Allison Williams Thinks Girls Needed An Intimacy Coordinator

It has been eight years since Girls ended its six-season run, and Allison Williams still looks back on the HBO comedy-drama fondly. With hindsight, though, there are parts of the experience she’d like to have gone differently. As a guest on the June 25 episode of Amanda Hirsch’s Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, she reflected on filming Marnie’s numerous sex scenes and said it would have been “so helpful” for them to have an intimacy coordinator.

An Unfulfilled Need

Girls ran from 2012 to 2017, a time before intimacy coordinators became commonplace. “We didn’t have them yet on Girls,” Williams told Hirsch.

“It would’ve been great because we had so many sex scenes to prep and work through,” she added. “It would have been so helpful to have someone who’s, like, department head of sex scenes.”

Without an intimacy coordinator, it was up to star and creator Lena Dunham (Hannah) and co-showrunner Jenni Konner to try to handle the responsibilities. Williams recalled her memorable anilingus scene with Ebon Moss-Bacharach (Desi) and said that they sent her a photo beforehand to give her an idea of how they pictured it going down. She remembered Konner leaning over the windowsill while Dunham was kneeling behind her, giving a thumbs-up and smiling to show how they pictured it.

“They were busy. … That should have been someone else’s job,” Williams said.

“Sterility” In Sex Scenes

Williams also opened up about how filming intimate scenes is “definitely among, if not the weirdest part of our job” as actors. However sexy or romantic they may look, she called the “sterility” of those scenes “so intense.” In more recent projects, she’s found that intimacy coordinators make the experience much more comfortable.

Williams explained the role, saying that they talk to the actors before a romantic scene to understand what they envision, what their boundaries are, and if they have any “red zones” they don’t want touched. They then go to the director and find out their vision. Using that information, they are “responsible for bridging any gaps there are and communicating people’s boundaries,” she said.

“By the time everyone shows up to do it, none of that is being litigated on the day,” Williams added. “You already know what you’re wearing for your nude covering, what the rules are, like, if your co-star feels comfortable with a certain type of kissing or not, and so you’re all just, like, ready to go. And it’s so nice.

Though there was no intimacy coordinator, Williams held firm on her boundaries while filming Girls. She opted not to appear nude in any of her sex scenes.

“I just wanted to give Marnie almost all of myself,” she told ABC’s Pete Travers in 2017. “But there were things that felt like they should be mine and felt like they should always be mine.”