Christopher Eccleston says an "A-list actress" falsely accused him of groping her on set

Christopher Eccleston—former Doctor Who star and love interest to Jodie Foster’s Detective Liz Danvers in True Detective: Night Country—says an “A-list” actress accused him of groping her on set during a sex scene earlier in his career, an allegation he calls an “abuse of power.”

“I did a sex scene with an A-list actress—not Nicole Kidman, who was brilliant—and she implied, in front of the crew, that I was copping a feel. Because she didn’t like me,” Eccleston told the Independent with “anger… evident,” according to the publication. He went on to say that he was “fortunate that happened to me before the Harvey Weinstein stuff came to light, so I wasn’t put in the stocks for it. But I’ve never felt more betrayed by a fellow actor than I did that day.”

“I have to say to you that I would sooner have put my hands in a food blender than copped a feel of that person. It was an abuse of power, what she did,” he continued.

This whole confession was bizarrely inspired by Eccleston praising intimacy coordinators. “I don’t think that would have happened with an intimacy coordinator on set. I could have been accused of all manner of things… that’s about what passes between actors, with trust and the abuse of it,” he said. He also added that True Detective was only his second time working with someone in that position in his career. “Those are a wonderful innovation in the industry,” he added. “Not just because it protects people, but to creatively decide how a scene should be played. If I were a writer, that would be very important to me—because the way people have sex is how they communicate.”

Of course, Eccleston isn’t the first actor to praise the relatively recent advent of intimacy coordinators (or deride them) in recent months. It’s not just actors, either. Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos recently chimed in as well, saying, “At the beginning, this profession felt a little threatening to most filmmakers, but I think it’s like everything: if you’re with a good person, it’s great and you realize you actually need them. She made everything much easier for everyone.”