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The show has been celebrated for its candid — read: graphic — depiction of sex. Netflix employed an intimacy director, Ita O’Brien, on set to ensure the cast always felt safe; consented without pressure; and were able to discuss where they were and weren’t comfortable being touched.

O’Brien’s methods include a workshop, where cast members could practise impressions of animals having sex. This wasn’t just a riotous icebreaker, Wood says. “[Ita’s] going, ‘Oh yeah, I do thrusts as a bonobo monkey’, and you’re like, ‘OK, that’s cool because it’s distancing me from the character’.

“So this is Aimee Gibbs having sex, not Aimee Lou Wood.” She adds that the sensitivity is game-changing. “You don’t want to feel vulnerable, like your skin has been stripped off, and then watch it back and go, ‘Why did I do that? I wasn’t comfortable, and now the whole world can see it’.”  For that crumpet scene, “the vain part of me was like, ‘This is so embarrassing’,” says Wood.

“But then I was like, ‘I’d much rather this, wearing days-of-the-week pants, in a big pink T-shirt, in unflattering positions and grunting, so that girls feel seen’.” Rather than? “Rather than watching some person in Victoria’s Secret lingerie with a bit of sweat dripping down her chest. That’s bullshit.”

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One of the big behind-the-scenes stories that came out of season one was the show’s decision to hire intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien.

“You never have a fight scene without a fight director. Why would you have a sex scene without a sex director?” says Patricia. “Or a dance scene without a dance choreographer. You don’t just fling people together in a room,” adds Emma.

Out of all the scenes that the cast shoot on the series, the sex scenes sound the most mundane with the biggest challenge being reminding themselves that they’re supposed to be enjoying themselves while being asked to “start on a number two orgasm and work to a number four”.

“You have beats. It’s not as glamourous as it might look,” explains Emma. “You have to hit certain beats. You come towards him and touch him here, here and here. You kiss for three beats and then move to the wall.”

Asa, who Ncuti describes as a “busy boy” this season, said: “It often looks like we’re doing things, but often it’s just your hand going under a table. You often have to remind yourself in a scene that you’re supposed to be doing stuff so you will be feeling a certain way. Nothing is actually going on. There is no awkwardness. You just have to remember that you’re doing more than you think you’re doing.”

Explaining the lengths that the crew went to in making the cast feel comfortable, Emma said: “We had a whole morning where we talked with the directors, cast and writers about our own experiences of intimacy. A massive conversation. And then we had a more physical session about physical consent. There were animal rhythms and all that stuff.  It was a real ice-breaker.

“And then you walk into the room and you feel empowered to say no, no, no to this, this and this. And I’ve taken it on to other jobs and it wasn’t scary doing that. And thank god it’s happening. It’s really necessary and about time.”

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The cast of Sex Education tell BBC Radio 5 Live about how they prepared for acting sex scenes in the show. This included watching videos of animals mating, to help make it less ‘real’ and less personal. The videos formed part of a workshop with an ‘intimacy expert’, and Conor Swindells, who plays Adam, said it was “really beneficial”.

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There are film scenes that are uncomfortable or dangerous for actors. Stunt doubles help out with action scenes. Battle scenes are choreographed down to the smallest detail so that nobody gets hurt. There has been no support for other scenes that can be hurtful: sex and nude scenes.

Sex scenes can violate privacy and can be emotionally, physically and mentally stressful. For example, if there is a huge team in the room. When a director repeats a violent sex scene many times. When actors are touched in places where they don’t want to be touched.

For a long time there was hardly any talk about the risk of injury in intimate scenes. Now something is happening: so-called intimacy coordinators are being established to ensure the security of nude scenes in the film. The United States and the UK have already set standards for staging intimate scenes. Now there is also the first intimacy coordinator in Germany: the actress and screenwriter Julia Effertz.

Note: this article is no longer available on the original link: wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/neugier-genuegt/redezeit-julia-effertz-100.html

Netflix’s Sex Education might be peppered with NSFW scenes (which shouldn’t come as any surprise) but the cast enjoy filming them as they are all carefully choreographed.

Aimee Lou Wood, who plays Aimee Gibbs in the series, revealed that they all find it ‘really fun’ filming the show’s – often cringeworthy – sex scenes as their moves are planned in advance. 

Speaking ahead of the launch of season two, Aimee told Metro.co.uk that the cast aren’t worried about filming the graphic scenes: ‘It’s actually really fun and I find it really helpful, those sex scenes, because you’re spending a lot of time with your character.

‘You could have full days of doing those kinds of scenes, just you and the director and one other person, so it’s probably the most time that I have personally to really sit with Aimee and be with the character and get to really know who she was.’

She added that seeing how a person behaves in the bedroom helps you get to know them better, explaining: ‘It helped me inform the rest of my characterisation and the other scenes so much, doing those sex scenes, because it says so much about person, how they have sex.

‘So it’s just helpful, it informs so much. That’s why sex scenes are great if they’re done well and if they’re not gratuitous, because it’s a person in their most vulnerable state.

‘You get to feel that you really get to know the character if it’s done honestly and not, you know, mood lighting.’

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“Sex Education” – a series telling in a natural way about the first sexual experiences of a group of teenagers – is one of the productions that can boast of being on the set of an intimacy coordinator. Although this profession has appeared only recently, it is already radically changing standards in the film industry. What exactly do intimacy coordinators do? We talk about it with Ita O’Brian, a precursor in the industry. on the set of “Sex Education”.

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Marking an industry first, Netflix even hired an “intimacy director” (Ita O’Brien, who’s joined by David Thackery for season two) to guide its young stars through the more uncomfortable moments on set, and Nunn hired a “sex educator” for her (largely female) writers’ room. 

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London — Two years after the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal fueled the MeToo movement, the media industry has been forced to rethink how it produces sexual content on stage and on screen. The biggest U.S. actors union adopted new guidelines for nudity and simulated sex scenes last summer, and a British directors association followed suit late last year. 

Emilia Clarke recently spoke out about pressure she felt when filming nude scenes for HBO’s Game of Thrones. HBO has since made it mandatory for crews to hire “intimacy coordinators” to consult on any scenes involving intimacy. 

TV, film and theater have always recruited specialists to consult on fight sequences, stunts and even historical context. Now intimacy coordinators are increasingly being called upon to help make sure actors portraying sex scenes feel physically and psychologically safe at they work.

“Just like a stunt coordinator, you’re bringing techniques to keep the actor safe… you’re mitigating the risk” says Ita O’Brien, one of the U.K’s leading intimacy coordinators and founder of Intimacy On Set. Her intimacy guidelines have been adopted by British actors union Equity U.K. 
O’Brien has worked with shows including Netflix’s Sex Education and BBC/HBO’s Gentleman Jack. She sees herself as “a mediator of consent, to ensure that every touch and every reaction is comfortable and consensual for all parties involved.”

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Ita O’Brien advises actors and directors on sex scenes. A conversation about the similarities between love scenes and stunts, the need to catch up in the industry and professionals who refuse help.

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Listen to the BBC World at One Interview with Ita O’Brien, from December 2019.

British film and TV directors have been issued with guidelines on simulated sex scenes and nudity, with industry figures saying they will help the UK catch up with the US and eradicate “grey areas” that leave actors vulnerable to exploitation.

Directors UK, the professional association for screen directors in Britain, issued the 96 guidelines, which are meant to create “clear and shared professional expectations” with the aim that they will become standard working practice within the industry.

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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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