Actresses still want to do sex scenes but need help on set, says Peaky Blinders star Sophie Rundle
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Actresses still want to film sex scenes, a Peaky Blinders star has insisted, but said intimacy coordinators were “vital”.
Sophie Rundle, who plays Ada Thorne in the hit gang series, explained that trained coordinators could help facilitate better intimacy scenes on camera for women.
Speaking to The Radio Times Podcast, she said: “Putting in intimacy coordinators as an element of safeguarding is really important.
“Having someone assigned to oversee the process is vital because it allows for a neutral third party and anonymity if you feel uncomfortable.”
She added: “Women are allowed to be sexual. We’re not saying no more sex scenes.
“Can we do them in a way that isn’t just titillating for someone else to watch? There are more interesting ways of exploring that narrative than just boobs.”
The British actress, 35, has previously starred in the steamy BBC drama Gentleman Jack in which she played Ann Walker.
The role included filming lesbian sex scenes with co-star Suranne Jones, who has previously admitted she had an instant connection with her on-screen lover.
Rundle also discussed how the Me Too movement had completely changed the industry but admitted that casting more older women still needs improving.
‘Playing mothers since I was 23’
“We do still have a problem. There is a constant compulsion to make everyone younger, so you do end up feeling 10 years ahead sometimes,” she told the podcast, adding: “But I do think it’s moving in the right direction.
“I’m a mother and I’m 35 – but I’ve been playing mothers since I was 23. I had a 23-year-old body that had never had a kid, while holding a baby in my arms. That’s got to start changing!”
She believes that real-life mothers and older women can bring a different level of experience to shows and films, especially in portraying life after a romantic comedy’s happy ending.
Rundle said that the female protagonists “drop off a cliff edge” after marrying or finding their soulmate and having children, and she would like to see the next chapters explored onscreen.
She cited Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag as a perfect example of something “game-changing” and bold. “You have to take a chance and crucially listen to women and what they’re saying, not just pretty young things in their 20s, although they are lovely.”
The actress also revealed that in her spare time she preferred to watch period to modern dramas because of the “theatre of it”.
She said: “It’s that escapism isn’t it? I do love it, I love being like ‘oh what would it have been like to live back then’?”
