Ewan McGregor is opening up about the benefits of having an intimacy coordinator on set during sex scenes with his wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Despite them being married since 2022, McGregor, 52, told Radio Times in a recent cover story that the experience was “necessary” for the pair, who star together in the upcoming drama series “A Gentleman in Moscow.”
“It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew,” McGregor explained in the story published Tuesday. “And it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera.”
“If you were doing a dance scene, you’d have a choreographer,” he added. “It’s an important part of the work now, because it’s somebody that the director and actors meet in the middle.”
McGregor went on to explain why hiring intimacy coordinators is also essential for a young actor’s protection considering his daughters, Esther and Clara, are also actors now.
“My [Esther] daughter 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,’” the “Star Wars” alum said.
“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,’” the Scottish actor added.
McGregor stars as Count Alexander Rostov in “A Gentleman in Moscow” while Winstead plays Anna Urbanova.
The series is set in the 1920s and follows “a Russian aristocrat [who] is spared from death and placed on house arrest while the Bolshevik Revolution plays out before him,” according to the show’s synopsis.
Back in 2011, McGregor admitted he’s not a fan of sex scenes, slamming them as “awkward” during an appearance on “The Graham Norton Show.”
“I don’t like them very much,” he told Norton at the time. “They are awkward because it is a strange and bizarre thing to be doing. It’s not a normal situation, I am 40 now, and the actresses get younger and younger.”
“A Gentleman in Moscow” hits Paramount+ with Showtime on March 29.