“Actors touching or kissing each other, that’s a question that will be about comfort level down the line,” Tim Allen tells TheWrap
Any hope of Hollywood resuming productions any time soon hinges on the participation of at least one key group: actors. And not everyone on camera is willing to jump right back into performing intimate sex scenes, close-up fight scenes or anything else that involves a lot of close contact on screen.
The mood of actors across Hollywood seems to reflect the contours of the country; some will have the same comfort level with intimacy that they did before the coronavirus started, while others want a whole new level of protections and safeguards before performing. They’re now looking to the guilds, to prominent producers who have proposed plans and to countries that have already shared guidelines about how to safely get back to work.
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“Some actors have said to me that their level of comfort of doing intimacy work isn’t going to change. They feel like when they get back to shooting, they get right back up on the horse and keep doing it business as usual,” Amanda Blumenthal, an intimacy coordinator who runs Intimacy Professionals Association told TheWrap. “I’ve talked to other actors who are incredibly concerned, and they don’t feel comfortable resuming doing intimacy work the way we did it pre-COVID. They feel like they would need a lot more reassurances in the form of testing to know that the risk was significantly lower.”
Also Read: SAG-AFTRA Announces Protocols for Intimacy Coordinators
As actors and the rest of Hollywood await the formal guidance of SAG-AFTRA and the other guilds, the Screen Actors Guild is looking closely at three key areas in making any guidelines: sanitation, testing and intimacy. Effectively, how do you handle proper social distancing on set with access to hand sanitizers and proper cleanliness; how do you make sure everyone is tested and can be cleared as healthy; and how do you handle scenes that involve actors on screen being in close contact or even intimate without masks?
“We’re working aggressively with industry safety experts and coordinating with other guilds and unions on the issue of safety,” David P. White, national executive director of SAG-AFTRA said in a statement. “There is also a particular emphasis on the need to have good protocols around intimate scenes. No one yet knows when the industry will be able to return to work but we intend to be ready at the earliest possible time to ensure the safety of our members.”
In recent guidelines released by Sweden and Denmark for how productions can return, Nordic officials recommended minimizing the number of people on set, tiered arrivals and departures for crew members, limiting hair, makeup and wardrobe to featured cast only, conducting casting remotely and even scene restrictions. However, there were no specific restrictions listed about intimacy.
Also Read: Safe 'Sex' on Set: Inside Hollywood's Push for Intimacy Coordinators
Alicia Rodis, another leading intimacy coordinator who is contracted by HBO and leads Intimacy Directors International, agrees with Blumenthal that actors are eager to get back to work, but only if it means they don’t have to compromise their safety for a job.
“Everyone wants to come back to work, but they want to do it responsibly and safely,” Rodis said. “We don’t want it just to be about people are going to grit their teeth and bare it so that they can get through and get another job. Because everyone’s always worried where the next job will come from. I would hate to say that with safety in regards to COVID.”
Even before the pandemic, intimacy coordinators were closely involved with the finer details of how to keep scenes that require a lot of contact safe and sanitary. Both Rodis and Blumenthal agree that while it’s too early to create specific policy on what will be a safe scene of intimacy, they do expect there will be more conversations about consent, privacy and liability as it relates to intimacy on set.
Also Read: Meet Hollywood's First Agent for Intimacy Coordinators
“I can’t imagine them wanting to go away from that. If anything they’ll want more. Consent is going to be just as important if not more,” Rodis said. “I think the idea of signing away liability to productions, I cannot foresee myself doing that. There’s still accountability that has to happen. I want to get back to work just as much anyone else, and that’s just as someone who works on set and absolutely loves what they do, but we have to have someone signing off and saying this is safe.”
Blumenthal says that in addition to more hand washing and hand sanitizer when working with actors, she could have to alter choreography that had already been planned for the shows that had their seasons interrupted. Some of the ideas she’s considering could include reducing mouth-to-mouth intimacy in a scene, putting actors in sexual positions that don’t require them to be face to face, or even utilizing camera tricks that provide the illusion that actors are closer together than they are. Though Rodis adds any changes would have to be conversations with the creatives.
“There’s all sorts of practical things we can do on the ground to mitigate some level of risk,” Blumenthal said. “But without the extra layer of testing, there’s always going to be a certain level of risk, and whether or not actors feel comfortable assuming that is potentially something they’re going to have to make their own informed decisions about.”
She added that it won’t just be actors that have to make these decisions, but also representatives, individual studio policies and of course state and federal guidelines.
