The Poor Things intimacy coordinator has claimed she was kicked off sets in the wake of Hollywood's #MeToo movement, revealing that even Emma Stone questioned the need for it during filming.

Elle McAlpine, 33, from London, founded her company EK Intimacy with her drama schoolmate Katharine Hardman in 2022.

In recent years, the former actress has worked as an intimacy coordinator on TV shows like It's a Sin and The Great, supporting the stars and helping choreograph sex scenes.

Speak with The guardthe mother of one opened up about having to “sell herself” and continually explained the role of intimacy coordinators around the time of #MeToo.

Seven years ago, Elle agreed that there was an “undercurrent of sexism” surrounding her job – because she was a woman in her 20s working with “very experienced” professionals who had never had to deal with “this red tape” before had during filming.

She explains: “In the beginning, when we were trying to vouch for ourselves, I felt so much pressure: the scene had to be good.”

Looking back, Elle said she often faced hostility on sets and was even occasionally removed from productions.

She added: “I obviously got kicked out of a few sets because I wasn't helping.”

Without naming the production, Elle recalled how she crossed the line and shouted “cut” when she saw an actor feeling “really uncomfortable.”

But since the Screen Actors Guild mandated intimacy coordinators on sets in 2020 in response to #MeToo, Elle says directors have been more welcoming and first meetings are “more like a chemistry lecture.”

In August 2023, Emma Stone said she didn't think she would need Elle's support “as much” when filming of Poor Things began.

The La La Land actress said: “I couldn't have been more wrong. She was so gentle and passionate.

'She was so helpful. It changed the whole energy of the set and the feeling of safety.”

Although the film received critical acclaim, some sex scenes – including one in which Bella Baxter lets two boys watch her work as a prostitute – shocked viewers.

Looking back on that day of filming, Elle said the children's presence made taking photos “quite difficult.”

Before filming, Elle informed the children's parents on site, prompting one of their mothers to reassure her, “Oh, he watches Game of Thrones all the time, so that's fine!”

In the Directors Note podcast, Elle explained how she explained her position to Emma Stone at the beginning of filming.

Elle said: 'I remember saying to [Emma]your character has many intimate relationships with men she doesn't know.

'And by default we have a lot of supporting artists coming in.

“My job can be to help them because they're also coming into a space where there's a huge power dynamic going on, where you have a very famous actor and a very famous director […]

“There's a huge amount of pressure that these supporting actors will feel when they walk into a room like that.

“So let me just do my job to give them a space where they can feel safe and let me be in the space.”

In the wake of the sexual misconduct revelations about Harvey Weinstein, millions of people shared their stories of sexual harassment and assault.

The movement started in October 2017 after actress Alyssa Milano followed a suggestion from a friend of a friend and tweeted: “If you have been sexually harassed or assaulted, write 'me too' in reply to this tweet.” The hashtag was tweeted almost a million times in 48 hours.

In a previous interview with the Daily Mail, Elle revealed that she decided to become an intimacy coordinator after having a bad experience filming a sex scene as an actress.

She said: 'I remember at the age of 21 I was filming a sex scene that wasn't choreographed and the entire crew was men, so I had to drag a make-up artist onto set for moral support.'

'The crew were equally embarrassed and tried not to look, and that made me even more ashamed. If I could go back in time, I would have asked for some time to go through what was expected – what would be shown, what parts of my body could be touched and also asked for female support.

'The relationship between director and actor is unique and actors often only want to please.

“If they don't feel comfortable going to their director and saying, 'I don't want this,' they can go to the intimacy coordinator, who will initiate a dialogue with the director.

'When the director explains why something is part of a scene, why it is part of the character, the actors are often fine with that or say: “I don't want to do that kind of sex. Can we please change it?” That's a slightly more complicated conversation, but we'll get there. Overcoming obstacles in this way often creates better sex scenes.'

With It's A Sin, Elle worked with intimacy coordinator David Thackeray to draw the shapes they wanted to emulate in the 'sex montage' – 11 separate scenes at the start of the drama.

“Those guys were all very comfortable with each other and so embodied in their characters that it was a dream to work with,” she says. 'Russell T. Davies is very detailed and he writes so beautifully, but in other productions it might say, “They're having sex” and we can help them work through that in a very choreographed way.

“What's hard is when an actor, who knows he's meant to do these sex scenes, doesn't want to do them. This happened on a set that Ita and I came in late in the day and the content of the sex scenes was a bit of a work in progress.

“The actors were quite young, early 20s, and had a lot of courage and said, 'I'm not doing that,' and we had to communicate that to the director. It worked well in the end, but I think it's important to write out sex scenes at the beginning so they know what they're signing up for.”

When Hugh Hefner passed away in September 2017 at the age of 91, no one could have predicted that less than a month later, the #MeToo movement swept through Hollywood, exposing years of sexual abuse by some of the industry's most high-profile men.

The late founder of Playboy magazine, who held sex parties at the historic LA mansion where he lived from 1971 until his death, would certainly not have survived if he had lived any longer, according to his third and last wife, Crystal Hefner. .

