Irma Vep star Alicia Vikander has recently talked about her career highlights in a chat with Harper’s Bazaar, revealing that she felt unprotected while shooting certain intimate scenes on movie sets.
A lot has been said over the past few years about the unprofessional process behind shooting Hollywood sex scenes, so much so, in fact, that many productions are now contracting intimacy coordinators, whose jobs basically revolve around handling choreography and many other logistical matters when it comes to intimate scenes. Though according to what the Tomb Raider star has just revealed, she could’ve made use of something like that way back at the beginning of her career.
“The only thing that can’t be improvised is an intimate scene — you have to make choreography and stick to it,” she said. “It’s the worst thing ever to do those scenes. I am very comfortable with my body and I’ve done quite a bit of nudity and sex scenes, but it’s never easy.”
Vikander also recalled an uncomfortable moment when an actor basically sat around naked for a couple of hours because no one was around to hand them a robe.
“I’ve been in situations that were not fine, where I didn’t feel I was protected,” she added. “[One time during filming] everyone was busy doing their own thing and, in the middle, you have an actor who sits there naked for a couple of hours. And someone is supposed to arrive with a robe, and they don’t. It comes afterwards, that was not right. I should have been looked after.”
The matter of intimacy coordinators is apparently something that comes up in Vikander’s upcoming Irma Vep series as well. The TV show is the story of an actress named Mira (Vikander) who goes to France to play the role of Irma Vep in a remake of the silent classic film series, Les Vampires.