Los Angeles, March 21 (PTI) British star Ewan McGregor has revealed that he and actor-wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead had roped in an intimacy coordinator for filming intimate scenes for their new show “A Gentleman in Moscow”.
In an interview with the British news outlet Radio Times, the 52-year-old actor said they felt the need for a professional as it was “odd” for them to be “intimate in front of the camera”.
“It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew, and it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera,” McGregor said.
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“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.”
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.
