News & Press: Press

By Tanya Sweeney

After working on her own project exploring the dynamic of sexual abuse, titled Does my sex offend you?, O’Brien realised that something had to change.

“I started my project in 2015 and was looking at how do we keep actors safe and what practices needed to be put in place,” she reveals. “When the Weinstein thing happened [as a number of women came forward to highlight instances of harassment at the hands of movie producer Harvey Weinstein], I was ready to say to directors, ‘Here are the guidelines. This will give you a professional structure in order to do intimate content in a professional way.’”

With directors and producers keen on fostering a safer workspace, O’Brien soon found herself hired as an on-set intimacy co-ordinator. After “choreographing” the sex scenes on Gentleman Jack, Watchmen and Netflix’s Sex Education, O’Brien recently worked on Normal People, the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel, along with director Lenny Abrahamson.

“I can’t imagine doing things like that without Ita,” its star, Daisy Edgar-Jones recently said. “There was a sense with Ita in charge of the physical stuff, that all we had to worry about were the story beats, and doing the writing justice. Then, it becomes like a job. You’re such good friends with the crew that you do a scene like that, then you break for lunch. It’s a bit odd.”

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By Victoria Ahearn

“It turns the usual thing on its head. Normally sex is the thing that’s problematized. But actually their sexual relationship is so immediate and good, which was one of the things I thought was such an opportunity in the novel — although there is other stuff in the novel which isn’t positive — to at least be able to show sex as this potentially transformative, positive and amazing thing in a real way rather than some sort of glamorized way.

“But it did present a challenge, because it has to be done in a way that feels not salacious and feels positive and creatively owned by the cast.”

To do that, Abrahamson and fellow director Hettie Macdonald worked with intimacy coach Ita O’Brien, whose deft approach involved choreographing every move.

By Flora Car

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, the BAFTA-winning actress and writer (who stars in and co-directs the drama) said that she wanted to avoid the stereotypical scenario of directors simply “watching” their actors perform sex scenes.

While working with an on-set intimacy coordinator, Coel rehearsed the same positions that would later take place during a sex scene starring co-star Paapa Essiedu, who plays an attractive but insecure gay man. 

“When we were doing rehearsals with Ita [O’Brien, the show’s intimacy coordinator]… it became, [with] some of Paapa’s scenes, where I would also want to try it, to see if it was safe,” Coel said. “And then I would say to my co-director Sam [Miller], ‘Come on let’s try it and do what they’re doing, so that we can feel that it’s safe’, because it also then takes away this line of directors watching actors do things, it was kind of like, ‘No, no, get stuck in and try it too,’ and I think that set up a very nice, safe environment.”

In the same interview, Essiedu said that, given that I May Destroy You is “about consent”, it was only fitting that the cast felt empowered to speak up if they felt uncomfortable.

He said, “Especially a show like this which is about consent, you know, it’s about the line where consent is; as an actor, as a performer, I think you should feel empowered to say, ‘This is what I’m comfortable doing, and this is what I’m not comfortable doing,’ and that was the conversation from the jump-off.”

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By Jennifer O’Connell

Sue Mythen
Role: Deputy intimacy co-ordinator

Sue Mythen joined the Lir Academy in 2011, the year after it opened, and is its director of movement. She was brought in by intimacy coach, Ita O’Brien, to work on some of the later scenes in the series.

“My biggest pride is that we had nine Lir Academy graduates in it, and to be able to move from being their teacher into being their colleague was a lovely progression,” she says.

The challenge for everyone working on the series was “how to tell an entire physical story through the movement work, and intimacy work has always been part of that.”

The importance of movement in acting can be seen, she says, in everything Paul Mescal does, “in every scene where we see him not being able to articulate, he has had to convey the inner life of the character through very subtle breathing patterns, or movement of the eyes. His face is always alive with who he is on the inside.”

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Aruna Dutt

Simulated sex scenes have often made stars feel pressured, such as in the cases of Game of Thrones Emilia Clarke and or threatened, in the case of Frida star Salma Hayek. In the worst case scenario such as Maria Schneider in The Last Tango in Paris, it can also mean a very real assault. 

In the best-case scenario with a closed set, O’Brien describes sex scenes as being done in an “unconscious place,” and that afterwards, actors would meet up and have to act like it never happened. 

Instead, O’Brien says, “I want people to be proud of their work,” which is exactly what was accomplished with Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones (as Marianne) and Paul Mescal (Connell). 

Before Normal People, neither actor had done sex scenes this way, they said in a recent interview with Dazed. Edgar-Jones described the experience with O”Brien:  “Ita was so wonderful. She took the pressure off completely. The scenes ended up being quite positive.”

Mescal agreed: “The fact that they put policies and structures in place allowed me to go about doing the things that are really important to the book as honestly as possible. Also, we were given guidelines in terms of the physical blocking, but it never felt like there was a disconnect from the emotional part of the scene – it never felt clinical or creatively dead.”

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“One of the key parts of the process was working with an intimacy co-ordinator called Ita O’Brien. A lot of conversation went into those scenes but part of the process of having an intimacy co-ordinator is that everything gets mapped out, everything is pre-agreed so that when you go into those scenes the actors know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and nothing within that scene is going to make them feel uncomfortable.

