Jean Smart Got Totally Weirded Out By The On-Set Intimacy Coach

Intimacy coordinators are hired by productions to facilitate understanding and safety between actors in sexy scenes. But Jean Smart of the HBO Max series “Hacks” felt downright uneasy when contacted by her “coach” the night before a kissing scene. (Watch the interview above.)

“I get an email from the intimacy coach telling me that she’s gonna be on the set tomorrow just to make sure that everybody’s comfortable,” Smart told Seth Meyers on “Late Night” Thursday. “And I said, ‘Well, now I’m uncomfortable. I wasn’t uncomfortable before. Not your fault, I said, but now I feel like a jerk that you’re gonna be standing there watching us slow-dance and then he kisses me.’”

Smart, the “Designing Women” and “Watchmen” star whose TV credits stretch back to the late 1970s, suggested that intimacy coordinators might take some getting used to.

“Oh God, I thought it was so weird,” she said.

The former “Frasier” star noted that her husband, actor Richard Gilliland, who died in March, had a funny reaction to her appointment with the intimacy coach. He imagined what the legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant would say if he were called on set to monitor a love scene.

“That would be a great ‘SNL’ sketch,” she said.