The Brief

Intimacy coordinators could soon play a bigger role in Hollywood, one that many in the industry say is critical in creating a safe working environment.

While crumbling negotiations between writers, actors and major studios have brought the entertainment industry to a screeching halt, some interim agreements could improve the safety of actors and crew members when it comes to nudity, intimacy and simulated sex scenes.

What exactly is an intimacy coordinator?

There have long been passionate sex scenes in Hollywood, and if you watch shows like Bridgerton, Outlander, or Normal People, it might seem as if scenes are getting even steamier. Many actors today consider intimacy coordinators vital to the safety and integrity of their performance.

India Amarteifio as Young Queen Charlotte, Corey Mylchreest as Young King George in episode 101 of Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.

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An intimacy coordinator is several things: a choreographer, an advocate for the actors, and a liaison between actors and production for scenes that involve nudity, hyper-exposed work, simulated sex acts, and physical intimate contact in film and TV settings.

Marci Liroff, a Los Angeles-based intimacy coordinator and former casting director, says the primary role is to make sure actors feel safe.

"Many times on set, there is a power dynamic that exists, and it's very hard for an actor to say no when asked to do something," said Liroff, one of two intimacy coordinators who joined LAist's daily public affairs program AirTalk this week to discuss how industry negotiations could shape the future of the job.

Actors can be hardwired to say yes, especially early on in their careers, and may end up agreeing to things that make them feel deeply uncomfortable. Liroff said many actors have arrived on set in a robe to meet their scene partner for the first time.

"There was no discussion around consent, choreography, boundaries," she said.

That's changing.

People attend an intimacy workshop run by Intimacy Directors and Coordinators (IDC), to educate people in the entertainment industry, including directors, actors, and producers, on how to safely and effectively tell the story of intimacy in performance in New York City in October 2022.

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Mayra Amaya agrees. She's a filmmaker and trained actor who's in the process of becoming a certified intimacy coordinator. She recalls personal experiences that could have been improved with an intimacy coordinator on set.

"Oftentimes it'd be assumed that something as simple as a kiss was something I should say yes to," Amaya said. "I was in a show in high school where we did a curtain call, and our director thought it'd be adorable if the two love interests who never touched throughout the entire show would have that final kiss as part of the curtain call. And that was the expectation; I didn't have the opportunity to say no."

While there are a lot of training programs, Amaya says it's not a requirement to be certified. But she says the training provides a good structure in understanding how to deconstruct consent and different power structures.

Liroff said that in addition, ICs can be trained in trauma response.

"An actor may get triggered by doing a scene, or the crew — scenes that are especially violent," Liroff said.

Since Hollywood sex abuse revelations ignited the #MeToo movement five years ago, demand for on-set "intimacy coordinators" has soared — but resistance, power imbalances, and a fear of saying "no" to sexual scenes are deeply rooted in show business, experts say.

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How will the Hollywood strikes impact their work?

For one, as is the case for most people in the industry, they aren't working right now.

SAG-AFTRA developed new guidelines in 2020 to make intimacy coordinators mandatory on sets. But even three years ago, intimacy coordinators were still nascent, and there weren't enough of them to cover all the scenes that required one.

Now, there's an over-saturation, and the conversation is back on the table.

A committee of intimacy coordinators, including Liroff, has been working with SAG-AFTRA during the strikes on clauses to include in their contract. They would help protect actors and make the role of an intimacy coordinator more clear.

One of the clauses would require productions to give actors more time when intimate scenes change.

"If they want to add something new to the scene," said Liroff, "it pushes the clock back another 48 hours."

SAG-AFTRA is also negotiating to add intimacy coordinators to the union.

And Liroff says she often gets calls from small student projects asking her to work on set — perhaps another sign that, not only are there more people working as intimacy coordinators, but awareness about the position, and demand for it, are growing.

ATLANTA (AP) — Andy Pages drove in two runs with a bases-loaded single in the seventh inning to give Los Angeles the lead, and the Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 4-1 on Wednesday night to clinch their NL Division Series.

The Dodgers won back-to-back games in Atlanta to take the best-of-five matchup 3-1 and advance to the National League Championship Series as they seek to become the first NL team to win three straight World Series.

Pages lined a 3-2 pitch from Robert Suarez up the middle to drive in Teoscar Hernández, who singled off starter Tyler Mahle, and pinch-runner Tommy Edman for a 3-1 lead. Didier Fuentes walked pinch-hitter Josue De Paula and Kyle Tucker to load the bases. Edman ran for De Paula.

Max Muncy’s solo shot off Raisel Iglesias in the ninth padded the lead and gave the slugger 19 postseason homers with the Dodgers, extending his franchise record.

Dodgers right-hander Tyler Glasnow, making his first start since Sept. 24, allowed only one hit but walked five batters in 4 2/3 innings. After he issued two walks in the fifth, left-hander Alex Vesia ended the inning on Matt Olson’s groundout to second base.

The missed opportunity left the Braves with 18 walks in the series, and none scored.

Glasnow and four relievers combined to give up just three hits. Tanner Scott pitched a perfect eighth before Edwin Díaz got three quick outs for the save.

