: “There’s a moment where I say to Hannah’s character, ‘is it going to be a female director?’, and she laughs and says, ‘no, no, no, the budget’s too high for that’. “Listen: straight, male voices in our industry are undoubtedly the loudest, and the most heard. That is just a given. And I don’t think that has changed,” she continues. “Obviously, there are great allies in this world, and in this industry. Great creators, and people that listen, and are really honest, and truthful, and committed to the bigger picture of it all. “But there are, as in everything, some folks that you’re like, ‘why? why him?’. I’m just really honest about it. I know that, when women get together, we do talk about it, and it’s just like anything that’s rough, you just make it funny. The way through is laughter.” Her own skills as a writer and director, she says, were honed during her decades as an actor. “I watch people front and centre, obviously, when I’m in a scene with them, and I study directors, and I look at the crew and I watch how people light something and I’m endlessly fascinated by the whole process,” she explains. “That excites me and flips my brain. Like, it’s just full and happy. So yeah, I think I’ve been at a good university for 35 years.” When it comes to choosing her projects post-Game Of Thrones, Lena says, she’s “always looking for something – something different or something that I haven’t explored”, which is what has led to her turning to directing and writing, as well as performing. “It’s a crazy thing, because it’s like, you do that show, you go on to do other things, they don’t work, they’re failures, but that’s just part of what we do,” she says. “You know, not everything is going to have the magic ingredients. “So, I think that’s what I look for more than anything. You’re like, ‘let’s try this recipe’, and maybe that’s a fuck-up, or it tastes kind of disgusting. And then you go onto the next – you just keep trying, you can’t give up.” With her latest audio offering, she adds that she just wants “people to really giggle and to feel sort of seen”. “Everybody forgets… when, in this world, somebody is a little bit mean or a bit shit, everybody is carrying something we don’t see. I know that sounds cheesy and it should be on a t-shirt, but I don’t care, because it’s true,” she says with a laugh. “With Intimacy, you’re going into this world where a million people are just juggling a million things, and it’s human mess. I just wanted to write something that felt real and touchable and fun to listen to. And champion this character for a few episodes.” Intimacy is available to listen to on BBC Sounds from Wednesday 22 July. Episodes will also air weekly at 11pm on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 27 July. 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