Intimacy on Set - Press

The Independent: From the extremes of Euphoria to the funny fumblings of Sex Education – how to get sex in teen dramas right

21/9/2023

So, how did Sex Education do it? Think of the most realistic depictions of sex on screen in recent years. You might list Normal People, It’s a Sin, I May Destroy You. Behind them all, you’d find Ita O’Brien, an industry leader in filming intimate content. I speak to O’Brien over Zoom, her office filled with yonic artwork that would put Gillian Anderson’s sex therapist Jean Milburn to shame. A movement director, O’Brien started work as a dancer and actor, and began working with drama schools to create “consent-forward” guidelines regarding intimate scenes in the mid-2010s. For O’Brien, it just made sense that sex scenes, like dance or fighting, should be choreographed.

Her work gained wider recognition in the wake of the #MeToo movement, and O’Brien soon pioneered the role of the on-set intimacy coordinator. Fittingly, the show she was first three seasons) presented an equally refreshing narrative around sex and consent. “A lot of [the show’s] intimate encounters don’t go well and end up in disaster in some way,” O’Brien says. “It’s about comedy as well.” That tone was set from the very first vignette, which showed a “full-on”, unguarded and ungraceful sex scene between Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) and boyfriend Adam (Connor Swindells). It perfectly captured the excruciating awkwardness of early sexual encounters; all clunky position changes, fumbled condoms and faked orgasms.

For Sex Education, that opening scene was a mission statement. “We had this conversation, saying, ‘Our young people are turning to pornography [because] there’s nowhere else for them to look,” she says. “[The creators] wanted this to be an alternative, really lifting the lid and helping open out the conversation about sexual content.” In a 2020 interview with Glamour, Wood said of that first season: “I thought, think of the young girls that are going to be watching this and going, ‘Oh thank God, that’s what I do,’ or, ‘We don’t always look perfect.’”

O’Brien stresses that Netflix shows shouldn’t be used in place of comprehensive, “age-appropriate” sex education, which she passionately believes should discuss “anatomy and consent boundaries” and how they integrate with emotions and relationships. Still, with sex ed in schools woefully lacking (my own consisted of horrifying pictures of sexually transmitted infections and watching Juno three times over the course of Year 9), Sex Education is far better than nothing.

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Vogue: Ella-Rae Smith on playing Queen Sareth in the second season of Apple TV+’s ‘Foundation’ alongside Lee Pace and Laura Birn

12/7/2023

It must have been quite a scene to get through. Could you share more about what your experience on set was like?

Yeah, sure. When I was reading the script, I completely forgot that I was going to be the one doing that particular scene. It was a lot to take in when I finally realised. But in reality, I was so looked after; on set, we had the most incredible intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien. She is an absolute legend in the intimacy coordination world and she physically held my hand, looked after me and my performance would not have turned out the way it did without her being there.

I’ve been doing this acting thing for eight years now, and intimacy coordinators weren’t really a thing when I first started out so I have been in situations where I felt uncomfortable or compromised. But for this, O’Brien just made sure I felt safe and comfortable, despite the fact that I was sitting there with my legs wide open—which is quite a weird thing to find yourself doing all day long.

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i: Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield on why he’s standing up for male sexual abuse victims in ‘therapeutic’ play

8/7/2023

Within his own profession, although there has been progress – some “good shifts” recently – in the industry’s handling of sexual harassment, there is always going to be more to do, he said. “In our business, there’s a greater sense of freedom and safety to express and to be heard.” He cited the use of intimacy co-ordinators, who help choreograph sex and nudity scenes, and which have become more commonplace onset in the last few years. In particular, he hailed the work of Ita O’Brien, who was the intimacy coordinator on his most recent film and who wrote the ‘Intimacy on Set’ guidelines now used as best practice within film, theatre and television.

“There was something immediately boundary-making about [it] —– we were suddenly given a really firm playpen by this amazing woman who was creative, sensitive and clear. We knew — myself and the actress I was working with – that if there was any issue, that issue was going to be very, very short lived. Thank God there wasn’t. But that’s a very hard job. It’s a very sensitive job. It’s a really vital thing to have a safe pair of hands to go to, to talk to,” he said.

“You need to make sure that everyone feels safe.”

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Rolling Stone: Is Reality-TV Sex Safe?

24/3/2023

Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien has been working with filmmakers in Hollywood since 2017. She boasts a long list of credits including scripted series like I May Destroy You, Normal People, Sex Education, Watchmen, Conversations with Friends, and Master of None. O’Brien, a leader at the forefront of her industry, said she hasn’t heard much of anything about her role translating onto unscripted productions, but that the possibilities for improvement could be “endless.”

