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Having worked with intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien for Sex Education, Mackey says it was ‘helpful’ to bring the ‘invaluable lessons and tricks of the trade from the Sex Education “school of sex”‘, onto the set of Emily. ‘It gives you such a sense of control and reassurance,’ she notes. In one passionate scene from Emily, Weightman struggles to undo Brontë’s corset – a moment that’s been deemed feminist foreplay. ‘It’s funny, because it takes so long, but it’s a really lovely moment,’ Mackey recalls of the scene. ‘[Oli and I] decided to just kind of craft [the sex scenes] with Francis, and go through the beats together,’ Mackey adds of the process behind filming, noting the actors had trust for each other to explore those intimate moments in a choreographed way.

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We worked with an amazing intimacy coordinator, and it taught me so much about how phenomenal they are and how important it was. We worked with Ita O’Brien who also did Normal People. We spent two weeks rehearsing. It meant that Jack and I could get to know each other as friends and become comfortable. We sort of went through every scene and broke it down, like a dance, like with the stunts. It made everyone aware of our limits of where we can be touched or don’t feel comfortable being touched. Once you have all these boundaries established and made clear, and once you mark through all the beats, then everyone knows where they’re at, and so then you can have fun and freedom within it, which was so important for this because those scenes are so liberating for both of them.

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Whether onstage or onscreen, Ruth Wilson has never shied from intimate and demanding scenes, and she’s got plenty in her new film, True Things.

Based on the book by Deborah Kay Davies, it casts Wilson as Kate, a benefits worker who can’t resist a torrid affair with an ex-con known only as “Blond,” played by Tom Burke. Wilson says the pair and filmmaker Harry Wootliff loved working with “the queen of intimacy coaching,” Ita O’Brien.

“She was brilliant,” recalls Wilson, who reportedly left The Affair over issues with the way nude scenes on Showtime series were handled, among other concerns. “I’m really hoping it results in more interesting sex scenes on our screens because there’s a dialogue now and there wasn’t one before. Having an intimacy coach now means the discussion can happen in a pragmatic, practical, rational way.”

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Translated from Spanish

For the intimacy coordinator of the series, Ita O’Brien, all this duality of opinions lies in a change of perspective, in a generational leap when it comes to understanding sexual consent. It all depends on whose eyes you look at those scenes. “It’s a matter of will and autonomy,” she says in a conversation via Zoom, the person responsible for choreographing the intimate scenes on the set, for the performers to feel safe and secure during their creation. “This is not just sex. It’s not the pum-pum-pumthat we used to see in the past. Here the meetings are not flat and isolated, each scene says something new about the relationship of the characters. There is a choreography of breathing, of details, of what it implies in its own story, ”she explains, and recalls a scene in the second episode in which it is the protagonist, Frances, who takes the initiative until orgasm with Nick. “She is the one who knows how to find the rhythm, she asks him what he likes and she guides him, she takes control. There is a power in that discovery,” she explains. Far from aligning herself with those who see it as something soporific, she says that Sally Rooney “writes about sex in a totally innovative way, especially when it comes to intimacy. I have no doubt that she writes for this era and generation.”

BY JESSICA DERSCHOWITZ

A pioneer in the field of intimacy coordinating, Ita O’Brien has brought her expertise and perspective to projects including I May Destroy You and Sex Education. Here, she guides us through working with the directors and stars of Hulu’s Conversations With Friends. Like Normal People, which she also worked on, the series is an adaptation of a Sally Rooney novel that examines a nexus of complicated (and extremely sexy) relationships.

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As well as being all-round brilliant and landing you BAFTA and Emmy nominations, I May Destroy You was one of the first shows that was celebrated for using an intimacy co-ordinator, Ita O’Brien. And there were a lot of those intense, sexually rough scenes. What was that experience like for you?

To be fair, I actually loved it. Ita is a very weird and wonderful woman. She’s absolutely integral to the creative process. All the scenes that have been much heralded after the fact, or that people have talked about as having had an impact on them, wouldn’t have been possible without her work and process. We prepared those scenes three or four months before we shot them – that’s how she works.

It’s about creating a dynamic on set where everyone is pulling in the same direction, and everyone feels safe and comfortable to go the extra mile to recreate something that is hard to do off the bat.

