'SMILF' Creator Frankie Shaw Responds To Controversy As Season 2 Starts

The Showtime show "SMILF" is a little show that's caused a big ruckus — first because of the name.

SMILF is a crude acronym for that means "single mothers I'd like to" — insert four-letter word for having sex. Creator, star, showrunner and often director Frankie Shaw plays an edgy single mom with a biracial child and a healthy sexuality in traditionally conservative South Boston, a neighborhood lurching through change just like Shaw's character ricochets through life.

The Golden Globe-nominated show, which stars Shaw and Rosie O'Donnell, is in its second season. On a visit to the set during filming, Shaw told Here & Now's Robin Young that she wanted to address the controversy surrounding the name of the show.

"I understand if you have a kid and they ask what this means, you don't want to tell them, and this season actually we're calling it 'single mom is losing faith,' " Shaw says.

More recently though, Shaw has come under more criticism after allegations of abusive behavior on set. When an actress asked to turn the monitors off during a nude scene, she says Shaw, who was on a different part of the set, wanted them on so she could monitor the scene.  She alleges that Shaw berated her and exposed her own breast to demonstrate it was no big deal.

"I was attempting to connect with her in a way that was so awkward and uncomfortable, and I have these stretchmarks and like all that stuff," Shaw says. "And it's just a lesson like ... I've been talking a lot about having an intimacy coordinator," which is a person on set who acts as a liaison between the whole crew to ease any discomfort during filming of racier scenes.

"I think that is key here, and I wish I'd had that," she adds. "In sex scenes I've done as an actress, I've definitely been in situations where I had felt uncomfortable. So yeah, I just feel terrible that anyone could have felt so badly."

Emiko Tamagawa produced this interview, and Robin Young edited it for broadcast.