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Crystal said her husband died 'just in time' – adding that the mansion would 'absolutely not' have survived the powerful #MeToo movement.

“I've been thinking about this because #MeToo happened literally a month after his death. He left Earth just in time,” said Crystal, who released her memoir Only say good things: Surviving Playboy on Tuesday – said.

“I feel like the mansion was so unique and couldn't be replicated. It was a weird social experiment at the time, but I don't know how he would have held up during the #MeToo,” the former Playboy cover model added.

While Crystal is adamant that the Playboy empire “absolutely would not” have continued after Hef's death, she did not believe her late husband would have suffered the same fate as Harvey Weinstein, the powerful film producer now serving 23 years in prison for rape and sexual abuse.

'I never saw [Hef] like a predator. But I do remember when the Cosby stuff came out, like when I was at the mansion, and Hef knew about it,” Crystal said, referring to the 60 women who came forward in 2015 to accuse actor and comedian Bill Cosby of drugging . and rape them.

In her book, Crystal revealed that during their marriage she “sought girls” for sex orgies with herself and the late magazine mogul.

She described how Hugh liked to have “at least five girls” at a time when they would get intimate in the bedroom.

She told DailyMail.com during the sit-down that she never had sex alone with her late husband during their marriage, which lasted from 2012 until his death.

'I was scared. He was used to some kind of show, some kind of circus up there. So just me? That is not enough. It's easy to feel like you're not enough there,” Crystal painfully recalled.

The former Playmate also admitted that it had been a “relief” to recruit other women to have sex with Hef so she didn't have to have sex with him “all alone” – an admission that has caused some backlash among fans taken care of.

“I feel like people are trying to impose something on me that, you know, doesn't really apply. It's not like we really started liking bars or anything like that. So many girls would come to the mansion and so many girls would be like all of Hef and want to go up there,” she said.

'People just flocked in. So I didn't really have to do anything. It was endless. It was to the point where I was like, “Oh, my god, okay.” It was difficult.'

The blonde beauty, who told DailyMaill.com that she recently decided to change her last name back from Hefner to her maiden name, Harris, wrote in her book that she was “never in love” with her last husband.

She told DailyMail.com that she also didn't believe he was in love with her.

“I think he loved me as much as he could. I think he loved sex, and himself most of all,” Crystal said, laughing.

After years of therapy, which Crystal said was necessary to heal after leaving her ten-year stay at the mansion, she was still able to laugh at some of the madness that took place there.

One of the absurdities was the mirrored ceiling above Hef's rotating bed, where decades of orgies took place.

“I've always wondered, 'What's that mirror on the ceiling? Probably barely,'” she joked to DailyMail.com during her candid sit-down.

In her story she wrote that so many women were vying for the chance to be with Hef under the mirror on the rotating love mattress.

'There were always so many girls eager to have a turn in Hugh Hefner's bed, standing next to me at every party, desperate to be chosen. I felt torn; part of me wanted to reject them for their own good. But I also knew someone was coming, so it might as well be someone who really wanted to go,” she wrote.

“Sometimes they would try to hang around and hold on to Hef and suck on him. There seemed to be an endless stream of women desperate to get into the mansion; it never slowed down.

'And it further reinforced the feeling that I couldn't possibly walk away. The more other people wanted what I had, the tighter I clung to it. If someone stuck around for a while, I tried to find out what they wanted. Female friend? Playmate? What?'

The model, who was married to Hugh until his death at the age of 91 in 2017, made it clear she did not enjoy the group sex encounters with her husband and the other women.

She wrote, “Here I was in the Playboy Mansion, in Hugh Hefner's bed with Hugh Hefner inside me, beautiful naked women around me, and there was nothing sexy about it.

'This wasn't about making love. It was about power, control and influence. It was a performance. I auditioned for a role. I thought it was about my strength.

'After a while he was just done, no climax, just done. Suddenly he waved us away and almost pushed us aside…' she wrote.

Crystal continued that he would “finish the job himself” and while his face was “contorted like he was in pain,” she “freaked out” because he was “having some sort of eighty-one-year-old man fit.” but he was fine.

'It was the strangest five seconds of my life. He gave us each a pat on the back. “You can stay here overnight if you want, and you are welcome to spend the weekend with me and my babies,” she wrote in her book.

In the memoir, Crystal shared more details about life in the Playboy Mansion – famously populated by Hugh's hand-picked Playboy bunnies – including how her husband had a “vicious streak” and was addicted to Viagra and painkillers.

Hugh died on September 27, 2017 at the age of 91 due to heart failure and blood poisoning after contracting a fatal form of e-coli, leaving behind a fortune reported to be $43 million.

Less than a month later, on October 16, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano took a stand against sexual abuse on social media, paving the way for women worldwide to come forward.

The Who's The Boss actress tweeted: “If all women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote #MeToo as a status we might give people an idea of ​​the scale of the problem.”

A-list actresses – including Jennifer Lawrence, Gwyneth Paltrow and Uma Thurman – shared their own experiences and #MeToo was born.