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While there are fewer steamy moments to linger over in Conversations With Friends, Alison and co-star Joe did have to navigate filming some sex scenes, as Frances and Nick embark on an affair. Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien – who’s worked on I May Destroy You, I Hate Suzie, It’s A Sin, and yes, Normal People – was on set to oversee the process, much to Alison’s relief.

‘It’s so mad to me that having an intimacy coordinator is a relatively new thing. I can’t imagine doing those scenes and not having an expert to guide you through it,’ she says. ‘Ita choreographs it like you would a stunt – the shapes we are trying to make, and the story we are trying to tell. But it was never too serious; we really celebrated the silliness and the awkwardness of it. We could laugh about it. Because those scenes are kind of odd.’

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In ELLE’s monthly series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke with Ita O’Brien, a pioneering intimacy coordinator who’s brought her expertise to groundbreaking shows like Sex Education, Normal People, I May Destroy You, Gentleman Jack, and, most recently, Conversations with Friends, out now on Hulu. O’Brien, a trained dancer and actor who received her Master of Arts in movement studies, was one of the first in the U.K. to develop guidelines for intimate scenes, creating best practices for working with any kind of nudity and sexual content.

​In her role now, she helps to carefully choreograph scenes on set, ensuring all actors feel safe and comfortable, while also serving the vision of the project’s director and writers. “There’s a brilliant system in place for it,” Alison Oliver, who plays Frances on Conversations with Friends, told ELLE about working with O’Brien. “We’ll discuss the scene: What’s the trajectory, and what’s the quality of intimacy? And why is it happening? It’s a continuation of dialogue, in a sense.” Below, O’Brien discusses what it was like shooting the highly-anticipated show, how she first came into this line of work, and the way she copes with the psychological toll that comes with the profession.

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Conversations With Friends executive producer Lenny Abrahamson and director Leanne Welham consulted doctors and women living with endometriosis to ensure their depiction of the disease was as accurate as possible. Given that endometriosis can also cause pain during sex and infertility, intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien advised on the way Nick and Frances’ lovemaking might be impacted by her chronic pain condition. “The concern when the pain first started was, had she been pregnant, and what was this all about?” O’Brien says, adding that she factored Frances’ emotional journey into staging sex scenes “that further discovery of herself … and all the complexity it brings.” After her diagnosis, Frances feels broken, sick, and unlovable and her relationship with Nick changes. She decides that she will figure out how to function with a body that actively revolts against her, alone, away from prying eyes.

France’s endometriosis might start as a side plot, but by the end of the series, it’s clear that the condition is inextricably linked emotionally and thematically to her affair with Nick. Her diagnosis arrives just as Nick starts sleeping with his wife again, and Frances learns of his desires to be a father, making her feel both broken and unwanted. “Many women contend with that question of: Is my body going to serve me?” O’Brien says. “Frances has to ask, ‘How will the endometriosis affect if I want to get pregnant, if I want to have a baby. Is my body as a woman going to do what it’s supposed to do?’”

Frances may be grappling with friendships and relationships, but by the end of Conversations with Friends, it’s clear that there is no more intimate and frustrating relationship than the one she has with herself.

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By Emma Firth

Indeed, these brushstrokes of authenticity are alluring. I cast back to when Normal People was first released two years ago, dissecting the frenzy around these ‘graphic’ scenes with girlfriends over WhatsApp. “They’re realistic,” one posted in the chat. There’s the build-up, the taking off of underwear (again, a televisual rarity), grabbing condoms, consent-affirming dialogue, pre-and-postcoital laughter, lounging nude and happy-drowsy in bed together. It feels up close and personal and, above all, joyful, even in those flickering embers of awkwardness. The characters in Sally Rooney’s adaptations are so viscerally present in their bodies, and in synergy with someone else’s, it’s impossible not to be entranced by its magnetism.

Credit here goes to O’Brien’s physical storytelling. “I’m looking at the details, how body parts meander into each other, such as the spines moving together, pulling the hip towards a thigh [and] bringing the energy down to the pelvis during intercourse so that, anatomically, we believe them,” she says. “That allows us to stay more connected to the emotional journey.”

