In a new interview with Net-a-Porter, Amanda Seyfried discussed the pressures of doing nude scenes at 19 and her wish that intimacy coordinators — professionals who help stage sex scenes, offering protection to those performing them — had been around when she was coming up as an actor. “Being 19, walking around without my underwear on — like, are you kidding me? How did I let that happen?” Seyfried said. “Oh, I know why: I was 19 and I didn’t want to upset anybody, and I wanted to keep my job. That’s why.”
Seyfried, whose performance as disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes on The Dropout recently earned her two Emmy nominations, including for Outstanding Lead Actress, has previously vocalized her discomfort with being sexualized in her early career, telling Marie Claire in May that she was “grossed out” by boys coming up to her after 2004’s Mean Girls and asking whether she could predict the weather with her breasts, as her character Karen claimed to. “I was 18 years old,” Seyfried said. “It was just gross.”
Seyfried’s comments come shortly after British actor Sean Bean questioned the necessity of intimacy coordinators, who he claimed “inhibit” his performances and “spoil the spontaneity” of sex scenes. Bean’s comments prompted backlash from a number of actors, including Rachel Zegler, who tweeted that “spontaneity in intimate scenes can be unsafe” and that intimacy coordinators “establish an environment of safety for actors,” recalling a positive experience she had while working with one as a “newcomer” on the West Side Story set. Jameela Jamil tweeted that “nobody wants an impromptu grope,” while Bean’s Snowpiercer co-star, Lena Hall, said she was “comfortable” with Bean but that intimacy coordinators are still “a welcome addition to the set.” Per Deadline, Philippa Childs, the head of British broadcast union Bectu, said Bean’s “disappointing” comments failed to acknowledge “his position of privilege and the vulnerabilities and challenges many in the industry, particularly young and less experienced actors, may face as they engage in shooting intimate scenes.”