What Emma Stone said about shooting the sex scenes in Poor Things, nominated for 11 Oscars

96th Oscars: Actor Emma Stone, who has been nominated for two Oscars for the film ‘Poor Things’, believes having an intimacy director on the set helped her immensely.

Emma Stone who plays a sexually uninhibited character Bella, an adult woman who died by suicide and is brought back to life but with the implanted brain of a child, initially rejected the offer for an intimacy coordinator for Poor Things. In an interview on Fresh Air, a radio programme and podcast on the American National Public Radio (NPR), with David Bianculli, the actor spoke about her initial reluctance to accept an intimacy director.

“I did think, OK, well, Yorgos (Lanthimos) and I have made three films together. I feel very comfortable with him. The DP - Robbie Ryan - and I, we did The Favourite together, (I) feel comfortable with him. Our first AD is a woman, Hayley, who's incredible. Our focus puller is a woman. You know, I felt like I'll be fine in this circumstance. And these are my friends, and I know everybody well,” Emma Stone said on NPR's Fresh Air.

But things changed when she met Elle McAlpine, the intimacy coordinator. “I felt so stupid that I thought that that wouldn't be a necessary situation... having her there felt like having both a safety net and a choreographer and a hand to hold. And, you know, she and I would text after a day of doing some of these scenes and just sort of say how we were feeling and what was going on. And it was just this really beautiful relationship that I found extremely, extremely meaningful,” Stone said in the Fresh Air interview.

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone have worked together in The Favourite, short film Bleat, Kinds of Kindness, and now Poor Things.

In an interview to The Guardian, Lanthimos explained why the intimacy and explicit scenes including full-frontal nudity were central to the idea of this film. “Well, shame is one thing that we are conditioned to feel in certain situations and Emma’s character (Bella Baxter) doesn’t have that (on account of having the brain of a baby who hasn't yet learnt social norms around nudity and sexual pleasure),” he said. “She never got to know what shame is, so she is totally free to give her mind, her thoughts, her opinions, her body, whatever,” he told The Guardian's Mark Kermode.

Poor Things has eight sex scenes, as well as full-frontal male and female nudity.

Intimacy directors are a growing group of professionals whose job it is to safely choreograph intimate moments on the stage and screen. Trained intimacy directors like McAlpine choreograph everything from a simple hug to simulated sex.

In the past, intimacy on stage and in films has caused harm, leading some actors to come forward to share stories of sexual harassment, manipulation and even assault. This led to a demand for intimacy choreographers worldwide.

While O’Brien was employed as the intimacy coordinator for the Netflix teen show Sex Education, Vanessa Coffey came on board for Outlander’s sixth seasons and Elizabeth Talbot was roped in for those flawless intimate scenes in Bridgerton.

In India Gehraiyaan was one of the first films to give credit to an intimacy director. Dar Gai, a Ukraine-born filmmaker settled in India, was brought in by director Shakun Batra for the film. “An intimacy director is like a conductor of an orchestra. We work using different theatre exercises and psychological exercises so that everyone is on the same page. It’s a very interesting process of finding the creative language of intimate scenes. Intimacy doesn’t imply physical closeness, but it has a lot to do with feelings that can’t be easily expressed,” the intimacy director told Moneycontrol in an interview in January 2022.