Meet Emily Meade, the Actor Who Changed On-Screen Sex Forever

When Emily Meade was offered a role on "Dead Ringers," a modern iteration of director David Cronenberg's 1988 psychological thriller available to stream on Prime Video on April 21, she accepted—eagerly.

However, it wasn't the star-studded cast—which includes Rachel Weisz in a dual role as identical twin gynecologists—or even the all-female writers' room that drew the actor to the project. Rather, Meade said it was the fact that her character, Susan, keeps her clothes on for the entire show.

She's kidding…kind of.

Meade has been cast in sexualized roles since her career began at age 16. And that has always been a point of frustration for her.

"It's not what I wanted to do," she said. "I grew up wanting to be 'I Love Lucy.'"

When she was younger, Meade was freckled and had prominent buck teeth. She was more likely to be cast as the goofy comic relief or a quirky character than a sex symbol, she imagined.

"But then I got older and got boobs and braces," she explained.

How Emily Meade got into acting

With newly developed breasts and newly straightened teeth—along with her cherub-like prettiness and endearing charisma—Meade caught the eye of a casting director who spotted her in a movie theater when she was 15 years old.

Parts began rolling in. Most of them required her to take her clothes off, she said. As her acting career developed in the decade that followed, Meade grew resentful and weary of the typecasting.

"Since I was 16, I'd been doing sex scenes with varying levels of protection," she said. "I had a lot of traumatic experiences."

By 2015, she had already made a decision to turn down hypersexualized roles when she was offered another one: the part of Lori, a prostitute in 1970s New York on "The Deuce," an HBO series from "The Wire" creator David Simon co-starring James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

"Alright, but this is the last one," she promised herself. For better or worse, the fateful role would become one of the most formative in Meade's career and one whose impact is still felt throughout Hollywood today.

Meade finally spoke up. And they listened.

Predictably, "The Deuce," which gives viewers a gritty look at the '70s porn industry, involves tons of sex and nudity.

"It was the highest volume of sex scenes I'd ever done in a show," Meade said. "I had bad experiences, but I didn't feel I had the power to speak up and make a change because it was just how it always had been."

Between the first and second seasons of filming "The Deuce," the #MeToo movement happened. Meade, emboldened by the outcry against sexual misconduct in Hollywood, made a groundbreaking request. Sensing an opportunity to make lasting change for women in the industry, she told the network executives at HBO that if she was going to continue performing scenes involving sex and nudity, she and her fellow actors needed some safeguards.

"There needs to be someone whose sole purpose on the set is to facilitate and advocate in sex scenes," she explained.

Meade didn't know it at the time, but the backup she was requesting was already a job. Intimacy coordinators—professionals who facilitate sex scenes with a focus on the actors' comfort level and safety—have long been used in theater productions. They just hadn't yet caught on in Hollywood.

To its credit, HBO responded quickly, Meade noted. Within a day or two, it hired Alicia Rodis, the co-founder of Intimacy Directors International, a New York City nonprofit group that has been coordinating onstage intimacy for nearly two decades.

How the sex scenes became a whole lot safer

Before working with an intimacy coordinator, Meade said she wasn't always able to communicate her uneasiness about acting in intimate scenes.

"Just like with real-life sex, it is really hard to say you're uncomfortable about something, especially because it's a job and everybody's depending on you and you're usually talking to men," she explained. "Often, you want to please, you want to be like a good sport and good soldier."

To cope with situations she was uncomfortable with in the past, Meade tried to toughen her exterior.

"I'd adopted an almost athletic, masculine, competitive attitude of, 'Whatever. I'm not a baby. I can do it,'" she said.

But with Rodis there, the experience of filming intimate scenes instantly changed. To illustrate the transformation, Meade cited an oral sex scene she filmed with Rodis' help.

"The penis was fake but really realistic," she remembered. "I didn't like the idea of an image of a penis in my mouth existing forever."

Rodis stepped in and communicated Meade's concerns to the director, successfully ensuring there would never be a shot of the dildo in her mouth and she wouldn't have to be topless.

"They worked it all beforehand," Meade recalled. "So I was able to go into it feeling better."

When they actually filmed the scene, Rodis remained close by.

"She watched the monitor, she'd come over and give me mouthwash and things to lubricate my mouth," Meade said. "She gave me knee pads and a pillow to, like, lean on and would check in to make sure I was OK."

The lasting impact

After filming "The Deuce," Simon, who also directed, said he would never work without an intimacy coordinator again.

"[Coordinating intimate scenes is] hard work, a lot harder than violence," Simon explained to Rolling Stone. "The truth is we knew we were asking a lot of actors and directors and crew in terms of professionalism and to deliver this material bluntly and honestly. But you can ask all you want; at a certain point, everybody has to trust everybody."

For HBO's part, the network has since announced it will staff all of its shows and movies with intimate scenes with an intimacy coordinator. Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video and others have since followed HBO's example.

Since filming the third and final season of "The Deuce," Meade has kept her promise to herself by steering clear of hypersexualized roles, though it hasn't been easy.

"It's been a very strange few years," she admitted. "I've had to be really strong in saying 'no' to things to develop a new path for myself."

Her part in "Dead Ringers" is the first she's accepted since "The Deuce." Her character Susan—the enigmatic wife of the rich woman who is funding the birthing center founded by Weisz's twin characters—is also her first role that shows a different side of what she can play.

"Susan is a return to what I had initially wanted to do with acting, to play this strange, funny, not particularly sexual character," said Meade. 

Compared to "The Deuce," the experience of filming "Dead Ringers" was "profound," and not solely because she got to keep her clothes on, Meade explained.

"It was the most female cast and crew I've ever worked with," she said. "The directors were female, the cinematographer was female, the camera crew was female."

In male-dominated Hollywood, the female-run production was a striking, surreal experience. But for Meade, a mostly female writers' room, cast and crew weren't just novel, they were essential.

"I just don't think you could tell this story as a man," Meade explained. "It talks about female reproduction in a way that I don't think you could write about without having firsthand experience of going to a gynecologist."

In case you were curious, yes, there was an intimacy coordinator on set for "Dead Ringers," which features its fair share of sex, nudity and intimate scenes. After all her work helping to make sex scenes safer across the industry, Meade said she was grateful to have an intimacy coordinator on set. But she was equally grateful to finally have a role that didn't require their services.

You can stream all six episodes of "Dead Ringers" on Prime Video starting April 21.