Emma Thompson hits back at Sean Bean over importance of intimacy coordinators

We couldn't agree more

Emma Thompson has stressed the importance of intimacy coordinators, after Sean Bean dismissed the necessity of the team on set.

The crew members ensure vulnerable and intimate scenes are filmed safely and to ensure the actors are comfortable, and have become paramount on film and TV sets.

However, the 63-year-old Game of Thrones actor has claimed they're "inhibiting".

He recently told The Times: "It would inhibit me more because it’s drawing attention to things. Somebody saying, ‘Do this, put your hands there, while you touch his thing…”

"I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise."

However, the Love Actually star has hit back at Sean and his comments - and we couldn't agree more.

In a separate interview on Australia's NovaFM, which has since been reported on PEOPLE, Emma said: "I don’t know if you were speaking to someone who found it distracting, but [in] another conversation, you might find that people go, ‘It made me comfortable, it made me feel safe, it made me feel as though I was able to do this work.’

“So intimacy coordinators are the most fantastic introduction in our work. And no, you can’t just ‘let it flow'.

"There’s a camera there and a crew, it’s not on your own in a hotel room. You’re surrounded by a bunch of blokes carrying things. So, it’s not a comfortable situation, full stop."

The two-time Oscar winner recently starred in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, in which she portrays a widowed teacher, Nancy, who has never had an orgasm. As a result, after her partner dies, she decides to hire a male escort to experience one for the first time – all of which is portrayed on screen.

But the star admitted that, despite the crew’s best efforts to make her comfortable, the scene was still “very challenging” to shoot.

In one final scene Emma's character drops her robe, and appears to embrace body positivity and have a new found confidence.

“It’s very challenging to be nude at 62,” she previously shared on the Cinema Café panel at the Sundance Film Festival, explaining that in the scene, Nancy simply “stands in front of a mirror alone and she drops her robe.”

On how they ran through the scene to make sure both actors were comfortable, Thompson shared: "[Director] Sophie [Hyde], Daryl, and I rehearsed entirely nude and talked about our bodies, talked about our relationship with our bodies, drew them, discussed the things that we find difficult about, things we like about them, described one another’s bodies."