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The actress said she it was “liberating” to work with Ita O’Brien. “I was quite nervous about the sex scenes we had to do, because I thought they should be approached as sensitively as they could be,” she told the Daily Mirror.

“One of the great things she brought was an articulacy – we could talk about the scenes. She just started talking about body parts and positions in a matter of fact way, which just liberated us all. As well as helping us sculpt the sex scenes, the positions, she’s also there to provide support to the artists.”

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Suranne Jones shocked US viewers last night with a heavy lesbian sex scene for new drama, Gentleman Jack.

The real-life story, which follows the tale of lesbian businesswoman Anne Lister in 1832, saw Suranne jump between the sheets with a married aristocrat, Marianna Lawton (Lydia Leonard).

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“We had intimacy directors just so we could tell the story in a very sympathetic and sensitive way.”

“We wanted to explore the way she had sexual affairs because it’s all in there in the diaries. It’s very personal.”

“We wanted someone who was able to give us a language so no one felt embarrassed and we could just talk about every aspect.”

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Suranne Jones has revealed a sex guru helped her overcome her nerves at filming lesbian romps for her new drama, Gentleman Jack. The Doctor Foster actress, 40, said show writer Sally Wainwright hired ­intimacy co‑ordinator Ita O’Brien to give advice on how to behave convincingly.

She said: “I was quite nervous about the sex scenes we had to do, because I thought they should be approached as sensitively as they could be.”
“One of the great things she brought was an articulacy – we could talk about the scenes.”
“She just started talking about body parts and positions in a matter of fact way, which just liberated us all.
“As well as helping us sculpt the sex scenes, the positions, she’s also there to provide support to the artists.”

O’Brien advises that sex scenes are carefully worked out in advance, saying: “Fight scenes in films are carefully ­choreographed and rehearsed. Sex scenes should be the same.”

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Gentleman Jack star Suranne Jones talks to People Now about the show and using Intimacy Practitioners on set.

How do sex scenes work? Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien says before she came along a director would often send the actors off on their own to figure out their own boundaries. Now, Ita has created a set of guidelines that she says makes the sex scenes filmed today, even steamier and more realistic.

Today, we learn how to choreograph a sex scene so that every angle, every touch and every emotion is as beautifully rehearsed as any battle. Listen to the podcast with Claire Murphy and Ita O’Brien.

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The role of the intimacy coordinator has become more important in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations and the broader #MeToo movement. This short film published by The Guardian explores how intimacy coordinators work with actors on sex scenes. Featuring insights from Ita O’Brien as she works on the short film Keep Breathing, breaking down the choreography of a sex scene to ensure the wellbeing of the actors and create a clear language and process.

Ita O’Brien, an intimacy coordinator based in England, said that sex scenes often get handled poorly — not out of malice, but avoidance of what many feel is an awkward situation. “Actors being left vulnerable, or feeling harassed and abused, hasn’t been [the result of] a director or producer not wanting to do well. It’s because they’re not comfortable talking about the sexual content,” she said.

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In one of the most poignant scenes in Netflix’s hit series Sex Education, Eric — the loveable french horn player with eccentric wardrobe taste — is pinned to the ground by Adam, a boy that has bullied him relentlessly for most of his school life. In an act of defence, Eric spits directly into his bully’s face. Adam retaliates with the same. Then they stop. A second passes. Suddenly, they kiss.

It’s a moment that can’t help but leave you electrified — by its tenderness, its innocence, but, above all, its spontaneity. A kiss is the last thing the viewer expects to see, and, by the looks of things, it comes as a bit of a shock to Eric and Adam, too. However, the truth is, of course, that hours of planning went into these brief few seconds. Each beat of the scene was choreographed with detailed precision.

Ita O’Brien begins with the basics. Where will the two boys be positioned? What areas of their bodies will be touching? How long will the kiss last? How many kisses will there be?

Then there’s the more complicated stuff. The spitting.

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“Somehow, everybody can understand an actor’s acting in all other realms of human expression, apart from the sex scene,” concurs movement director and intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien. “It’s that thing of ‘oh, how can it look sexy if they’re acting it’ but the sex scene is still acting—it’s not real life.” O’Brien has been developing ways to keep actors in safe in these scenarios since 2015. Through first engineering her own drama, writing a theatre piece focused around abuse, she began to examine the dynamic between the perpetrator and the victim, which led to broader thinking about the blind spot for potential abuse within the industry.

As she explains by phone, “I was aware I needed to put in place a clear practice and a process to help my actors stay safe.” The Intimacy on Set guidelines—which range from excluding sex scenes from screen tests to identifying specific body parts that can be touched—were born from this initial momentum, coupled with the work of a colleague at the Central School of Speech and Drama: Vanessa Ewan, a senior movement tutor who had noted the time and space afforded fight directors to create their sequences and suggested sex scenes and those with intimate content should be done the same way.

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