Also Read: How Iceland Resumed Production Mid-Pandemic - and Hopes to Bring in Foreign Crews in May
But such guidelines will need to be applied not just to the shows with steamy, graphic sex scenes but also dramas and sitcoms that involve regular amounts of contact, and it remains to be seen how long any show could proceed without at least some contact.
“For us, we could probably skate by for a while with not touching each other. But once the staff knows predictively that nobody has the virus, you could be comfortable,” “Last Man Standing” star Tim Allen told TheWrap as the show awaits a season renewal. “But for Nancy Travis and myself, it’s ‘Are you comfortable?’ and the other actors touching or kissing each other, that’s a question that will be about comfort level down the line.”
Sweden and Denmark’s guidelines also made restrictions on crowd scenes, specifically no scenes inside night clubs, church congregations or political demos, saying it’s “irresponsible” to execute any scenes where social distancing can’t be upheld.
Also Read: How Virtual Cinemas Saved Art Houses and May Stay After the Coronavirus Crisis
Michael Barnard, a background actor who has worked on shows like “Black Monday” and “Westworld,” has previously had to perform intimate, simulated sex scenes, and he’s certain the days of having 100 actors in tents for massive crowd shots or buffet lines and craft services for actors, especially non-union ones, are over. He’s now questioning his ability to find work in the future and how those jobs might one day advance his career with more featured roles.
“I’m very concerned. I’m trying to figure it out. How could I trust an intimate scene, but on top of that, how could I trust a crowd scene?” Barnard said. “Actors want to act. People’s level of fears ranges from ‘I don’t care’ to ‘I’ll never do it again.’ But I would say in the middle range, people want to trust health experts and our governor to discover when it’s safe to mingle again as actors.”
That’s a question that’s also weighing on producers and showrunners as they propose plans that could get people back to work. Janet Mock, a writer, director and producer on “Pose,” said it will affect the third season of the show’s script now that they won’t be able to shoot ballroom scenes with dozens of background actors.
Also Read: 'All Rise' Returns to Production, Will Remotely Film Coronavirus-Themed Episode
“We need less people on set and everything will be almost treated as a closed set,” Mock said. “One thing we’ll have to do to make sure that our actors are protected and that the cast and crew is protected in general is have less people around when the set is being lit, during rehearsals, less PAs around stars of the show. It’s frustrating, but we’re gonna need less contact in order to tell stories about humanity.”
While there are a lot of plans and projections at the moment, most in the industry agree guidance from doctors and scientists will determine much of how stories are actually captured.
“Everything that came before coronavirus was ‘BC’ and now everything on our end, when we pick it back will be ‘AC,” said Michael Robin, executive producer for CBS’ legal drama “All Rise.” “We’ll see where the safety of all of it is, in terms of when we’re allowed to gather again and what science has sort of kicked into this. That will also tell us a lot about what we can and can’t accomplish.”
Since “All Rise” takes place in contemporary Los Angeles, Robin said from an onscreen standpoint, the pandemic will play a major role. The scripted drama managed to produce a new episode remotely that will air Monday, showing how the characters are adjusting to shelter-in-place orders.
“The world will have had that, or still has it in it. We’ll have to sort of pick up on that in our storytelling.”
Also Read: Daytime Drama! How Soon Will Soaps Run Out of New Episodes?
But there are some promising signs on the horizon. TheWrap reported this week that Netflix has been able to begin production on a series in Iceland utilizing the country’s current safety guidelines of no more than 20 people allowed in a space at a time. And because of the country’s spacious areas for filming and wider access to testing, the production has been able to create a contained environment of only healthy people. Similarly, a soap opera called “Neighbours” in Australia has resumed production, utilizing crew members as background actors, but without scenes of intimacy.
“The industry will continue. Life finds a way, art finds a way,” Rodis said. “I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to stop telling certain stories because of this. We just have to get more creative and keep everyone’s well being at the forefront.”
Jennifer Maas and Tim Baysinger contributed to this report.
19 Movie and TV Casts That Reunited Remotely During Coronavirus, From 'The Goonies' to 'Full House' (Photos)
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Josh Gad/YouTube
It's not just your old high school and college buddies that are using stay-at-home quarantines during the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to reconnect with you over Zoom. The casts and teams behind over a dozen beloved shows or films have reunited remotely in recent weeks just to pass the time. Many of the stars are doing conversations for charity, while others are staging full remote episodes or special performances just to perk up a fan's day. In case you missed them earlier, here are all the reunions that took place since the shutdowns began, and we'll add more as they inevitably take place.
