Dave Franco and Alison Brie have spoken about turning down an intimacy co-ordinator for the graphic sex scenes in their new film.
The husband-and-wife star together as a couple for the first time in Together, a new body horror film starring the pair who move to a remote town amid a rut within their relationship.
The couple then proceed to start being affected by a bizarre otherworldly force that pushes them together until they start literally melding together by the latter stages of the film.
Within the film is a sex scene in a toilet stall where the pair struggle to pull apart after Franco’s Tim finishes.
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This is shown in graphic detail, with director Michael Shanks explaining in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that they were able to get a prosthetic to show them eventually having to yanks Tim’s penis out.
In this interview, Shanks mentioned that, whilst an intimacy co-ordinator was on set for the crew, they ultimately decided Franco and Brie didn’t need one.
Intimacy co-ordinators are specialists in any intimate scenes on film, but particularly sex scenes, who ensure that everyone involved in the cast and crew feel comfortable and knowledgeable about the scenes.
Speaking exclusively to LADbible ahead of the film’s UK release, Dave Franco and Alison Brie spoke about that decision.
Franco said: “Well we’ve been together for 13 and a half years… we did make sure to talk to the crew around us to make sure they were comfortable.”
Brie added: “The idea was that we knew we were very comfortable with each other physically and we talked about it separately before bringing that to the set and just wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page.”
The film is in large part about co-dependency and how people are close in relationships, something which was forced upon Franco and Brie during filming.
The pair were put together within elaborate prosthetics where they spent hours at a time, even having to pee together.
When asked about this, Brie said: “I feel like it took a journey. Probably our longest day connected... There were really two days that we were really physically connected, and the longest day was almost, was over 10 hours. At first, it's kind of fun and funny, and we're watching it come together, and it looks cool, and then we're going to the bathroom together, and that's kind of funny.”
She stated, however, one particular scene of shooting after multiple days of being connected saw her straddling Franco on a chair whilst connected and that was the most uncomfortable to film.
Franco said: “It was nice that we're a real couple, because we can kind of surpass any politeness. I could be like, 'Babe, I love you, but you're killing me and you need to redistribute your weight somehow.'”
Regarding avoiding taking home the closeness or issues of the characters, the pair reiterated that a massive help was how different they are from the characters in the film.
Franco added: “More than anything, we would go home at the end of the day and just be like ‘Thank God we haven't dealt with any of the issues that they're dealing with.’”
Together is in cinemas in the UK August 15.
Topics: Film, Sex and Relationships, TV and Film, Entertainment
Michael Slavin