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“I found that really interesting, that we could explore that too, of how the different sides of a relationship would bring out different qualities of intimacy,” Oliver says.

To help out in that department, Conversations hired Ita O’Brien, the same intimacy coordinator who worked on Normal People. That intimacy coordinators is still a relatively new thing and shows like Conversations used to film sex scenes without them is “so mad,” Oliver says.

“In terms of the difficulty of it, it’s probably always the initial stuff of the embarrassment in the beginning of, like, ‘Oh, god. We’re doing this,’” she continues. Luckily, director Lenny Abrahamson—who also worked on Normal People (notice a pattern?)—encouraged the actors to embrace “the weirdness of it” from the start. “When you have someone like that, it really, really puts you at ease, more so than someone to make light of it.”

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Intimacy on a television or movie set can be many things. It may include a hug between an older married couple, someone changing a nappy, a medical or historical scene that involves nudity, a fleeting hand graze, a simulated sex scene.

When the director of photography is focused on getting the best shot, the producer is making sure production is on schedule and on budget, and the actor is fixated on giving their best performance, consent can get lost or diluted.

Until the #MeToo movement, the job title ‘intimacy coordinator’ was virtually non-existent, and the work mainly existed in diluted forms. Even now, there’s just a handful of accredited intimacy coordinators in Australia.

But demand is growing, intimacy coordinator Chloe Dallimore told The Feed.

“Now for many of the big organisations we are embedded in the OH and S (Occupational Health and Safety) policy,” Chloe said.

“I challenge everyone to actually sit and watch the credits on productions and see how many have an intimacy coordinator because it’s on almost every production.”

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Award-winning film director Lenny Abrahamson has said the industry has to “clean up its act” when it came to shooting sex scenes.

Lenny has directed a second TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, which airs next Wednesday on Rte One.

The ‘Room’ director who previously found global success with Normal People opened up about filming sex scenes – saying having Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien on set helped make actors more comfortable.

He told us: “I think we have all heard stories from actors who haven’t had good experiences on set. Not necessarily abusive but situations where people feel uncomfortable and not supported.

“There was a feeling the industry had to clean up its act around a lot of this stuff. “Normal People was the first show of scale where an intimacy co-ordinator was used. I think the danger is, if you’re a renowned director that’s a bit older than the cast, as an example, you might say what you want to happen in this scene to a young actor.

“And maybe the actor doesn’t feel comfortable but doesn’t want to upset you? You don’t want people to feel like I’d better do it because I don’t want to upset. I have worked with actors who can tell stories about how it’s been. Directors who have said look I’m embarrassed to talk about this to the actors.

“You guys figure it out. That’s way too much pressure on two actors who may not know each other very well”.

However having Intimacy co-ordinator Ita on set helped actors have comfortable conversations about sex scenes while filming Conversations With Friends.

Lenny said: “I have been always very tentative about approaching those scenes. Having an intimacy co-ordinator just provides a way of talking which gets past that. “Separately who is really encouraging the actors to be complexly candid about what they might feel good about doing.

“Then because nobody is feeling awkward or embarrassed it allows you to do good work. The actors are lending their bodies to the making of these shapes.

“On a practical level too, an intimacy co-ordinator knows about every form of padding and cover up on set which is good for the crew as well who could feel embarrassment”.

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He also spoke about the importance of bringing back intimacy coach Ita O’Brien for the new mini-series, which was majority funded by the BBC and Hulu in association with RTÉ.

He said that the “risky thing” in the old way of doing things is that a younger actor may automatically agree to something as they don’t want to upset a more experienced director.

“There’s always that worry so previously I’ve been very tentative about approaching those scenes. What having an intimacy co-ordinator does is just to provide a way of talking. You just get past that. The actors have somebody that they can talk to, separately, who is really encouraging them – as am I and everyone else – to be really candid that they might not feel good about doing.

“And with that confidence, you can actually go about thinking about the scene. It’s like dance choreography. We are all about the making of images we are all collaborating on that.

“The actors are lending their bodies to the making of the shapes. And when you think about it like that, it stops it becoming an awkward, embarrassing pretend. it becomes more of a dignified thing where all of you are very respected in that context and very listened to.”

