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Ita O’Brien’s first time working as an intimacy coordinator was in 2018 for Sex Education. The result is brilliant as the series is a tremendous success. The mechanism is then launched for Ita, which surrounds more and more takes for Netflix, HBO, BBC or even Warner Bros. productions . Historical fictions such as Gentleman Jack or The Last Duel by Ridley Scott (film for which she collaborates with actors Matt Damon and Adam Driver), to the triumph of the series.

From I May Destroy You to marvelous adaptations of the works of Sally Rooney, Normal People and Conversations With Friends, Ita O’Brien is always on the lookout for cinematic nuggets where intimacy is at the heart of the narrative. In these last two programs, it is indeed intimacy, in its most vulnerable aspect, which drives the story forward. It’s rare to see this on screen, but it’s beautiful. Behind this authenticity, there is the confidence of the actors, free to play serenely because they are supported by their intimacy coordinator. A support that Michaela Coel does not fail to welcome in her speech when she received the 2021 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Best Actress award for her performance in I May Destroy You. 

​“Thank you Ita for making our industry a safe space, for creating physical, emotional and professional boundaries so that we could do works about exploitation and abuse without ourselves being abused in the process.”

MICHAELA COEL

This is how the creative industry welcomes intimacy coordination. In order to grasp all its facets, I spoke with Ita O’Brien.

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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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