Friday was nice. I drove to Uxbridge, parked as arranged on a stranger’s drive and took the Metropolitan line to Wembley Park. I spent the morning in a makeup trailer in the car park of the unit housing production offices, costume and workshops having braids and dreads woven into my hair before mud was caked onto my face. Very relaxing as there were only two of us being worked on and two makeup artists. So a great atmosphere for a chat. Then the makeup all came off again. So now I know what I will look like on my next gig – we have already sorted the costume.
Lunch was courtesy of Lidl. Although there are food outlets all around the nearby stadium thrift/tightfistedness determined that I should get a couple of pasties and a fruit salad from the supermarket. Back to the unit and met the others who were scheduled to attend the sex session. Yes, dear reader, your hero was going to participate in an orgy.
It is now industry standard to have stunt and fight coordinators and is becoming increasingly common to have intimacy coordinators to ensure that people’s boundaries are respected both on and off set when sex scenes are being shot. I have put myself forward as happy to go topless, show my bare arse and be nude – except for genitalia. Not very different from my Christmas Card of a couple of years ago …
So, if you have managed to get past THAT, let’s continue with Friday afternoon in Wembley. First off we were told that we would be keeping our clothes on. Secondly, this wasn’t an orgy rehearsal but an intimacy workshop and an ideas session. So what is intimacy coordination all about? The BBC World Service published an excellent article by Valeria Parasso two days after the events described here. So we began with asking one another for permission to touch various body parts, make counter-offers if unhappy with the request and generally get to understand that no-one on set would have the power to insist on you performing anything that made you uncomfortable. Then we got down and dirty.
Well. sort of. Clothes kept on, permissions sought and no genital contact,We had (simulated) sex. Loving sex. Sad sex. Angry sex. And Argumentative sex. It’s quite an interesting exercise to pretend to have doggy-style sex while fully clothed and having an improvised argument about mixing up colours in the white wash with a woman you have recently met while another character measures your sexual performance all under the watchful eye of the intimacy coordinator and her assistant. But, as is the case nowadays on set, no one was doing anything they did not consent or feel safe with, no one was present who was not involved in the specific scene (the rest of the group were in the green room) and the whole experience was treated seriously without being po-faced; the element of fun and humour was always present.
And I’m getting FAA rate for this,
What’s it all about? Without breaching any NDA I think I can revealthat I have eight days working on a series at the end of the month and, just possibly, further work on subsequent episodes!