Kalki Koechlin addresses issues of acting out intimate scenes

With the Tata Literature live festival well underway in India, Kalki Koechlin was among a panel of speakers, where she discussed how intimate scenes should be dealt with in the world of film making.

“When we are on a film set, no one is going to not have a really choreographed action scene. No one is going to ‘by mistake’ punch the actor in the face. So why aren’t we doing that for intimate scenes?” DNA India report the actress explain.

She went on to add, “There are a number of scenes I’ve done where I’ve not even met the actor before I have to bite his lips off. It doesn’t make sense. There needs to be trust between the actors.”

Currently involved in a theatre production, Koechlin explains how her and her co-star are dealing with doing their scenes. “In this play that I’m doing, about rape of a Roman woman, every morning my co-actor and I have consent between each other where we ask ‘Can we do this?’ and agree on touch. That has just made us so much more comfortable. We trust each other a lot more,” she explained.

“There is no ‘improvisational bit’ that happens. That kind of good practice needs to be encouraged and demanded from those of us in the industry,” she added.