During this year's Variety's Actors on Actors series, Academy Award-nominee Mikey Madison confessed to "The Last Showgirl" star Pamela Anderson (a woman with a history of having been exploited by the fame machine) that she had declined to use an intimacy coordinator for "Anora," despite the explicit nature of the film and her character. This situation kicked up a flurry of discourse, with multiple intimacy coordinators speaking with Variety to weigh in on the situation. To be clear, Madison said that the "sex shots" in "Anora" were "a very positive experience" for her. However, the water-cooler conversations that followed showed that the general public still doesn't fully understand what it is that an intimacy coordinator does.

In the wake of Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein's long overdue reckoning for his history of sexually harassing, abusing, and intimidating women, there was an upswing in conversations about the systemic issue of on-set safety.