It has been eight years since Girls ended its six-season run, and Allison Williams still looks back on the HBO comedy-drama fondly. With hindsight, though, there are parts of the experience she’d like to have gone differently. As a guest on the June 25 episode of Amanda Hirsch’s Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, she reflected on filming Marnie’s numerous sex scenes and said it would have been “so helpful” for them to have an intimacy coordinator.

An Unfulfilled Need

Girls ran from 2012 to 2017, a time before intimacy coordinators became commonplace. “We didn’t have them yet on Girls,” Williams told Hirsch.

“It would’ve been great because we had so many sex scenes to prep and work through,” she added. “It would have been so helpful to have someone who’s, like, department head of sex scenes.”

Without an intimacy coordinator, it was up to star and creator Lena Dunham (Hannah) and co-showrunner Jenni Konner to try to handle the responsibilities. Williams recalled her memorable anilingus scene with Ebon Moss-Bacharach (Desi) and said that they sent her a photo beforehand to give her an idea of how they pictured it going down. She remembered Konner leaning over the windowsill while Dunham was kneeling behind her, giving a thumbs-up and smiling to show how they pictured it.

“They were busy. … That should have been someone else’s job,” Williams said.

“Sterility” In Sex Scenes

Williams also opened up about how filming intimate scenes is “definitely among, if not the weirdest part of our job” as actors. However sexy or romantic they may look, she called the “sterility” of those scenes “so intense.” In more recent projects, she’s found that intimacy coordinators make the experience much more comfortable.

Williams explained the role, saying that they talk to the actors before a romantic scene to understand what they envision, what their boundaries are, and if they have any “red zones” they don’t want touched. They then go to the director and find out their vision. Using that information, they are “responsible for bridging any gaps there are and communicating people’s boundaries,” she said.

“By the time everyone shows up to do it, none of that is being litigated on the day,” Williams added. “You already know what you’re wearing for your nude covering, what the rules are, like, if your co-star feels comfortable with a certain type of kissing or not, and so you’re all just, like, ready to go. And it’s so nice.

Though there was no intimacy coordinator, Williams held firm on her boundaries while filming Girls. She opted not to appear nude in any of her sex scenes.

“I just wanted to give Marnie almost all of myself,” she told ABC’s Pete Travers in 2017. “But there were things that felt like they should be mine and felt like they should always be mine.”

George R.R. Martin hasn’t held back on how he feels about the Game of Thrones franchise’s current HBO offshoots. For one thing, he has expressed frustration on how House of the Dragon has omitted elemental aspects of key scenes. That has contributed to existing tensions ahead of the third season, although to be fair, Martin has shouldered plenty of criticism against himself, too, including how Game of Thrones‘ eighth season might not have gone off the rails so hard if he had, say, finished writing Winds of Winter.

He still hears those grievances on a regular basis, but guess what? Martin is feeling fantastic about the next Game of Thrones prequel, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This more grounded story will feature no dragons or white walkers, and Martin has called himself “so so happy” upon observing filming for the series that is “[n]inety per cent … set in a field, surrounded by tents.” This spin off picks up after HotD‘s events and around 90-100 years before GoT, but what’s also important is when viewers can plan on watching the series.

Does A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms Have A Release Date?

Not yet. In fact, this series was expected to arrive in 2025, but HBO recently announced that the story of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, Egg, has been pushed back to a 2026 release. However, Variety reports that “HBO content chairman and CEO Casey Bloys narrowed that down further … by saying the show was coming in the ‘winter’ … indicating an early 2026 release.”

Showrunner Ira Park hasn’t issued a further statement, so it’s best to hang tight for further word. In the meantime, here’s the series description:

A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros … a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms could run for three seasons if all goes well. That would take the series further into the release schedule than the planned four seasons for House of the Dragon, which is also scheduled (for now) for a 2026 return. Also, the super-prequel about Aegon’s Conquest is also in the works to take the Targaryens back to where they began. So many blondes.