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Warner Bros.
"The Goonies"
On April 27, Josh Gad hosted a reunion with almost the entire full cast of the '80s cult classic "The Goonies," including Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Martha Plimpton, Kerri Green, Jeff Cohen, Ke Huy Qyan, Corey Feldman, Joe Pantoliano and Robert Davi. Gad also spoke with writer Chris Columbus and even got the 90-year-old director Richard Donner to join the call, though not without some technical difficulties first. The cast asked each other questions about what reactions they get from fans and even re-enacted a handful of scenes from the film.
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Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage
"Hamilton"
After John Krasinski had a wave of support for the first episode his makeshift YouTube series "Some Good News" in which he chatted with his co-star on "The Office" Steve Carell, he then surprised a fan of "Mary Poppins Returns" who said her favorite musical was "Hamilton" and that she missed out on a performance of the show because of the coronavirus. Lin-Manuel Miranda then brought together the cast of the original Broadway production, including Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr, Okieriete Onaodowan, Phillipa Soo, Christopher Jackson, Anthony Ramos, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Jonathan Groff, to sing the show's opening number.
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NBC
"Friday Night Lights"
The cast of the TV series "Friday Night Lights" reunited for Global Citizen's "Together at Home," with the cast specifically gathering to virtually watch the pilot episode of the series. Adrianne Palicki, Scott Porter, Derek Phillips, Aimee Teegarden, Gaius Charles and Brad Leland took part, though stars Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton couldn't attend. On the Zoom call, the cast also recalled how competitive actor Taylor Kitsch was playing flag football.
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Fox
"Melrose Place"
For the first time since 2012, Heather Locklear and the cast of "Melrose Place" reunited as part of the YouTube series "Stars in the House" to support The Actors Fund. Josie Bissett, Thomas Calabro, Marcia Cross, Laura Leighton, Heather Locklear, Doug Savant, Grant Show, Andrew Shue, Courtney Thorne-Smith and Daphne Zuniga all took part to reminisce about the soapy Fox drama.
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Warner Bros.
"Contagion"
While not strictly a reunion, the cast of Steven Soderbergh's pandemic outbreak drama "Contagion" banded together to help provide PSAs with advice about social distancing, hand washing and more. Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle were among the first set to record the informational videos, which were made in partnership with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the same school that also consulted on "Contagion" the film.
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Twentieth Century Fox
"That Thing You Do!"
The members of the fictional band The Wonders (or The Oneders) from Tom Hanks' film "That Thing You Do!" reunited for the first time since the film's release in 1996. Band members Tom Everett Scott, Johnathon Schaech, Ethan Embry and Steve Zahn all joined up with co-star Liv Tyler in honor of Adam Schlesinger. Schlesinger wrote the Oscar-nominated title song from the film and shortly before the reunion died of COVID-19.
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Disney Channel
"High School Musical"
The cast of "High School Musical" didn't stream their Zoom reunion call, which from Instagram photos shared by the cast included director Kenny Ortega along with Truman Alfaro, Vanessa Hudgens, Paul Becker, Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman, Lucas Grabeel and Ashley Tisdale. They did however participate in Disney's "Family Singalong" show, with star Zac Efron delivering a special message in lieu of being able to perform.
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NBC
"Parks and Recreation"
The cast of "Parks and Recreation" performed an entire virtual episode as part of a standalone, scripted special on NBC inspired by social distancing. Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Adam Scott, Rob Lowe, Jim O'Heir and Retta all reprised their roles from the sitcom series to raise money for Feeding America's COVID-19 Response Fund. The episode aired Thursday, April 30 on NBC.
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Photo by ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images
"Full House"
The cast of "Full House," including John Stamos, Bob Saget, Dave Coulier, Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin, Andrea Barber and creator Jeff Franklin, all imagined a parody intro to their famous '90s sitcom for a brief TikTok video they called "Full Quarantine." It showed Saget sanitizing a Swiffer and Coulier fishing a slice of pizza out of a pond and ended with the caption, "unlike 'Full House,' this will all go away."
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ABC
"My So-Called Life"
The cast of the sitcom "My So-Called Life" held a private Zoom reunion call that included Wilson Cruz, Claire Danes, Bess Armstrong, Devon Odessa, Tom Irwin, Mary Kay Place, Devon Gummersall and A.J. Langer. The series creator Winnie Holzman and her husband Paul Dooley also joined the call, though Jared Leto was not present.
