Normal People
BBC, 2020
BAFTA winning and Oscar nominated series inspired by Sally Rooney’s novel, Normal People tells the intimate story of the complex relationship between two small-town Ireland classmates – Marianne, a wealthy loner, and Connell, a popular boy whose mother works for Marianne’s family – as they navigate adulthood from their final days in secondary school to their undergraduate years in Dublin.
Directed by award winning filmmakers Lenny Abrahamson (Room, The Little Stranger) and Hettie MacDonald (Doctor Who,Howard’s End) with cast including Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones (War of the Worlds, Cold Feet).
Intimacy Coordinator
Ita O’Brien for Intimacy On Set
“‘I was anxious to start with because I thought the most subtle and important moments would be between me and the actors,’ admits Abrahamson. ‘But what’s brilliant is that she [Ita] would come in and talk to the whole crew and production about simple things like not using euphemisms, about getting explicit consent every time you’re about to do something…that is empowering for the people involved.’”
“‘She’s brilliant.’ says Edgar-Jones. ‘The sex scenes were a joy to us because it was her job to worry about how it would work and we just turned up, did the choreography and carried on.…What I’m really happy with is that there’s an equal representation of both our bodies. Paul is equally exposed…It means that there’s more of a balance, gender-wise.’”
The Guardian, 12 April 2020
“‘Ita came in to work with us..Me and Daisy felt safe throughout the process…we would discuss the degree of nudity that would be required each and every day.. Then we would have a conversation, both myself and Daisy — and Lenny and Ita — about what we were comfortable with. And all those things were basically to give me and Daisy agency in the process and take away anxiety.’” (Paul Mescal)
Variety, 5 May 2020
“I just feel very, very lucky that we got to work with an intimacy coordinator [Ita O’Brien] who was wonderful. I can’t imagine anyone having to film intimate scenes without having someone there to look after it. It’s like doing a stunt without a stunt coordinator…She just created an environment that was pressure-free, which enabled us to concentrate on the narratives that we were trying to put forward. And I liked that the sex scenes were never sort of for the sake of it, they’re never just because they want to throw one in. They’re always carrying on a narrative and the story beat and they’re very important to their relationship. We had a lot of love behind the camera, which made us feel that we could kind of do those scenes justice.” (Daisy Edgar-Jones)
Nylon, 30 April 2020
