Ewan McGregor Says Intimacy Coordinator Was Necessary to Film Sex Scenes With Wife Mary

Publish date: 2024-09-18

Ewan McGregor opened up in a recent Radio Times cover story about his experience working with his wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead on “A Gentleman in Moscow.”

In particular, McGregor revealed that he and Winstead had an intimacy coordinator on set while filming sex scenes for the new drama series.

“It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew,” McGregor said. “And it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera.”

“If you were doing a dance scene, you’d have a choreographer,” he added. “It’s an important part of the work now, because it’s somebody that the director and actors meet in the middle.”

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For McGregor, it’s also crucial that productions hire intimacy coordinators because in the past, a young actor — similar in age to his 22-year-old daughter Esther — may have felt pressured to perform in “unnecessary” scenes.

“My daughter is 22. If an older, famous director goes to a 22-year-old and says, ‘I want you to be naked in this scene,’ that actress might feel, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to do it, my career might depend on it,’” McGregor said. “And then five years after that, she could look back and go, ‘I wish I hadn’t. Why am I naked in that scene? It’s unnecessary.’”

McGregor plays Count Alexander Rostov in “A Gentleman in Moscow,” while Winstead portrays Anna Urbanova, described as “a glamorous, independent and self-made film actress, at the height of her fame.”

Per the official logline, the series “follows Count Alexander Rostov (McGregor) who, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, finds that his gilded past places him on the wrong side of history. Spared immediate execution, he is banished by a Soviet tribunal to an attic room in the opulent Hotel Metropol, threatened with death if he ever sets foot outside again. As the years pass and some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold outside the hotel’s doors, Rostov’s reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. As he builds a new life within the walls of the hotel, he discovers the true value of friendship, family and love.”

“A Gentleman in Moscow” premieres March 29 on Paramount+ with Showtime.

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