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By Ella Kemp

Normal People was so affecting because of the microscopic focus on Marianne and Connell, with empathetic performances from Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal somehow capturing everything Rooney confessed on the page. Conversations has a more difficult job – as did the book – to honour the inner lives of four different people, led by the most reluctant, pessimistic and guarded of the group.

There are still tender moments, and brief flashes of light – intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien teams once more with director Lenny Abrahamson to give sex scenes, mainly between Frances and Nick but also Frances and Bobbi, great emotional heft, telling their own story just as clearly as the dialogue and unspoken yearning of everyone’s body language. Kirke and Lane prove just how vital satellite characters can be to a story of knotty, difficult romance. Alwyn struggles to rise to the material at times, at his best when Nick is finally given permission to break down and finally feel something, anything.

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By Aaron Tinney

Ciaran Hinds has revealed an intimacy coordinator choreographed a sex scene with his wife on the set of his new TV show.

The Belfast-born actor (69) said the supervisor also worked with his actress daughter Aoife on the popular BBC show Normal People.

Ciaran and his French-Vietnamese actress wife Helene Patarot (68) are seen having sex against a wheelie bin in an alleyway in episode three of Irish-set comedy drama series The Dry.

He said about working with his partner of 34 years: “I did have a long chat with Paddy [Breatnach — the director] about that whole episode, and about the idea of people of a certain age getting it on behind the bins.

“But he convinced me not to be embarrassed by it because it had to be something quite shocking, but also odd and quite funny too.

“The odd thing is that we had an intimacy coordinator on set. You talk about how to deal with sexual situations and sexual issues, and how to feel comfortable together on set.

“She knew that we were married and said that we probably wouldn’t need any supervision.

“And indeed Helene had the time of her life, having such a laugh at it.

“But the curious thing was that the intimacy co-ordinator had been the intimacy co-ordinator for Aoife, too, on Normal People.

“So basically she has sexed up the whole family.”

Ciaran and Helene’s daughter Aoife (31) played Helen, the “other woman”, in Normal People.

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BY MARY CATE SMITH

The first TV adaptation of Rooney’s work marked a huge departure for sex scenes on Irish and international television and in so many ways, it paved the way for more honest, raw storytelling around relationships. Conversations with Friends hit the ground running by hiring the Normal People intimacy coach, Ita O’Brien. While a whole host of film sets pre-dating the #MeToo era have been mired in controversy regarding sexual misconduct, Oliver says that this set was very professional and that she felt “100% safe at all times.”

Not only did O’Brien pioneer the role of intimacy coordinator on film and television sets, she also established a set of best practice guidelines for practitioners in the industry and introduced genital-shielding props to film sets. So, what exactly does an intimacy coordinator do? According to Oliver, there’s a lot of discussion around consent and expectations before any touching ever happens and to ensure that nothing touches anything it shouldn’t.

“Once you meet her, you’ll talk in depth about scenes that have an intimate nature and why we’re doing them. She’ll talk a lot about the quality of intimacy and the kind of story we’re trying to tell with this intimacy, which I think is really important. It’s very much about storytelling rather than showing – it’s very narrative-driven.” O’Brien looks at the beats of the scene says Oliver, and the “shapes you make to tell that story,” settling on a set of pre-agreed movements that look and feel authentic to the action and allow the actors to feel safe.

“By the time you actually do the scene, you’ve choreographed it so much and you feel the most safe you can. There’s such a respect and it’s handled in such a brilliant way.”

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By Rebecca Nicholson

Alwyn had read Conversations With Friends and Normal People already, long before his involvement in the former. “I read Normal People before I knew they were making a show out of it, and I remember when I saw it thinking, I’d love to be in something like that.” Normal People’s sex scenes between Connell (Paul Mescal) and Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) became such a talking point that people began to lust over Mescal’s silver chain, as if everything else about him had been exhausted. In Conversations With Friends, Nick has a heated affair with Frances, and Alwyn is fairly regularly, if tastefully, naked in it. “We were guided through it with an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, who is great,” he says. “They’re essentially choreographed. So they’re like fight scenes. They’re quite mechanical. And obviously they’re weird, funny, strange things to do with your friends. But when Lenny’s in the room, cracking jokes, and there’s 10 crew members around, and it’s freezing cold or boiling hot, it just takes all the sexiness out of it.”

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