Intimacy Coordinators Have a Contract Now. Here's What Changes on the Floor.

SAG-AFTRA's National Board has unanimously ratified the first collective bargaining agreement anywhere to cover intimacy coordinators. It applies to projects that commence principal photography on or after 22 February 2026 — the trigger is the start of photography, not the date anyone signed anything, so a show already rolling when it landed carries on under its old terms.

The reporting around it has mostly been about what it means for performers, which is fair — that is who the protections are for. This piece is about the other side of the call sheet: what it changes for the people scheduling the day, and where its edges actually sit, because they are further in than the headlines suggest.

What is an intimacy coordinator, exactly?

An intimacy coordinator is a specialist who is responsible for consent, choreography and safety in scenes involving nudity, simulated sexual conduct, or what SAG-AFTRA's protocols call hyper-exposed situations.

The union's Standards and Protocols for the Use of Intimacy Coordinators set out the shape of the job. The IC meets performers one-on-one before the rehearsal and before filming, and confirms consent — including consent to the specific descriptive language used to describe the nudity, which is a detail most summaries skip and which matters more than it sounds. They act as a resource to the director and the assistant directors on the specialised movement itself. And they carry the protections for minors.

The framing that gets it wrong is "the person who makes sure nothing bad happens". The framing that gets it right is closer to a stunt coordinator: a department of one who owns the safety and the execution of a specific kind of difficult shot, and who is in the room because the shot is hard, not because anyone is suspected of anything.

What does the agreement actually cover?

Less than "intimacy coordinators are now unionised" implies, and the limits are worth knowing before you assume you are inside or outside them.

It covers intimacy coordinators employed by producers represented by the AMPTP, working on scripted dramatic programming — serials excluded — for work performed within the United States and its territories. An independently financed feature with no AMPTP-represented producer sits outside it. So does a shoot in another country.

What it gives the coordinators inside that boundary is concrete rather than declaratory. Two things stand out. The first is guaranteed visual access to the performance of the scenes they are responsible for, which sounds procedural until you have watched an IC be asked to wait outside a closed set for the take they were hired to supervise. The second is benefits — producer contributions to the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan and to either the SAG-Producers Pension Plan or the AFTRA Retirement Fund. That is the part that turns a specialism into something a person can build a career in rather than a gig they subsidise.

Why is it a prep item rather than a shooting-day item?

Because the work happens before the day.

Read the protocols in order and the sequence is unavoidable. One-on-one meetings with performers happen prior to the rehearsal. Consent is confirmed against specific language and specific choreography, which means the choreography has to exist before the meeting. And the director's intention for the scene has to be translated into movement that everyone has agreed to before anyone is on a set with a lit rig and thirty people waiting.

Every one of those steps is a prep step. Booking an IC for the shooting day only is the same category of mistake as booking a stunt coordinator on the morning of the car hit.

Practically, for an AD or a line producer, that means the IC appears in three places:

What is a closed set, and who decides it?

A closed set restricts the floor to the people whose presence is necessary for the shot. It is the oldest tool in this area and it long predates the agreement.

What the protocols add is rigour about the decision. The point of an IC holding the closed-set plan is that the list of who is necessary gets made in prep, with the performers, rather than improvised at the door by whoever is standing there. An AD who has that list in advance runs a calmer floor, because "who is meant to be in here" stops being a negotiation held in front of the cast.

Does consent get signed once?

No, and this is the part most worth internalising if you have not worked with an IC before.

SAG-AFTRA's protocols task the intimacy coordinator with ensuring continued consent throughout the filming of the scene — not obtaining it once in prep and then proceeding. A performer can agree to choreography in a rehearsal room and reach a different position after four takes, and the structure is designed to make that a normal, sayable thing rather than an escalation.

The protocols are equally explicit that this is done while minimising interference in production flow. Both halves of that sentence are load-bearing. An IC who stops the day for every take is not doing the job well; neither is one who is invisible after the rehearsal.

What if you are not shooting under a SAG-AFTRA agreement?

Then none of the above binds you, and you should know that clearly rather than assume you are covered by something.

There is no general statutory requirement for an intimacy coordinator in most jurisdictions. The obligation comes from the contract. In India, in particular, there is no equivalent collective framework — no national IC agreement, no accreditation body with the standing SAG-AFTRA's vetting standards have, and no contractual trigger that automatically puts one on a call sheet.

That is a description, not an endorsement. A production shooting an intimate scene without an IC has the same problem it always had; what it no longer has is the excuse that nobody has written down what good practice looks like. SAG-AFTRA's Standards and Protocols and its Recommended Standards for Qualifications, Training and Vetting are both published, both free to read, and both perfectly usable as a template by a producer with no union obligation at all.

Where this sits alongside the rest of the safety file

It sits next to the things you already do. A production that runs proper turnaround, that has a real plan for firearms on set, and that treats an armorer as a department rather than a formality is a production that already understands the pattern here: a specialist owns the dangerous thing, and they are in prep.

The intimacy coordinator is the newest entry in that list and the first one to have its own contract. The scheduling discipline is identical.