Inside the intimacy department of Gehraiyaan: Intimacy director Dar Gai and her team on the art of shooting sex scenes

What kind of food is served on a film set? Who picked out the paintings for the hero’s bedroom? What does an Executive Producer do? Karishma Upadhyay’s monthly column Bollywood Inside could attempt to answer these and other questions you might have about all things Bollywood but were too shy to ask. * “I was nervous; I didn’t know how I would shoot the intimate scenes. I remember speaking to Shakun [Batra, director], and he told me to relax because they had an intimacy department. I had no idea what that was. Just the fact that there was this department made me freak out more because I started wondering what kind of intimate scenes we’d have to shoot,” remembers actor Siddhant Chaturvedi about his first experience of onscreen intimacy in Gehraiyaan. By the time he finished shooting for the film, Chaturvedi was a convert. “I think every set that involves intimate scenes should have an intimacy coordinator just to make everyone feel comfortable.” Across industries and through the ages, moments of intimacy, whether romantic or violent, have been clumsily executed at best, and have invited inappropriate behaviour at worst. There have been stories of embarrassment, confusion, exploitation, and at times even assault like when Maria Schneider revealed unsettling details surrounding the infamous rape scene in Last Tango in Paris [1972]. Not only was the scene a last-minute addition to the original script, Schneider did not know Marlon Brando’s character would use butter as a lubricant before forcing himself on her. A clip of director Bernardo Bertolucci talking about the scene resurfaced years later, in 2016, setting off wide media attention and sparking outrage in Hollywood. Two years later, the #MeToo movement sparked off more urgent conversations around the treatment of women on Hollywood sets, and triggered a much needed reckoning in the industry. Starting with the series The Deuce [2017-2019], HBO adopted a policy of having an intimacy director on all its shows and movies with intimate scenes. This person would choreograph scenes that involved nudity, simulated sex or sexual content. In 2020, 23 Emmy-nominated scripted shows, including Euphoria, Watchmen, and Succession, had intimacy coordinators on their credits. Closer home, Batra’s Gehraiyaan, which also stars Deepika Padukone, Ananya Pandey, and Dhariya Karwa  along with Chaturvedi, has become the first mainstream Bollywood film to have an intimacy department.   While he was writing the film, Batra realised that intimacy was an integral part of this relationship drama. Not only did he want the intimate scenes to look different from anything the audience had seen before, he also wanted to create a safe environment for his actors. That is when he roped in India-based Ukranian filmmaker Dar Gai as the intimacy director.

“The new generation of filmmakers are much more responsible when it comes to creating a safe space for their actors.

Also, having an intimacy coordinator makes life so much easier for the filmmakers themselves. Instead of all the awkwardness, you have a person who has their own way of making everyone comfortable,” she says.   Khanna, who has been a director’s assistant on films like Andhadhun and Badlapur, trained remotely under Hollywood intimacy coordinator Amanda Blumenthal (Euphoria, The White Lotus, Being the Ricardos) during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The course included everything from closed set protocols to choreography and movement coaching, understanding sexuality, and how to be an advocate to a LGBTQ+ cast and crew.