Thunderbolts* actress Florence Pugh has said that working with intimacy coordinators on film sets has helped her understand better the purpose of sex scenes. Appearing on the latest episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast she described both positive and negative encounters with the professionals who oversee sex scenes on film sets.

“It’s not to get in the way. It’s not to confuse, it’s not to make things more complicated or make things more awkward. I’ve had good ones and bad ones,” Pugh said.

Pugh said she had filmed several sex scenes earlier in her career without an intimacy coordinator present. “While I’ve always been quite confident and quite happy in my skin,” she said, “there were times when someone on set used [language that was] completely inappropriate to direct a sex scene and there wasn’t an intimacy coordinator present to protect me.”

“My view is changing about it as well, because I’m now having fantastic experiences with intimacy coordinators,” she said. “However, that being said, I’ve also had a shit example where someone just made it so weird and so awkward and really wasn’t helpful... it’s a job that’s still figuring itself out.”

Pugh said working with effective intimacy coordinators helped her better understand the purpose of sex scenes. “I’ve been able to understand better meaning now through working with great ones... finding the story of what it is, what kind of sex is it, how do you touch each other, how long have you been having sex for,” she said.

“Everybody’s just kind of working away to chip away at the scene. And I think when I worked with a fantastic coordinator, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been missing, understanding the dance of intimacy as opposed to just shooting a sex scene.’”

Her comments follow recent statements from Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lawrence, who said they did not feel the need to rely on intimacy coordinators on their respective projects.

“We did not have [an intimacy coordinator], or maybe we did but we didn’t really [use it]… I felt really safe with Rob [Pattinson]. He is not pervy,” Lawrence said about filming Die My Love.

Paltrow said that while working on Marty Supreme, she asked the intimacy coordinator to “step a little back” while shooting scenes with Timothée Chalamet. “I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but… if someone is like, ‘Okay, and then he’s going to put his hand here,’ I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that,” she said.

Pugh also addressed challenges faced by female actors on set. “It’s a bit stickier being a woman during filming because you can’t really be a problem because people will say that you’re a nightmare,” she said.

She recalled filming a crying scene that required multiple takes. “We did it maybe six times, and each time you have to start with no tears and then gear up,” she said. “And we got it and the director wanted to go again… My co-star went out to the director and said: ‘Don’t do that, man. Don’t put her through that. She’s got it.’”

The Louis Theroux Podcast episode featuring Florence Pugh is available on Spotify.