Why Ewan McGregor Had To Use An Intimacy Coordinator For Sex Scenes With His Wife

Filming nude scenes can be quite the obstacle for a multitude of reasons. Because of this, a relatively new group of experts known as intimacy coordinators has risen to help movie and TV sets handle such matters in the best possible fashion, and to ensure that everything happens with the full consent of the people involved. If you ask Ewan McGregor, this is a noble endeavor — even when the actors involved are actually married in real life, like he and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. 

McGregor stars in the Paramount+ show "A Gentleman in Moscow" as Count Rostov, and Winstead plays actress Anna Urbanova. While it's easy to assume that a setup like this would make the intimacy element fairly simple during their scenes together, McGregor noted in an interview with the Radio Times that they nevertheless used an intimacy coordinator  — because filming without one simply wasn't an option. 

"It's still necessary, because it's also about the crew, and it's odd to be naked in front of people, it's odd to be intimate in front of the camera," he said. "If you were doing a dance scene, you'd have a choreographer. It's an important part of the work now because it's somebody that the director and actors meet in the middle."

Ewan McGregor isn't wrong when he says that increased elements of control and consent are crucial for filming intimate scenes. Many actors have fought against unnecessary nude scenes over the years. While some of them have managed to reach a satisfactory conclusion to the situation, stories like Rosie Perez's experiences on the set of "Do the Right Thing," Emilia Clarke's nude "Game of Thrones" scenes, and Harvey Weinstein forcing risqué scenes on Salma Hayek in "Frida" all speak volumes of the state of the industry before the intimacy coordinator era. 

McGregor is doubly motivated to champion intimacy coordinators because two of his daughters are also actors. "My daughter [Esther] is 22," he told the Radio Times. "If an older, famous director goes to a 22-year-old and says, 'I want you to be naked in this scene,' that actress might feel, 'Oh, my God, I've got to do it, my career might depend on it.' And then five years after that, she could look back and go, 'I wish I hadn't. Why am I naked in that scene? It's unnecessary.' Now there's somebody she talks to whose career doesn't rest on the shoulders of this person."