Olivia Cooke shares brutally honest take on reality of intimate scene

House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke is shocked that women once had to film intimate scenes without intimacy coordinators.

Cooke, who plays Alicent Hightower in HBO's Game of Thrones spin-off, also said that women are still labelled "difficult" when they voice their objection to sex scenes.

In an interview with The i Paper, Cooke said, “It’s amazing to me that people had to just fudge their way through those scenes before those people existed.”

She praised intimacy coordinators for being a “voice” for actresses who are hesitant about saying they’re uncomfortable with a scene, especially the ones “just starting out and don’t have the vocabulary to say what they’re not comfortable with.”

However, she argued that such scenes are important as “showing intimacy, passion is an integral part of reflecting the human experience,” but stressed that they should be filmed in a way that the actor doesn’t feel like "a chunk" of them "has been taken."

Cooke is currently promoting her upcoming series The Girlfriend, where she stars as Cherry. Robin Wright stars as Laura in the upcoming Amazon Prime Video series, which she has also directed.

The psychological thriller follows Laura as she gets suspicious of her son’s new girlfriend, Cherry, whom she fears is a social climber.