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‘We’re much more willing to watch rape than we are a fully consensual, slightly off-the-beaten-track sexual scene. What does that say?’ … Emma Stone in Poor Things. Photograph: Yorgos Lanthimos

‘We’re much more willing to watch rape than we are a fully consensual, slightly off-the-beaten-track sexual scene. What does that say?’ … Emma Stone in Poor Things. Photograph: Yorgos Lanthimos

Intimacy Coordinator: EK Intimacy

‘With orgasm people strive for oblivion’: Poor Things’ intimacy coordinator on consent, orgies and Emma Stone

Safe sex scenes are now an essential part of post-#MeToo film-making – coordinator Elle McAlpine talks about the challenges of working on Yorgos Lanthimos’s fantasy drama – and being chucked off other sets

Three years ago, shortly before dawn, Elle McAlpine was catching the train home, having just orchestrated an orgy. She had left the set of sci-fi series Brave New World: a night-time shoot where more than 100 dancers descend into sexual revelry.

McAlpine laughs to remember her journey home, sitting on the tube alongside her fellow passengers, still processing the scene she’d just presided over. “I was like, ‘If people knew what I’ve just done …’

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Elle Hunt (2024) ‘With orgasm people strive for oblivion’: Poor Things’ intimacy coordinator on consent, orgies and Emma Stone. The Guardian