Ewan McGregor said it was “still necessary” to have an intimacy coordinator on set for sex scenes with his wife in their new series, “A Gentleman in Moscow.”
Speaking with the Radio Times, McGregor explained, “It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew, and it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera.”
He continued, “If you were doing a dance scene, you’d have a choreographer. It’s an important part of the work now, because it’s somebody that the director and actors meet in the middle.”
In the Paramount+ series, McGregor plays Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat confined to a hotel following the Russian Revolution. McGregor’s wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, plays Anna Urbanova, an actress who becomes romantically entangled with the count.
“It’s lovely to sit in the back of the car holding hands on the way to work. It was a great experience,” McGregor told the outlet about working with Winstead.
McGregor and Winstead have been married since 2022, and share a son, Laurie, born in 2021.
The couple first met on the set of the FX series “Fargo” in 2017 and felt a personal and professional connection.
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“We walked on set, we didn’t know each other very well, and we just did the scene. It was like, instinctive. And five minutes later, everyone was looking at each other going, ‘Oh, there it is. That’s the scene,’” he recalled.
The Scottish-born actor was previously married to Eve Markis, with whom he shares four children; Clara, 28, Esther, 22, Jamyan, 22 and Anouk, 12.
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McGregor also supported having intimacy coordinators on set as his eldest daughters, Clara and Esther, are pursuing acting.
“My daughter [Esther] is 22. If an older, famous director goes to a 22-year-old and says, ‘I want you to be naked in this scene,’ that actress might feel, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to do it, my career might depend on it.’ And then five years after that, she could look back and go, ‘I wish I hadn’t. Why am I naked in that scene? It’s unnecessary,’” he said.
“Now there’s somebody she talks to whose career doesn’t rest on the shoulders of this person.”
“A Gentleman in Moscow” premieres March 29 on Paramount+ with Showtime.