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Nickelodeon
"Victorious"
The stars of the Nickelodeon TV series "Victorious," featuring Victoria Justice and Ariana Grande, were already meant to gather around this time for the 10th anniversary of the series, but instead did so virtually. Elizabeth Gillies, Leon Thomas III, Matt Bennett, Avan Jogia, Daniella Monet and Eric Lange, as well as the show’s creator Dan Schneider, all participated in the call along with Grande and Justice.
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20th Century Studios
"The Maze Runner"
"The Maze Runner" actress Kaya Scodelario shared a screenshot on Instagram of her Zoom call with her co-stars from the YA adventure trilogy, including Dylan O’Brien, Will Poulter, Ki Hong Lee, Dexter Draden and Thomas Brodie-Sangster. "We survived the Glade, the Scorch & whatever the third one was about. We got this," Scodelario said in the post.
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Disney Channel
"Jessie"
The cast of the Disney Channel series "Jessie" dedicated their gathering to Cameron Boyce, who passed away last year at age 20. Star Debby Ryan appeared on the episode of "Stars at Home" along with Peyton List, Skai Jackson, Karan Brar and Kevin Chamberlin.
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NBC
"Taxi"
Another classic TV franchise with an unexpected reunion, the cast of the sitcom "Taxi" got together for an hour-long chat for "Stars in the House," including Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, Christopher Lloyd and Marilu Henner.
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NBC
"Chuck"
EW rallied the cast and crew of the NBC comedy series "Chuck" to not only reminisce about the show but also perform a table read of a fan-favorite episode from, the ninth episode of Season 3, "Chuck Versus the Beard." Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Adam Baldwin, Joshua Gomez, Sarah Lancaster, Ryan McPartlin, Vik Sahay, Scott Krinsky and Mark Christopher Lawrence all took part in the reunion, as did "Chuck" co-creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak.
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CBS
"The Nanny"
Fran Drescher led the cast of her sitcom "The Nanny" for a live, virtual table read of the 1993 pilot episode. Madeline Zima, Charles Shaughnessy, Jonathan Penner, Alex Sternin, Ann Hampton Callaway, DeeDee Rescher, Peter Marc Jacobson, Renee Taylor, Daniel Davis, Nicholle Tom, Lauren Lane, Rachel Chagall and Benjamin Salisbury all took part in the reunion.
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Chris Cuffaio/NBCU Photo Bank
"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air"
Will Smith reunited with his cast members from "The Fresh Prince" as part of the two-part season finale for his Snapchat series "Will at Home." He was joined by Alfonso Ribeiro, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Tatyana Ali, Karyn Parsons, Daphne Maxwell Reid and Joseph Marcell. Smith and "The Fresh Prince" cast also paid tribute to the actor who played Uncle Phil, James Avery. Smith recalled that the reason his character's name on the show is Will Smith is because Ribeiro told him that people would be calling him by his character's name for the rest of his life.
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Universal
"Back to the Future"
For the second episode of his "Reunited Apart" show, Josh Gad virtually reunited Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson to talk what Gad called a "perfect" movie in "Back to the Future." Lloyd said the film was at one point supposed to be called "Spaceman From Pluto."
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NBC
"Community"
Nearly the entire cast of NBC's sitcom "Community" will reunite on May 18 to do a live table read of the Season 5 episode "Cooperative Polygraphy." Series stars Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Jim Rash, Ken Jeong and Donald Glover, who left the series after season 5, will join creator Dan Harmon to read the Season 5 episode titled “Cooperative Polygraphy.” The special will stream on the “Community” YouTube page on May 18 at 2 p.m. PT and will also include a fan Q&A.
Stars from “Chuck,” “The Nanny,” “Frasier,” “Taxi” and more have taken part in table reads and Q&A specials
It's not just your old high school and college buddies that are using stay-at-home quarantines during the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to reconnect with you over Zoom. The casts and teams behind over a dozen beloved shows or films have reunited remotely in recent weeks just to pass the time. Many of the stars are doing conversations for charity, while others are staging full remote episodes or special performances just to perk up a fan's day. In case you missed them earlier, here are all the reunions that took place since the shutdowns began, and we'll add more as they inevitably take place.
Brian Welk
Film Reporter • brian.welk@thewrap.com • Twitter: @brianwelk