Claire Foy (Facebook)

I have yet to fully recover from the joy leaping from within when our entertainment editor, Robert Requintina, told me the other day that my column, Moviegoer, has been ranking rather too well in the Manila Bulletin ratings.

Throughout January, it finished at No. 7 among the most read items across all sections, and I was actually No. 13 in the over-all ranking (Top 20) of most read writers.

I was naturally floored; unbelieving is more like it. I quickly looked at my back issues, trying to find out what I had done right, or wrong, this time. And you know what?

I realized that my readers like to read about sex. The column I wrote about actors opening themselves up to full-frontal nudityon-screenn enjoyed one of the highest ratings ever, soaring to No. 1 for weeks.

This finding sent me in a joking spree with Robert. I asked him if he was ready to transform me as a sex columnist at this high point in my career! He assured me, “It’s never too late.” I laughed in a nervous kind of way.

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It happened that I just came across a story in the Hollywood Reporter (December 2021) in which Claire Foy said that she can’t help but feel exposed while performing sex scenes on screen.

Claire won an Emmy best actress for her work as the young Queen Elizabeth in Netflix series, The Crown. Women, she said, do feel exploited whenever they do intimate scenes in front of the camera. Ms. Foy said that while there are “intimacy coordinators” on sets, whose work is useful, they’re not enough to douse her fears.

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I was struck by her remark and rushed to find out what an “intimacy coordinator” in foreign movie sets does. Should we have one, too, in our own sets? What is his or her job description? Maybe, I can qualify.

According to Wikipedia, an “intimacy coordinator” is a staff member who ensures the well-being of actors who participate in sex scenes or other intimate scenes in theater, film and television production.

To some degree, he is like a director in much the same way that there are stunt directors who assist the real director.

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Ms. Foy revealed her feelings around sex for the screen on BBC Radio's Woman's Hour Podcast to promote her new series, A Very British Scandal, on BBC One.

She plays Duchess of Argyll, someone unfairly branded a nymphomaniac and adulterer by the media and her husband during their 1963 divorce proceedings. In portraying the role, she had to perform, naturally, intimacy scenes.

Ms. Foy said that regardless of how a scene is handled, she feels performing fake sex makes her feel exploited as a woman. “It’s grim, it’s the grimmest thing you can do.’’

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Here is where intimacy coordinators come to the rescue. They are open and frank as they talk about sex to actors.

“It’s sort of amazing, the things they are able to say. It just makes me feel like a 12-year-old. I just start laughing, talking about what body parts people have and where you cannot and where you can touch them and the padding that you can use, but it’s really useful,” Claire said.

When I grow up, I want to be an intimacy coordinator, if not a sex columnist.