Rivals author Jilly Cooper has provided some forthright views on intimacy coordinators.
The writer was questioned about their role following comments made by Rivals actor Danny Dyer, who quipped “every intimacy coach in the land” had worked on the show.
Cooper had a withering response to the profession in an interview with The Times of London, saying: “In my day when people were acting, they just used to jump on each other and roll around without having anyone telling them what to do. I suppose the world’s changed, hasn’t it?”
Cooper added she would not have been comfortable with intimacy coordinators had she been an actress rather than a writer. “I’d be very embarrassed,” she said. “I wouldn’t like it myself, but then no one has any fun any more, do they?”
She was asked about intimacy coaches’ roles in choreographing sex scenes after BAFTA winner Dyer, who plays self-made electronics businessman in Rivals, had said in a separate interview: “It is brilliant, but it is a mad thing to do a sex scene. If you think about it you are legally allowed to tongue someone else. It is part of your job.
“On Rivals, there are a lot of intimacy coaches. I think we used every intimacy coach in the land.”
Season 2 of Rivals, which Dyer noted would comprise 12 episodes compared with Season 1’s eight, is currently shooting in the UK. The Happy Price-produced comedy-drama is expected to land globally on Disney+ and Hulu in the U.S. next year.
Rivals follows the rivalry between an old money MP, Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and Tony, Lord Baddingham (David Tennant), who clash over control of a fictional independent TV station in the 1980s. Further stars include Aiden Turner, Emily Atack, Victoria Smurfit and Nafessa Williams.
The series is adapted from Cooper’s book of the same name, which was published in 1988 as the second of her Rutshire Chronicles novels.