“Obviously they’re two young actors. Paul has not done TV work before so there’s a huge amount of responsibility of putting them in that situation and making sure that was all treated in a really serious and sensitive way. That was a big part of creating that scene, I think.”

Lenny continues: “The temptation in an adaptation would be to have her arrive, they start to talk and then to cut to them making love but we were just trying to tell the story like the love making is a continuation of everything that went before and really just watch them together exploring that new phase of their relationship.

“That felt like an exciting and worthwhile thing to try and do on screen. We talked a lot before we did any of the sex scenes.

“We all understand the notion of life drawing and the body and of what choreography is so to get past the embarrassment and the complex and confusing quality that can arise if you’re doing an intimate scene is really to understand what you’re doing and that everybody participates in that choreography.

“Nobody feels like their own intimate life is somehow asked to be produced, it’s not that at all. It’s like a dance. Once we understood that, once we all talked it through and why we were doing it the way we were doing it and what it meant, those scenes became very relaxing to do. They stopped being embarrassing in any way and that was just amazing for me. I felt like everybody felt they were empowered and had a stake in making it feel real and good, and everybody was creatively involved in it.

“It was a very positive experience and a lot of the credit goes to the ways Ita has developed to make sense of that kind of work in the context of the actors and the crew.”

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Normal People employed ‘intimacy coordinator’ Ita O’Brien to help with the sex scenes. It’s a job that has become more common on film sets in the era of #MeToo but was new to director Lenny Abrahamson and to Guiney. “We were concerned it would get in the way of what the actors wanted to do, but in fact, it was like using a choreographer or stunt director and made us able to recreate the intimacy in the book.

“It’s very much about the intellectual and emotional connection between Marianne and Connell and their physical connection is an extension of that, so we wanted the sex scenes to be just like a continuation of the conversation, of their dialogue and that’s what our intimacy coordinator did so brilliantly.

“It made it all so much more grown-up and professional and allowed us to really get on with filming. It puts everyone at ease, I think. We’re very proud of it because it’s something fresh and not seen before on TV, and I’m thrilled we went there and pulled it off.”

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By Claire Armitstead – “I May Destroy You“

For Essiedu, this means a deep dive into what masculinity means when its boundaries are broken, not by racist thugs or harassing police, but by demons unleashed by its own desires. “I’m into everything,” boasts Kwame on another casual date, minutes before he is reduced to pleading: “Not that.” The representation of the moment when good sex turns bad is so up-close and personal that I wonder if he had any doubts about taking on the role?

“I’ve done scenes before where we’ve had nothing to support us and it’s so stressful,” he admits. “But I didn’t have any qualms, mainly because of how sensitively it was handled – like we have an intimacy coordinator at all times. We spent a lot of time in preparation for those scenes.”

The intimacy co-ordinator was Ita O’Brien, who also worked on the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. For all that it is being hyped as a #MeToo drama, Essiedu rejects the idea that I May Destroy You is “pandering to a zeitgeisty type thing”. Obviously, he says, “it’s a series that confronts and challenges our current ideas around sex and consent and romance, and our responses to trauma as well. But a lot of it is inspired by things that have actually happened.” In 2018 Coel spoke out about being assaulted. “Michaela is jumping from a place of authenticity,” Essiedu continues. “She captures the reality of lives that I recognise.”

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And yet now, as the windows steam up, things in the background are changing. Movement and intimacy director Ita O’Brien has been developing best practice when working on TV sex scenes, founding Intimacy on Set to provide trained professional intimacy co-ordinators to the industry. She has since noticed a tonal shift in sex scenes, with moments of intimacy captured on camera now more commonly being used to propel the narrative rather than simply to titillate.

She believes that the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the upheaval it caused across the industry also led to questions about how actors can perform intimate content in a safe and a responsible way. “Intimacy guidelines are about taking away that mismatch of power on set,” O’Brien says. “The structure allows everyone to work to the best of their skill in order to create intimate content that serves the writing. After Weinstein, the industry said they had to do better and work with respect, and within that environment, they had to observe how to perform intimate content well.

By Abigail Gillibrand

And while there might have been more than 40 minutes of sex scenes across the entire 12 episodes – it turns out the stars of the show Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones barely got their kit off IRL. Talking on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, Daisy, who plays Marianne in the soon-to-be iconic series, opened up on how they filmed the intimate scenes – with a little help from sex coordiator Ita O’Brien. ‘Ita would make sure Paul and I would discuss the boundaries and what we were and were not comfortable with,’ the 21-year-old explained. ‘We also agreed on touch and would say, “this area is fine but please stay off this area,” or, “I don’t feel comfortable with this.”‘ . .

Daisy went onto say how for the majority of the time they were covered up, and only took their clothes off for the wider shots. She added: ‘Depending on what shots they were filming we were allowed to wear modesty gear so for a large amount of it we were fully clothed. ‘Then for the wide shot we would make sure we felt comfortable and there was enough protection as possible and then yeah, from action to cut we were able to freestyle knowing what the boundaries were and we were able to act the scene.’

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