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Engagement Party

Behind the Sex Scenes...with an Intimacy Coordinator

Engagement Party

CNN

News, Entertainment News, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6986 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Let’s talk about professional sex. Audie sits down with Yehuda Duenyas, a SAG-AFTRA Hollywood intimacy coordinator, to go behind the scenes of how physical romance is choreographed, why stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean Bean are skeptical of the position, and what depictions of sex on screen reveal about our culture. -- This episode was produced by Sofía Sanchez.  Senior Producer: Matt Martinez   Technical Director: Dan Dzula    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

We've been hearing a lot about the sex recession the last couple of years, but here's the thing.

0:06.0

Sex on screen, it's back, baby. There's been this whole heated rivalry thing, of course.

0:11.0

And then there's a new season of Bridgerton and the new Wuthering Heights, which is supposed to be very steamy, just made 83 million globally in its opening weekend. But behind the literal scenes,

0:23.8

those coordinating intimacy are intimacy coordinators. And like this was a job that was one of the

0:29.8

big wins of the Me Too movement. Here's the thing. Every once in a while, you hear a little

0:36.0

question mark about the job.

0:37.7

So, for example, Gwyneth Paltrow, she was one of the high-profile voices in the Me Too movement.

0:43.4

Recently, when she was on her press tour for the Oscar contender, Marty Supreme,

0:48.0

she sort of implied she didn't know intimacy coordinators really existed until she started working on the film. So today I'm going to sit down

0:55.8

with a Hollywood intimacy coordinator, Yehuda, Duenas. We're going to talk about the state of this

1:03.4

very new industry and talk about how we tell the story of sex on screen. Stay with me.

1:21.1

When people ask you on a flight, what do you say you do? My name is Yehuda Duenas. I'm an intimacy coordinator, which means that I help films and productions navigate intimate scenes

1:27.1

in film and television.

1:30.4

Have you like stopped telling people what you do?

1:32.9

Yeah, I've totally stopped telling people what I do.

1:35.7

No, no.

1:37.3

What kind of questions were you getting at first?

1:39.8

Well, sometimes they ask, is that like porn?

1:43.1

And I say, no, it's for film and television.

1:47.1

It's, you know, shows that you see on Netflix and HBO and Paramount Plus.

1:52.2

And whenever you see an intimate scene or a sex scene or anything like that,

1:57.9

there's usually someone now more commonly, there's someone on set

...

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