The American actor's union, which represents more than 100,000 employees, actors and media personalities globally, introduced new guidelines on Wednesday for cinema and television crews who create and supervise scenes with nudity and adult-oriented sex acts.
The new policy has reportedly been elaborated foremost for so-called intimacy coordinators - special movie or TV crew members who help actors perform erotic scenes - to avoid sexual harassment during the filming, as they will now be required to engage in one-on-one meetings with actors before staging simulations of onscreen sex, Fox Business said.
"Under the guidelines, intimacy coordinators should have pre-production meetings with producers, directors and writers to establish the exact degrees of nudity expected and the specifics of simulated sex as established in scripts. They should have one-on-one meetings with actors to be clear about what they consent to. These protocols and guidelines will help to normalize and encourage the use of intimacy coordinators in productions, therefore ensuring the safety and security of SAG-AFTRA members while they work", SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris said in a statement, cited by Fox Business.
The new rules "strike the right balance between describing the roles and responsibilities of intimacy coordinators while still allowing for flexibility from show-to-show”, said Amanda Blumenthal, founder of the Intimacy Professionals Association, who also worked on the new guidelines.
The #MeToo hashtag has revealed widespread sexual harassment across the globe. Since the kickoff of the #MeToo movement in early 2017, many famous people, including prominent actors, producers, and movie directors, have faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, some dating back decades.
