Aidan Turner, the star of Poldark, has slammed previous intimacy directors who assisted on site during filming sex scenes.
In the drama Fifteen-Love, the 40-year-old Irish actor, who has previously spoken about male objectification, plays a top tennis coach accused of abuse.
The series alternates between Aidan’s character Glenn’s former connection with Ella Lily Hyland’s Justine, and Justine bringing the claims forward several years later, when a tennis injury forced her out of the spotlight and Glenn moved on to other emerging talents.
‘It was an important story to tell,’ he told Metro.co.uk. ‘I just think that vehicle of who has the burden of proof, as the audience, who do we believe and why one character over another?
‘They’re both speaking their own truth, and who do we call out on being the liar?’
As the play moves on to the more serious subject of career-ending claims in the MeToo age, glimpses of their prior romance emerge, including some steamier sequences.
Concerning that, Aidan stated that working with an intimate director was “very vital” when filming with Ella Lily.
He told us: ‘It’s just a few years ago when it wouldn’t be commonplace to have an intimacy coordinator on set. And then a few years before that, I mean, the term wasn’t even known.
‘It was awkward in some moments. Not always, but directors, I found in my experience, weren’t always great at doing that.’
He went on: ‘They had the rough parameters of what they want, but then would slowly Homer Simpson back into the bush and disappear a little bit and then you’re left with just the two actors going, “Okay, let’s figure this out”.
‘But in our story here, absolutely, we needed somebody.
‘To have the scene do what it’s supposed to do, and not just a generic thing, whatever the intimacy of the scene is, to try and achieve that creatively with the intimacy coordinator you can really get into the depths of that with that physical movement.
‘I think it’s the breaking down for me, that’s the biggest thing, it’s to really break down into a very technical way what’s required and then you kind of build on that again.
‘Once you have all the building blocks and technical bits, even like where you put your hands and if they’re having sex at what kind of what pace are they doing it.
‘You know, is there kissing and it’s just all the little bits and then when you start to put that together, you can build character and emotion, and everything but you’re safe in that surrounding.
‘And then the scene is better because it’s interesting, and it does what it’s supposed to do as a vehicle for the show and telling the story.’
He added that having an intimacy director on the show was ‘needed’, saying ‘I don’t know where we would have been.’
Fifteen-Love launches on Prime Video UK and Ireland on Friday, July 21.