Mahle, a native of Newport Beach, California, who grew up a Dodgers fan, allowed two runs — one earned — in 6 1/3 innings.

Michael Harris II hit Glasnow’s first pitch for a single before stealing second and eventually scoring from third on a wild pitch that bounced off catcher Will Smith’s chest protector.

The Dodgers pulled even in the second with the help of two Atlanta errors. Shohei Ohtani walked, stole second and advanced to third on catcher Sean Murphy’s errant throw into center field. Muncy’s pop fly into shallow left field was dropped by shortstop Mauricio Dubón for another error, allowing Ohtani to score.

Hernández crashed into the wall while attempting to catch Ozzie Albies’ double off Vesia leading off the sixth. Hernández pointed to his head and neck when talking to an athletic trainer but remained in the game.

Edgardo Henriquez stranded Albies at second. Henriquez allowed one hit in 1 2/3 scoreless innings for the win.

Injury report

Dodgers second baseman Miguel Rojas was held out after leaving Tuesday night’s 3-1 win during an at-bat in the eighth inning with lower back soreness. Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said Rojas would not be available off the bench.

Ronald Acuña Jr. started in right field for Atlanta one day after being moved to designated hitter in a late lineup change due to right knee soreness.

Up next

The Dodgers will face Milwaukee or San Diego in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday.

The Democratic National Committee on Wednesday sued President Donald Trump’s administration for recent television advertisements that promoted his political message while costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda and accuses Trump of personally directing them. It asks the court to declare the ads illegal and stop the use of federal funds to pay for them.

Trump has faced bipartisan backlash for the ads, which glorify him and echo his campaign pitch as voters cast early ballots with the midterm elections less than a month away.

The spots, which began airing in September, already have cost more than $12 million to run, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, and a total of $20 million in Homeland Security Department funding has been tapped to pay for them.

Responding Monday to the criticism, Trump defended the ads as “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.” but said he’d pay for them using his MAGA Inc. super PAC going forward.

But on Tuesday, the fifth ad in the campaign began airing with the notice “paid for by the U.S. Government,” promoting Trump’s military actions in Venezuela earlier this year. The same day, Trump made it clear he hasn’t committed to reimbursing any money that has already been spent, telling reporters “we’ll decide.”

DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement that Trump is misusing taxpayer dollars in “a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November.”

“Americans deserve better than to have their hard-earned tax dollars used for Trump’s illegal schemes,” he added.

Legal experts have suggested the ads run afoul of a federal statute against congressionally appropriated money being used for “publicity or propaganda,” and potentially other federal laws. The Homeland Security money tapped for the ads comes from a $175 million package Congress gave to the department as part of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements akin to what past administrations have done to promote various policies. Legal experts have said the recent ads differ from many past public service announcements because they aren’t aimed at helping members of the public benefit from specific government programs.

The defendants in the lawsuit — Trump, the White House, DHS and the Office of Management and Budget — didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fall has only just begun, but it's already time to start thinking about the quintessential winter bug: the flu.

The annual flu season usually starts in October or November. But this year, it looks like the flu started to pick up in early September.

"There are enough signs pointing in the same direction to make me think, 'OK, yes. This is the start of flu season,'" says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The percentage of people testing positive for the flu in the West has been rising steadily since around the beginning of September, she says. And the number of people showing up in emergency departments because of the flu has also been rising for weeks, she adds.

"It's very uncommon to see flu activity rising this early. It's activity that we might normally see more like November or December," she says.

The timing of the flu season isn't the only thing that's odd. It's also unusual that flu activity seems to have started in Western states, such as California, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska.

"It typically starts in the South and then expands from there," Rivers says. "So two uncommon developments there."

Rivers stresses that the amount of flu activity is still very low in most parts of the country. But that's starting to change as the flu picks up nationwide.

It's unclear why flu activity would have started so early, and in such an unusual part of the country. But one clue might be a new variant that evolved a mutation, which appears to make it better at evading existing immunity, especially among teenagers.

"That's our best argument for what's going on right now in terms of this early flu season," says Dr. Alex Greninger, a virologist who heads infectious disease diagnostics at the University of Washington. Doctors there are seeing as much flu right now as they usually would around Christmas, and the mutated variant appears to be common, he says.

So Greninger, Rivers and others are urging people to think about getting their flu shot earlier than usual.

"It's crucial that people get an influenza vaccine," says Scott Hensley, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "And this might be a year that people might want to get a vaccine early."

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn't been promoting flu shots as it usually does. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the CDC, is a long-time vaccine skeptic.

"It is disappointing that CDC is quiet given that flu kills of hundreds of kids a year and can result in tens of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths," says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last year as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protest what he called political interference at the agency.

The CDC declined to make an official available to NPR for this story. In a statement, a CDC spokesperson said, "CDC is developing a communications strategy to provide clear, accessible information about influenza vaccination and other critical steps people can take to protect themselves during respiratory virus season. This includes information about the benefits and risks of vaccination to support informed decision-making."
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