Kim Basinger doesn't 'see all of this need' for intimacy coordinators: 'We work it out or we don't'

Kim Basinger, who starred in the steamy 1986 movie 9 1/2 Weeks, wouldn't have wanted an intimacy coordinator for her intimate scenes with costar Mickey Rourke.

"I can't imagine having somebody come up to me and say, 'Do you mind if they put their hand here?'" Basinger said in a Variety interview published Thursday. "That’s just another person in the room. Either we work it out or we don't. I don’t see all of this need for supervised visits."

Related: Michael Douglas says use of intimacy coordinators 'feels like executives taking control away from filmmakers'

Basinger, whose last film was 2018's Fifty Shades Freed, said the erotic movie directed by Adrian Lyne earned her many loyal fans.

"It's a very hard thing to shoot a beautiful love scene," Basinger noted. "You think it's just lay down with a bunch of baby oil. It's not. It can really work your nerves."

SAG-AFTRA, the labor union representing actors and others in the entertainment industry, describes an intimacy coordinator as "an advocate, a liaison between actors and production, and a movement coach and/or choreographer in regards to nudity and simulated sex in intimate and other hyper exposed scenes." The organization has been working with them since 2019, and now advocates for intimacy coordinators to be hired in scenes involving nudity or simulated sex or upon request for other intimate and hyper-exposed scenes."

While the intention of someone in the position is meant to make scenes that could be awkward, even miserable to film, more comfortable for the actors, Basinger is one of several who have publicly questioned the use of such jobs.

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Michael Douglas, who's known for sexy movies such as Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, said in May that he felt the position was a way of "executives taking control away from filmmakers," although he acknowledged that there had been "some terrible faux pas and harassment" in the entertainment industry.

In August 2022, Game of Thrones alum Sean Bean said he believed having intimacy coordinators on a set would "spoil the spontaneity" of love scenes, he told The Sunday Times. "It would inhibit me more because it's drawing attention to things. Somebody saying, 'Do this, put your hands there while you touch his thing.' I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise."

Related: House of the Dragon intimacy coordinator responds to Sean Bean's comments

Miriam Lucia, an intimacy coordinator on HBO's House of the Dragon, responded by noting that Bean is "a man of a certain age, who has been in this industry for a very long time."

"He doesn't have an experience of the other side. Or maybe he's had a bad experience of working with an intimacy coordinator," Lucia told Deadline the following month. "All I would say is that in my experience so far, I don't think it gets in the way of the creative process. I think it helps to enable the creative process, because I think once you've worked out what the actors are comfortable with in terms of touch and consent, and what the movements are going to be, then you add the emotion to it. And then you find the freedom, because you're not scrambling and fumbling and trying to find it there and then in the moment."

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