Rules for screen sex scenes issued to British directors
British film and TV directors have been issued with guidelines on simulated sex scenes and nudity, with industry figures saying they will help the UK catch up with the US and eradicate “grey areas” that leave actors vulnerable to exploitation.
Directors UK, the professional association for screen directors in Britain, issued the 96 guidelines, which are meant to create “clear and shared professional expectations” with the aim that they will become standard working practice within the industry.
Bill Anderson, who was part of the team who put the Directors UK guidelines together and has directed episodes of Doctor Who and Mr Selfridge, said the guidance should not be seen as “a prescriptive list of don’ts and potential transgressions”, but as a resource for actors, directors, writers and producers.
“There are these grey areas at the moment,” Anderson said. “Actors want to do daring work, but they also want to be able to go home and read a bedtime story to their kids without being horrified about what they’ve done on set a few hours earlier.”
The guidelines include advice for producers, directors, writers and performers. They ask TV professionals to consider whether a sex scene is really necessary, ensure that first auditions never involve nudity and advise production staff to debrief cast and crew after any nudity or simulated sex scenes.
Compiled over the last six months, the guidelines are based on best practice from 40 of Directors UK’s members – with specialists such as Intimacy Directors International UK, which is an organisation that represents intimacy coordinators, consulting as well.
The Directors UK guidelines, which are supported by the BFI, Bafta, Time’s Up UK and Equity, build on a growing culture of on-set safeguarding triggered by the #MeToo movement.
Intimacy coordinators – such as Alicia Rodis, who was brought in to work on the second season of HBO’s porn industry drama The Deuce; and Ita O’Brien, who has credits on Netflix’s Sex Education – are commonly seen in US productions, with the Screen Actors Guild announcing in July that it wanted to standardise guidelines for intimacy coordinators across the industry.
Rodis, O’Brien and Intimacy Directors International UK (IDI) have previously issued guidelines for performers about on-set behaviour, with IDI UK insisting that the guides should be used to “assist in rehearsals of an intimate nature” but not as a replacement for an intimacy coordinator.
Yarit Dor, co-founder of IDI UK, said the new guidelines should act as an initial resource for the film and TV industry. “It will help clarify from the beginning what to expect. It’s an initial checklist for directors to look at who will know what they need to take into consideration,” she said.
Dor said the UK was now following the lead of the US TV and film industry, with HBO – which now has a policy of including intimacy coordinators on all of its shows which contain intimate scenes – setting the standard. “In the US it happened much faster because of
Harvey Weinstein,” she said. “The UK hasn’t resisted it, but now more British directors want to know about intimacy coordinators and best practices.”
Susanna White, a Directors UK member who has directed The Deuce and Generation Kill, said she hoped the guidelines would become industry standard and clarify best practice. “Traditionally, you would just get on with it,” she said. “You might have a closed set – so only key crew members were allowed on set during those days. But it was a rather intuitive process.
“It’s not hampering anyone in any way. We want to be able to tell powerful and explicit stories but we want it to be responsible.”
Brodie Turner, safeguarding, consent and inclusion coordinator on the immersive Wolf of Wall Street production, said the guidelines were an important step in an industry that could be slow to adapt. “People are told to trust the way they were trained, so it can be hard for them to adjust to new ways of working,” he said. “There’s an understanding of the ‘done thing’, and that’s the way you’re supposed to work. A lot of unlearning needs to happen.”
The guidance is released in the same week that Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke said she felt terrified during her nude scenes on the HBO and Sky Atlantic fantasy series.
Speaking on actor Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, Clarke said that as a relatively new actor there was no guidance on what was acceptable on set, even on a multimillion-pound production such as Game of Thrones.
She said: “I’ve never been on a film set like this before. I’d been on a film set twice before then, and I’m now on a film set completely naked with all of these people, and I don’t know what I’m meant to do, and I don’t know what’s expected of me, and I don’t know what you want, and I don’t know what I want.”
Anderson said situations such as the one described by Clarke were what the guidelines should help to eradicate. “I want the guide so anyone in a wardrobe department, young actor can hold it up and say: shouldn’t you be treating me like this?” he said.
“Ultimately, you’re working off your own moral sense. Your job is to tell the story – sometimes with sex scenes – and it’s not something that you do lightly. It’s not easy, especially when actors would ask ‘why are we doing this?’ You need to be able to answer that question.”