The series is called Sex Act, from writer Raffi Donatich (whose feature writing debut Poetic License recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival). Donatich worked with Harris on Slave Play and Daddy, and Dunham “sees a lot of herself in Donatich, whom she’s taken under her wing in a mentoring capacity,” per Deadline. Dunham’s production company Good Thing Going and Harris’ bb2 reportedly reached out to Sarah Paulson, who is attached to star in the show as “an intimacy coordinator who’s never been kissed.” Sex Act is currently in development at Netflix with Dunham expected to direct.
The intimacy coordinator discourse doesn’t seem like it’ll die down any time soon, so Sex Act will probably still be able to capture the zeitgeist whenever it debuts. Over the last year we’ve seen debate about our latest Best Actress Oscar winner turning down an intimacy coordinator while playing a sex worker; members of the old guard like Kate Winslet said she wished she’d had access to one when she was younger. Dunham’s Girls co-star Allison Williams even said that it “would have been so helpful to have someone who’s like department head of sex scenes” on their show.
Just this week, House Of The Dragon‘s Olivia Cooke shouted out the show’s intimacy coordinators, saying that it’s a valuable resource for “those who are just starting out and don’t have the vocabulary to say what they’re not comfortable with. And for women, who’ll often get labelled ‘difficult’ or ‘a bitch’ for speaking up.” While “showing intimacy, passion is an integral part of reflecting the human experience” performing those scenes can leave actors feeling like “a chunk of yourself has been taken,” Cooke said in her interview with The i Paper. “It’s amazing to me that people had to just fudge their way through those scenes before those people existed.”
