Married stars Alison Brie and Dave Franco revealed that they didn’t work with an intimacy coordinator to shoot sex scenes for their new movie Together.
“As a couple, we didn’t need an intimacy coordinator,” Franco, 40, told London’s The Times in an interview published on Friday, August 15. “We’ve been together almost 15 years; we know what we’re doing and we’re pretty comfortable with it.”
Intimacy coordinators became a standard part of the filmmaking process on movie and TV sets in the wake of the #MeToo movement as a way to set expectations for sex scenes and ensure actors are comfortable. Numerous stars — including Emma Stone, Kate Winslet, Nicholas Galitzine and Ellen Pompeo — have spoken about feeling more secure on set thanks to the work of intimacy coordinators.
Brie and Franco’s latest project, the body horror movie Together, required lots of physicality because its plot revolves around supernatural forces drawing a couple together. While the pair felt comfortable enough to shoot Together without an intimacy coordinator, Brie admitted that there were still some surreal moments on set.
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“In our new film, Together, we play a couple whose reliance on each other leads to some quite horrific outcomes and I’ll admit there are some parallels between what’s on and off screen,” she said. “Not the horrific outcomes, but we play a couple who have a solid history together. The film also involves lots of intimate scenes, which was kind of weird. Doing what we had to do in front of a hundred people was a new experience.”
Brie also looked back on the making of 2020’s thriller The Rental, which was directed by Franco. One scene involved Brie being given direction by Franco as she simulated intimacy with costar Dan Stevens.
“Dave has directed me in other movies, other sexual scenes,” she pointed out. “Was he jealous? Not at all. In The Rental with Dan Stevens he kept saying, ‘This has got to look authentic.’ I guess that’s the great thing about us both being actors. We understand the separation of real emotion and something you’re doing at work.”
Franco and Brie got together in 2012 after meeting at a Mardi Gras party a year earlier. Their engagement was first reported in August 2015, with Brie and Franco ultimately exchanging vows at their Los Angeles home in March 2017.
During a March 2024 appearance on the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast, Brie confessed that the concept of marriage “worried” her before she met Franco.
“I’ve walked all over being like, ‘I’m never getting married!’” she said. “And then I met Dave and I was like, ‘Marry me immediately!’”
Brie said that she “never felt the pull toward wanting to be married at all” throughout most of her life, since her parents divorced when she was 5 years old.
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“I met Dave and truly, like, a couple months into dating, I started [being] like, ‘I mean, I will marry this guy,” she remembered.
According to the Together duo, their 2017 wedding was a totally nontraditional celebration. Brie and Franco revealed to Variety in an August 3 interview that they handed out weed pens as party favors during a reception at L.A. eatery Pizzeria Mozza.
“We wanted people to let loose and go crazy, much more than they did,” Franco joked. “We were handing out weed pens, which just led to everyone bringing home multiple to-go pizzas.”
