Michelle Williams is about to burst onto the 2025 TV schedule in the FX series Dying for Sex, and as the title implies, there will be a lot of sex involved. So, now she’s opening up about her new series, filming sex scenes and working with an intimacy coordinator. She also revealed why these coordinators aren’t just there to make actors comfortable. There’s a lot more to the work they do.
For a bit of context, Dying for Sex is based on a podcast of the same name that tells the real-life story of a woman named Molly who was terminally ill and determined to have a major sexual awakening before she died. The show follows her through that, and it tracks her friendship with her best friend and caretaker, Nikki. As you’d imagine, to make a show like this, an intimacy coordinator was involved, as Williams, who plays Molly, explained to Vanity Fair:
We used an intimacy coordinator, and I hadn’t had experience with that before. What’s great about it is that it’s really working with a choreographer. Like in the dance, they’re showing you how to make a more beautiful line or how to land a turn—but the intimacy coordinator can really show you how to give a better blow job.
This isn’t the first time the job of an intimacy coordinator has been described this way. For example, while explaining how these folks construct a steamy scene, Halina Reijn, the director of Babygirl, compared them to stuntmen. She explained that they both safely choreograph scenes and “teach you little tricks that actually are way less intimate to do” but look “more extreme” on screen.
Williams' point was similar. She praised how their coordinator taught them the scenes like a dance, and she also learned how to do things like give a fake blow job, as she said:
There’s a technique to fake blow jobs in the same way that there’s a technique to time-step. She taught me that.
This all goes along with making sure consent is present, as Bridgerton’s coordinator once explained. It’s all about keeping everyone comfortable, but it’s also about figuring out how to effectively film intimate moments logistically.
Along with explaining all the work she did with her intimacy coordinator and why she thought it was “great,” Michelle Williams also weighed in on the debate about the necessity of them. In the past, Shailene Woodley said she didn’t enjoy working with intimacy coordinators. And Katherine Heigl didn’t love them at first, but has since changed her tune on them. Mikey Madison's comments about not using one for Anora also sparked some big discourse around the award season.
So, when asked about some actors being “more resistant to intimacy coordinators,” the Blue Valentine star said:
It’s just a shock—it’s a change. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and it’s something to get used to. But whether or not you feel like you need an intimacy coordinator, your scene partner—of which you have many—might really value it. They might need privacy around a sensitivity that they have. That is valid and that is the kind of care that an intimacy coordinator can offer. So if it’s not for you, just think it might actually be for somebody else. That makes it extremely worthwhile.
Overall, Michelle Williams found her time working with an intimacy coordinator “extremely worthwhile,” and it sounds like it really enhanced her experience on Dying for Sex.
Now, to see all this work in action, you can check out Dying for Sex with a Hulu subscription on April 4.
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