28 Years Later’s Intimacy Coordinator On How The Nude Prosthetics Were Handled (And Her Thoughts On The Actors Running With Fake ‘Genitals’)
First and foremost, 28 Years Later is an intense and acclaimed horror movie (read our review). Second and…second-most, it’s a surprisingly emotional and tragic take on survival. Third, it’s a movie about giant prosthetic penises. Not really, but that’s what a lot of the audience discourse has latched onto, with fans sharing tons of thirsty posts in the aftermath. While it might seem like filming those sequences would have been calamitous, the film’s intimacy coordinator addressed what her time was like.
UK native Vanessa Coffey has worked as an intimacy coordinator on projects such as the sultry thriller The Couple Next Door and the fantasy epic House of the Dragon, and did indeed stick around on the mainland to assist in the already filmed sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. As such, it wasn’t such a shock to know she’d once more be working with clothes-free infected, but she told Variety that it was indeed an initial shock for crew members before it quickly became a norm. As she put it:
I think a lot of departments suddenly thought, oh no! But actually everybody pulled together really quickly. But when you think of the Berserkers, the prosthetics is quite incredible. With them, there are prosthetic buttocks as well as prosthetic penises, and everything has to be held in place, so that would always have had to have been the case.
For all that it might be uncomfortable for an actor to run around in a natural way while one’s body is encased in prosthetics, but aside from any worries about things falling off, Coffey opined that it was also potentially freeing for the infected performers, saying:
But there’s also a comfort level, I suppose, because obviously the infected run really fast and I would imagine it’s much easier to fun fast confidently across the countryside with a prosthetic attached than actually having your own genitals out.
I can only imagine that it woudl be easier to appear intimidating and monstrous without having to worry about how one’s crotch will appear on camera. Especially when the weather isn’t exactly ideal. Trying to maintain consistency would also be an issue. But I digress.
It Was Important For Everyone On Set To Be Aware Of The Prosthetics
Director Danny Boyle spoke up rather quickly after the film had screened for audiences and critics, saying that Alphas Samson and Berserker, as well as all of the “normal” infected entities, were indeed decked out with prosthetic body parts to cover up their dangling bits. (Not that the fashioned genitals didn’t make things amusing behind the scenes.) After all, it would have been highly illegal and problematic to have that many disrobed adults running around a set with a 14-year-old actor as a co-lead.
According to Vanessa Coffey, decisions were made early on to spread the word to all involved that there would be simulated nudity involved, just in case the prosthetic were’t publicized for the press. As she put it:
Originally we had to have that conversation with all of the people who were potentially going to be playing infected, that there would be the semblance of nudity. There was every chance it was never going to come out in the press that we actually did use prosthetics. So in those circumstances the viewer would, of course, assume that that was that real person’s genitals. So we also were really careful with emailing everybody in advance who was coming on board saying that this was the expectation.
Though it might not seem like the cast and crew would have needed to treat the faux nudity as if it was real, the intimacy coordinator confirmed that Danny Boyle & Co. did handle those scenes with the proper sensitivity to avoid any undeserved questions or scrutiny. She continued:
So closed set applied for any of those scenes where we’ve got people who were in a state of undress and or seeming to be in a state of undress. We wanted people to be aware that safeguarding protocols were in place because we also didn’t want questions about what we were doing in terms of safeguarding either us or our young actor.
If nothing else, 28 Years Later definitely set the mold for any upcoming horror movies that may also want to feature lots of creepy creatures with their boobs and butts on display. Not that I expect any other movies to take quite the same route, even if it would make for quite the left-field move for Scream VII.
The long-awaited sequel is in theaters now, with its Bone Temple sequel already set to hit the 2026 movie schedule on January 16.
