117: Adelaide Waldrop, Intimacy Coordinator

I spoke to Adelaide Waldrop a certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy for Stage and Screen (ISS), where she trained with Lizzy Talbot and Yarit Dor (she began training in this work in 2017 with various practitioners in the UK and US). She also serves as the Secretary of the Intimacy Coordinators’s Branch of BECTU and teaches Intimacy for Performance at LAMDA.

Speaking of which, Adelaide graduated from LAMDA’s MA in Directing programme in 2017. She has directed productions in the UK and America and is the co-founder and co-Artistic Director of devised theatre company Maude.

Her credits as an intimacy co-ordinator include the upcoming Netflix erotic thriller DAMAGE and upcoming ITV queer period drama THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON. Past credits include Jack Rooke’s TV series BIG BOYS, Charlotte Wells’ directorial debut AFTERSUN, BBC drama THEN BARBARA MET ALAN written by Jack Thorne and Genevieve Barr. She is currently working on the HBO/Channel 4 series GET MILLIE BLACK by Marlon James.

We talk about drama school, how directing a production of Spring Awakening at 19 provided a first taste of co-ordinating intimacy, how establishing the necessity of having an intimacy co-ordinator on certain sets was at times difficult, choreographing non-sexual intimacy such as the father-daughter relationship between Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio in upcoming MUBI release and Cannes darling AFTERSUN, the kind of persona Adelaide embodies in order to do her job well, how she holds space for actors to admit discomfort and pushing the industry forward to be more representative and inclusive in its depictions of sex.

The fact that there are still actors who denounce the need for safe-guarding and choreography when it comes to sex scenes or any scene of an intimate nature, I think underscores the need for these kinds of conversations and I am beyond thankful to Adelaide for having this one with me.