Kiana Daniele is a certified Intimacy Coordinator and Director trained through SAG-AFTRA accredited program Principle Intimacy Professionals, with experience across stage and screen productions including Binge, ABC Studios and Channel 10.
A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Kiana is also an award-winning performer best known for the Australian tour of SIX, and brings a strong focus on collaboration, consent and performer wellbeing to her work.
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Kiana Daniele: video transcript
You know when you’re watching film and TV and all of a sudden you see the characters start making out or there’s simulated sex, I am there to facilitate that process, to make it as comfortable as possible.
I’m Kiana and I am an intimacy coordinator and director.
I think [the job] exists because we clearly had a moment in the industry where we realised that this wasn’t being handled in the best way possible. And there have been intimacy coordinators [before that] – they just didn’t have that name, like it was costume, it was the makeup artists. People have been doing the role. It’s just now you actually have someone wearing that hat.
Kiana Daniel: doing the job of an IC
I think first and foremost it’s about understanding whether or not this uncomfort is actually a ‘no’.
So it would be very much me working one-on-one with them, fine-tuning what it is within the scene that’s kind of bringing up potential blocks or bringing up just that vulnerability inside them, and being like, ‘OK, is this a space in which we can still work? Or is this kind of your body saying you’re not kind of good to do this scene?’
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Once that’s been established, it would be then just fine-tuning, whether that is just that this person needs more rehearsal, whether we need to minimise the people in the space. So I always start with the small things and kind of work my way up, to try and fine-tune where those moments of uncomfortability are coming up from and working through that with them.
Ways that we’re there for the crew would be overseeing all the intimacy with them so that they know … Like a big thing for me is if I’m working with a soundie, making sure that … cause they’re being fed the sound constantly in a scene. So checking in with them, like ‘Do you need a break?’ Or if I can give them specifics of like, you know, ‘This part, it’s going to be the highest moment, you might want to pull away’. It’s that kind of thing, like how much information can I give them so that they can do their job really efficiently as well?
if I’m working with content where there might be sort of vulnerabilities around that, allowing the crew to know that they have permission as well to say no, and saying that they might need a moment to step out, just as much as the actors.
Kiana Daniele: what I’ve learned
Even if you don’t want to become an intimacy coordinator or director, there are so many great things that you can learn from just researching about the topic itself, about how to kind of advocate for yourself on set and what are the questions that you should be asking, because you might not always get to work with an IC – you don’t have to have one on set yet.
So if you can learn the basics about choreography or what kind of questions you need to ask in your rider, what kind of questions you should be asking your agent about the project or, if you are left in a room with your other co-star, how you can facilitate that.
Even if you don’t want to become an IC, I think there’s so much you could learn.
