At long last, the Droughtlander is coming to an end. Leading up to the release of Outlander Season 6 on Sunday, March 6, stars Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe are sharing details of what’s to come. In a recent interview, Heughan revealed that he brought on an intimacy coordinator for Outlander Season 6.
With its long history of steamy scenes, some might have assumed the Starz series always had an intimacy coordinator on set. But unfortunately, conversations around the emotional and physical safety of actors performing sex scenes have only come to the forefront in recent years. The intimacy coordinator role is fairly new in the grand scheme of things.
Heughan and Balfe are both producers on the hit series, and he shared that hiring an intimacy coordinator for Outlander sex scenes helped evolve the show’s hot and heavy moments to new heights in Season 6.
“I brought on board the intimacy advisor Vanessa Coffey because, with intimate scenes, it’s important that everyone is protected, but also we find a way to explore these scenes and actually maybe get something more out of them,” he said during a live taping of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“I think this season we’ve done an even better job with those types of scenes because she really helped us understand what we are doing and how we build up this relationship and take it somewhere else, so she’s been terrific,” he continued.
Heughan commented on the show’s lack of an intimacy coordinator in earlier seasons. (Outlander debuted in August 2014.)
“I got into this in a very different time and the Starz network was different, but also the industry was different, and so we really didn’t know what we were doing,” he said. “We were thrown in the deep end and had to learn through the experience, so I think it’s been really great to bring Vanessa on board to help younger actors with less experience.”
Heughan and Balfe have opened up about what it’s like to film Outlander‘s sex scenes in the past, and despite the lack of an intimacy coordinator, they said the scenes were handled with care, albeit awkward. There are “usually a lot of people in the room” while filming, Balfe told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. Having an intimacy coordinator on set would give the actors the space to decide who could be in the room while those scenes are filmed, making for a safer work environment for everyone involved.
Outlander Season 6 Premiere, Sunday, March 6, 9 pm ET, STARZ
