Aimee-Lou Wood: We had an intimacy coordinator there all the time – she was so helpful. And there were conversations going on for weeks, so you were kind of ready for it when it happened. It was well prepared, those scenes felt the most cathartic and the most rewarding. I was probably more prepared for the sex scenes than I was for any other scenes. It was harder to do just talking…
“I believe there is always another way to do a scene where no one is vulnerable, so I tell them their ‘no’ is a gift.”
To do so, Netflix relies on a crew of writers, directors and producers who’ve brought a keen sense of fluid, inclusive teenage sexuality to a series about a 16-year-old son of a sex therapist, Otis (Asa Butterfield), and his enterprising friend Maeve (Emma Mackey). Together they team up to give sex advice to their perpetually inflamed cohort at Moordale Secondary School. (Ncuti Gatwa and Gillian Anderson round out the show’s stellar leading cast.)
But scenes like the one between Hewkin and Newmark unravel seamlessly, thanks particularly to the show’s intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien, who works with the actors before, during and after their sex scenes to ensure that standards of safety are met and that the delightfully complicated choreography is performed efficiently.
There’s so much repressed aggression released in their hookup scene that it begins as a literal, physical fight. How did you and Connor Swindells approach filming that? Also, I have to ask, did you actually spit in each other’s faces?
No. [Laughs.] We blocked that really carefully and mimed the spitting, then we’d cut and add artificial spit to our cheeks. It does look real, but we were very cautious of trying to be as respectful of each other as possible. On Sex Education, we had an intimacy director, Ita O’Brien, who was there to give us guidance with those scenes. Before we started filming, we had an intimacy workshop. The whole cast and crew was there. Everybody gave examples of sex scenes they’d done before and we had great conversations about how those made them feel. We had conversations about consent and feeling comfortable with your sex scenes. Then we moved on to [laughs] emulating the mating rhythms of snails, lions, dogs, and more. It was very physical work!
We all got to know each other very quickly in that workshop, but it was great because it meant that by the time we got to shooting that scene, the walls had already been broken down. Ita was also on set for it and every sex scene. Before the scene, we choreographed it. It’s literally like a dance. We’d agree between us about where we could touch, how long we’d kiss, and then have those counts in our head when we filmed it. We felt very taken-care-of, so shooting that scene became like another day at the office.
On avait littéralement une chorégraphie. On chronométrait. ‘Tu fais ça pendant sept secondes. Ensuite ça…’ C’était comme une danse.” Réalistes, fluides, parfois drôles : les scènes de sexe de la série Sex Education, visible sur Netflix depuis le 11 janvier, ont été saluées par la critique et les spectateurs. Elles occupent une place importante dans cette série où un lycéen, inexpérimenté mais fils d’une sexologue, guide ses camarades dans la découverte de la sexualité. Leur réussite tient en partie à la “chorégraphie”, que décrit l’actrice Emma Mackey, issue du travail avec une coach au rôle presque inédit : une “coordinatrice d’intimité”
The teen comedy Sex Education has been praised for its sex-positive bedroom portrayals. Its secret weapon? An intimacy co-ordinator and her copy of The Lesbian Kama Sutra…
How to Make Sex Scenes Natural and Nonthreatening? Cue the Intimacy Coordinator…
It’s interesting that it was so comfortable, because I imagine it could potentially have gotten really awkward. What were your sex scenes like?
It was ultimately quite fun. When you’re doing intimacy scenes, it’s a closed set and you’ve only got the key people there, so that takes the pressure off because you haven’t got like 80 people looking at you having sex. But it was all so well-handled — we had an intimacy workshop way before filming, where we spoke about our worries and any questions we might have…
Few TV series are as likely to cause such a stir this year as Sex Education. This addictive new comedy drama from Laurie Nunn which was written as a love letter to those American High School movies such as John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club.
Be warned – with sex both shown and discussed in graphic detail, the series is not suitable for younger teenagers. The programme makers hired an “intimacy coordinator” in order to make the young cast (several barely out of their teens) feel safe as regards the many explicit scenes.
In the wake of the MeToo movement, the major TV networks are hiring ‘intimacy coordinators’ to ensure actors don’t feel exploited. Alice Vincent reports.
Netflix is going to get down and dirty this week as it launches its new comedy-drama Sex Education.
The series follows a boy and his sex therapist mother who set up an ad-hoc clinic in his school.
With that subject matter you can expect plenty of scenes of people going at it, which even the most talented of actors can struggle with (or in the case of Olivia Colman, involves some devilish pranks).
To get it right, the cast of Sex Education had an ‘intimacy director’ to choreograph the scenes, and they told Digital Spy and other media that they’re glad they did.
Hollywood’s #MeToo reckoning not only shone a light on the industry’s toxic culture of predation and sexual violence. It also underscored the critical need for an overhaul of the way sex and consent are portrayed on our screens, and a major change in the way cast and crew members are treated on and off set.
In Netflix’s new teen comedy Sex Education, that change is palpable in the way the writers’ tackle the topic of sex, but also in how sex scenes were filmed.
Netflix hired an “intimacy coordinator” to ensure both cast and crew felt comfortable when filming sex scenes and responsible for making sure actors agreed to be touched during intimate scenes
The Independent newspaper in the UK dubbed her the world’s leading sex scenes director. Ita O’Brien from the UK has the job title of ‘Intimacy Cooridnator’. She teaches in some of Britain’s premier acting schools, hosts Intimacy on Set and Stage Workshops for film and theatre actors around the world, and devises her own work. Ita is currently working to establish best practice for producers, directors, and actors working with scenes with sexual content
Ita O’Brien, the UK’s leading intimacy coordinator, has worked with Netflix, BBC1, Channel 4 and many more to ensure sex scenes on set are done safely
Sex scenes tend to arouse great passion in people; they either love them or hate them. Not surprisingly, most actors hate them. Ita O’Brien is one of the world’s leading intimacy directors, making the process safer and less traumatic for actors.
Listen to the interview (14min 5sec) first broadcast on Wed 28 Nov 2018, 12:30pm.
Staging workshops and seminars on “best practice” approaches to intimacy on screen and stage, Ita O’Brien is finding there has been significant progress in the #MeToo era – but much needs to be done.
“There is a lot of good practice out there already and there are lots of directors and productions that have done this well,” says the British intimacy coordinator, who was brought to Australia by the Equity Foundation.
In the past year, Ita O’Brien’s job has become part of a global conversation. An “intimacy coordinator” for stage and screen, based in the UK, her role is to coach production companies through the protocols of touch and contact between actors in explicit scenes.
One of the many conversations #MeToo and Time’s Up have inspired has to do with the nature of creative arts professions. If you work in film, television, theater, or a related field, chances are some of your specific duties — i.e. conducting a screen chemistry test or shooting an intimate scene — would be unacceptable in any other career. But just because the entertainment industry comes with some unusual responsibilities, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be standards or best practices to ensure everyone’s comfortable and treated with dignity…