They’re getting sexy back.
The consensus is that sex in media has been on the decline in recent years, in part because Gen Z reportedly didn’t want it on screen, but with the success of Rivals and the revival of Bridgerton, it’s making a comeback.
Vanessa Coffey has “witnessed an increase in on-screen intimacy” in recent years. The intimacy coordinator has previously worked on “Outlander” and “House of the Dragon.”
Coffey said she hopes that having her and her fellow intimacy coordinators around will make the actors “feel safe to take risks” and that the audience will also “feel like it’s okay to take risks knowing that the actors aren’t being exploited, and that this is actually part of the story.”
She cited shows she worked on, British shows Rivals and Euphoria, and the movie Wuthering Heights as examples of shows and movies where sex is alive and well.
In recent years, that has been called into question.
In 2023, a viral study surveyed Gen Z and found that 51.5% of them wanted less sex on screen and more platonic friendships.
Over the past decade and with change, superhero movies have also dominated the box office. It features CGI, fight scenes, and stars with gym-honed physiques, but there are very few vulgar moments. An essay on superhero movies that became a hot topic in 2021 went so far as to declare that “everyone is beautiful and no one is exciting.”
But everything seems to have changed this year.
While superheroes remain big box office hits (2025’s “Superman” grossed over $600 million worldwide), the public is embracing more flashy films, such as Michael B. Jordan’s “Sinners” (which grossed over $300 million worldwide and features several obscene scenes) and Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi (which grossed over $100 million). It’s a worldwide box office success and has a lot of dangerous scenes).
The biggest moment came in November, when the Canadian show “Heated Rivalry” aired on HBO Max and became a phenomenon. The show, starring Hudson Williams and Connor Story as professional hockey rivals who repeatedly fall into bed together, made the cast overnight stars, garnering more than 10 million viewers and becoming HBO Max’s most-watched scripted series of all time.
“People were watching in droves,” Coffey said of the “heated rivalry.”
She added, “I think kissing and sex and all that stuff is really big. People want to see naturalistic and sometimes romantic depictions of what it is or what it should be.”
Brooke Haney, an intimacy coordinator who has worked on shows like “The Mayor of Kingstown” and movies like “Ponyboy,” starring Dylan O’Brien, said she once worked as an acting professor at Marymount Manhattan College and observed there that Gen Z students “just don’t want to be lied to.”
She added that “they weren’t nonsense” and just wanted something “real”.
Popular shows like “Heated Rivalry” and “Bridgerton” “have an authenticity that we don’t often see,” she says.
For example, she talked about Francesca (Hannah Dodd)’s inability to orgasm in Season 4 of Bridgerton, and said that Rivals “shows a more authentic representation of queer sex, and we rarely see that.”
So despite previous reports that the state of on-screen intimacy was in question, it’s thriving, experts said.
“I think that’s what people really want,” she said.
“[Viewers]aren’t really interested in sex for the sake of sex, but they’re very interested in being shown something new.”
