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In her role, Mackey’s character has sex on screen numerous time and the actress, 23, said she was initially “taken aback” by the explicitness of the script.

Speaking on Belstaff’s The Road Less Travelled podcast, hosted by Reggie Yates, Mackey said: “The first time I even read the script, I was like ‘I don’t know if I can do this’. Regardless, I never thought I was going to get the part in the first place.

​“I was like ‘you might as well just try’ but reading the script, I was so taken aback by it. I was like ‘I can’t, I don’t know if I can’. I was quite prudish about it all anyway.

“Luckily like we were just really well looked after from start to finish, even before we started filming, we were given all of these tools by Ita O’Brien, who’s the intimacy coordinator.”

She added: “The tools we were given were specifically to prevent any sort of like, trauma post-sex scene. We were given all these tools like psychical consent and we choreographed it quite significantly.” 

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For the genuinely romantic depictions of sex on screen, actors and directors can face a myriad of challenges. Film sets are often packed, demanding, and tiring. It’s only in the last few years that a specified role to guide and coach actors for love scenes has become mainstream. Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien worked on Netflix’s “Sex Education,” as well as HBO’s “Watchmen.” We attended one of Ita’s workshops in South London to find out how sex scenes are co-ordinated in movies.

Approaching the second anniversary of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, the London Film Festival hosted a panel discussion about the rise of the intimacy coordinator on film and TV sets. In the wake of the MeToo movement, is the industry finally waking up to consent and the comfort of cast and crews?

Introduced by Anna Bogutskaya (who reminded the audience that intimacy “isn’t just the sexy bits”), the panel featured Pink Wall writer-director Tom Cullen, actor and Instinct director Halina Reijn, and intimacy coordinators Yarit Dor (Adult Material) and Ita O’Brien (Sex Education).

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How do you stop people being groped in the workplace when consensual groping is part of the job? It’s a question that the film and TV industries have been increasingly agonising over in the last few years, and which has now led to the rise of a new job on set: that of the intimacy coordinator.

“I didn’t think there was even a role in the profession when I first started developing this work several years ago,” says Ita O’Brien, a former actor turned movement director who specialises as an intimacy coordinator. “Now I can name at least 20 to 30 intimacy coordinators working around the world – and we’re training up dozens more to meet the demand.”

O’Brien’s job is to make sure that actors are comfortable, that boundaries are discussed, and every step of a scene is mutually agreed and choreographed in the same way as a fight, a dance or an action sequence.

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Intimacy on Set is a company that was founded by Ita O’ Brien to help stage, TV, and film navigate the tricky waters of nudity and sexual intimacy. The intimacy coordinators risk-assess the show, take part in rehearsals, offer on-set supervision, and provide a post-production debrief. Intimacy on Set also offers training and workshops for the wider industry, as they try to change the way onstage sex is approached.

The company also produces a selection of best practice guidelines. These include recommending that actors don’t practice nudity or sex in auditions, and ensuring actors are made aware of all scenes which could include sexual intimacy.

For producers and directors, the decision to employ an intimacy coordinator is one that needs some thought. On the one hand, there’s a valid concern that the creative process could be stymied. On the other, creating a reassuring space for great creative work to flourish is vital.

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The work intimacy coordinators do is complex and multifaceted. It requires a few skill sets that don’t necessarily always coincide in a single professional—including choreography, contract negotiation, and emotional intelligence. Ita O’Brien, who has worked as an actor, dancer, movement director, massage therapist, and, now, an intimacy coordinator on productions including Netflix’s Sex Education, began advocating for the merits of this job a few years ago. “I was saying then, ‘My hope and my intention is that, say, in five years’ time, that productions will not dream of doing sex scenes without an intimacy coordinator,” she told V.F. during a recent phone interview. “It’s so amazing to see how quickly the industry has shifted and changed.” She and Rodis have never met in person, but Skype frequently, she said, as they work to help productions across the globe embrace intimacy coordinators.

O’Brien has published guidelines for on-set intimacy and nudity—rules that, for instance, mandate that directors and actors discuss all intimate scenes before signing contracts, throughout rehearsals, and during performances. They also call for a true closed set while filming those scenes. “The main thing is open communication and transparency with this work,” O’Brien said.

As an intimacy coordinator, her onboarding process involves speaking with all relevant parties on a given set to identify each intimate scene and do risk assessment. If an actor has worked with an intimacy coordinator before, this usually just means checking in with them to learn of any potential concerns; O’Brien walks those who haven’t through her process before asking them what kinds of interactions might make them uncomfortable. By the time everyone arrives on set, O’Brien has spoken with all the parties involved in these scenes, from performers to producers. She’s familiar with each actors’ nudity clause, and what they’re comfortable with. She also makes sure to check with the director about what the scene adds to each characters’ emotional journeys—in other words, why it exists in the first place, and what it’s meant to express.

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The film industry has responded to abuses of power by encouraging the presence of intimacy consultants during the shooting of nude scenes. Ita O’Brien, Britain’s first intimacy co-ordinator, has worked on the TV shows Sex Education and Gentleman Jack. She has facilitated agreements on which body parts can be touched and encouraged everyone to talk about sex in an adult way. Both series were praised for their naturalistic and fun sexual encounters.

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Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien speaks about her experience handling sex scenes for film and TV with W Radio.

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On this big episode of the Spotlight Podcast, we discuss safety, harassment and bullying in our industry. Joining us, we have Maureen Beattie, performer and President of Equity, Wendy Spon, CDG and former Head of Casting for the National Theatre, and Ita O’Brien, Intimacy and Movement Coordinator who has recently worked on Gentleman Jack and Sex Education for Netflix.

Intimate scenes should serve the content of the text, the director’s vision, the character and the relationship with the opponent. The intimacy must feel genuine…

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The intimacy coordinator that helps choreograph sex scenes

Ita O’Brien is the BBC’s first “intimacy director” and has worked on new BBC drama Gentleman Jack. She was brought in to ensure actors in the drama, including star Suranne Jones who plays Anne Lister, felt comfortable while filming steamy moments.

Produced by Emily Wolstencroft, Claudia Redmond and Jayde Pearson.

Watch on BBC.co.uk

Ita O’Brien is sitting in an office chair, her hands resting on its arms, leaning slightly forward, her expression rapt and panting like a dog. “Huh, huh, huh! OK, now you’ve got the wild cats,” she cries, beginning to wiggle while softly wailing. “Eeh, oowah, ooow. OK. And now let’s gently allow that to become human.” O’Brien exhales, one could say orgasmically. “Er, aah.”

O’Brien is a pioneer, Britain’s first intimacy co-ordinator, a woman who choreographs sex scenes and — through exercises such as the animal ones she is demonstrating — teaches actors how to be comfortable rolling about virtually naked, apparently in the throes of sexual ecstasy, in front of a film crew.

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The growing use of intimacy directors in the industry is a sign of progress, according to Gentleman Jack executive producer Faith Penhale.

Talking at a screening of Sally Wainwright’s BBC1 period drama last week, Penhale said the #metoo movement had led to the creation of a role in an area of drama that had previously been overlooked.

“We were all very conscious going into this that a huge part of Anne Lister’s life was her sex life,” said Penhale. “She was very sexually active, and she loved having sex with other women. In all areas of drama, you need to consider how you are going to take care of people playing this out for us.”

Penhale said working with intimacy director Ita O’Brien was “terrific” and said seeing her in action was a really interesting process.

“O’Brien worked very closely with Sally and the cast, including Suranne Jones and Sophie Rundle. We had lots of conversations that I do not think we would have had otherwise,” said Penhale.

It was Gentleman Jack creator, writer and director Wainwright who originally called for an intimacy director after hearing O’Brien on Radio 4.

“I had never directed a sex scene before and I thought it was important to do these scenes responsibly,” said Wainwright. “If female directors cannot do it responsibly, then who else can?”

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Listen to the interview with Helena Whitbread and Ita O’Brien on Anne Lister and the making of Gentleman Jack, for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Creator Sally Wainwright brought an intimacy coordinator on board to choreograph the (many) sex scenes on the series. And it shows.

What we may now call a butch lesbian, Anne Lister ‘wanted to deny her own femininity and didn’t want to show her own breasts and wanted to give pleasure to her partners,’ intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien tells GSN.

‘We just looked at someone coming from that place of empowerment and coming from that more masculine point of view and just took that into the dynamic of the intimacy.’

O’Brien has spent years developing the best practice when working with intimacy, scenes with sexual content, and nudity in film, TV, and theatre.

If you had no idea such a role existed, you’re not alone. The profession is brand new and it’s a positive consequence of the MeToo movement.

It all comes down to safety and consent. If it’s common practice to have a fight coordinator on set to plan a duel scene, why can’t you have an expert working through a sex scene with the actors to make sure it feels natural and everyone is comfortable with it?

‘The intimate content in our lives is natural and so it should be in our storytelling,’ O’Brien continues.

‘It should be dealt with in an adult, open and actual way. It should be dealt with in the same way as any other part of the script or play is dealt with.’

An intimacy coordinator talks the actors through the quality of a sex scene, including the positions and the lead-up to it.

Note: this article is no longer available on the original link: gaystarnews.com/article/gentleman-jack-sex-scenes/

She is known as Britain’s first modern lesbian: a 19th-century Yorkshire landowner who chronicled her passionate sexual encounters with women in code in her voluminous diaries.

When the code is deciphered for viewers of BBC One’s much-anticipated new drama about the life of Anne Lister, they can be sure of one thing: the sex scenes were sensitively filmed.

That is because Gentleman Jack, starring Suranne Jones as Lister, is one of the first major BBC series to employ an intimacy co-ordinator, a role that has come to prominence in Hollywood in response to the MeToo scandal.

Intimacy co-ordinators are hired to guarantee the wellbeing of actors taking part in sex scenes, making sure that they are comfortable with everything they are asked to do.

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The creators of Suranne Jones’ new drama Gentleman Jack have described how they brought in the BBC’s first ‘intimacy director’ to help with lesbian sex scenes in the wake of the ‘#MeToo’ movement.

The six-part series stars the actress as the ‘wildly promiscuous Regency lesbian’ Anne Lister.

The period drama features steamy scenes with Miss Jones and her character’s lesbian lovers, including Ann Walker, played by Sophie Rundle.

Former dancer Ita O’Brien was taken on as an ‘intimacy director’ to work with the actresses to film the love scenes.

The show’s creators wanted the actors to feel comfortable in the wake of the #MeToo movement and ensure they were doing ‘right by the lesbian community’.

Executive producer Faith Penhale said ‘intimacy director’ is a ‘new role that has been devised for the industry’.

She said: ‘Employing Miss O’Brien is a positive consequence of the #MeToo movement…