“It is really interesting, this question of the duty of care that’s put in place for people who offer themselves up personally in the service of entertainment and how those people are taken care of in that place,” O’Brien told Rolling Stone. “I know producers do have a duty of care and they do have things put in place, but I do think it would be an exciting place to continue to explore.”

O’Brien emphasized that film sets are people’s workspaces and should be treated as such. There’s been an incredible shift in the entertainment industry with the development of intimacy guidelines, and she said she’d love to see the same done for reality TV. Sometimes, according to O’Brien, “in the adrenaline of the moment you think everything’s fine,” but the aftermath can feel differently.

“I do think in this area it would help to have someone who brings the fundamental tenets of open communication and transparency and agreement and consent and that journey in, and bookending that journey out and checking in afterward,” O’Brien said.

“I do think in this area those aspects of the intimacy guidelines would be really useful to someone who’s there and going, ‘These are all the things that could possibly happen. Yes, you could end up possibly having intercourse under the covers live in front of the cameras, yes you could agree to be in your bikini and the guy being in his boxer shorts, kissing, being fondled,’ and just going, ‘Have a think, what is OK for you? Most importantly, what isn’t OK for you?’ And then in advance just thinking of your boundaries.”

O’Brien recently worked on Magic Mike’s Last Dance, talking to audience members who appear in the film’s final dance scene about their comfort levels receiving lap dances from actors. She used this as an example of what intimacy coordinating could possibly look like in the unscripted space because in this instance she wasn’t dealing with trained actors, but it was her job to check in with everyone before and after filming to make sure they were on the same page about “the journey to clear transparency on what they might experience.”

“At the end of the day, they have to step away from that program and go back into their personal lives and look at that nugget of what they’ve offered in that time for entertainment and make sure that during that time, they haven’t overstepped their own boundaries so it doesn’t damage them not just physically but emotionally and psychologically,” O’Brien said.

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Deadline: ‘Normal People’ & ‘I May Destroy You’ Intimacy Coordinator Launches World’s First Intimacy Practice Degree

20/3/2023

Ita O’Brien, the pioneering Intimacy Coordinator who has worked on the likes of Normal People, I May Destroy You and Sex Education, has founded what is being called the “world’s first degree in intimacy practice.”

O’Brien’s Intimacy on Set outfit has joined with the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts on the two-year course, which will teach best practice in the fast-growing world of intimacy co-ordination and help build and support professionals in the increasingly crucial role. The formal nature of the training recognizes recent developments in the industry, for a role that was barely heard of a decade ago.

O’Brien, who has led the charge to improve intimacy co-ordination on TV and film sets, said: “Intimacy practice is a young profession, and whilst awareness of its existence has grown considerably in the last few years, deep understanding of good practice is missing.

“To ensure we develop a profession which can proudly grow with excellence we need to be able to train talented individuals who can navigate the both physical and emotional journey that each actor will go on, and can responsibly and safely deliver the intimate content as envisioned by the director, the storytelling and each character.”

The course has been forged in partnership with the University of East Anglia and will begin in September.

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Yahoo Entertainment: We Talked to Intimacy Coordinators About Penn Badgley’s Viral Anti-Sex Scene Comments

15/2/2023

Penn Badgley shared last week that he’d requested that the number of intimacy scenes in You Season 4 “go from 100 to zero,” explaining that “fidelity in every relationship, and especially my marriage, is really important to me.” While sex scenes for his character, serial killer Joe Goldberg, remain in the season, there are certainly fewer; the scenes lack close-up shots, and clothes mostly stay on.

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I reached out to Steinrock and another intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, to chat about Badgley’s comments, the surprising backlash they’ve drawn, and the role of intimacy coordinators in building scenes around these kinds of boundaries.

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O’Brien, a UK-based intimacy coordinator who founded Intimacy On Set to train other coordinators and pioneered the role in 2014, told me she’s worked with actors who have different agreements with partners on what they will and won’t do when filming intimate scenes. “I had an actor recently who, in conversation with their wife, said their boundaries were, ‘I don’t want to touch anybody’s breasts or nipples,’” O’Brien said. “He said, ‘This is what my requirements are,’ and because that was so clear, everyone could respect that, we could honor those requirements, and ensure they were honoring their relationship.”

According to O’Brien, it’s not uncommon for actors in relationships to have specific boundaries and conditions for intimacy scenes based on their relationships. She told me the work of fulfilling these needs is about “comfort, consent,” and even “joy.”

“When we’re inviting agreement and consent in all these areas, it means we can all work openly, creatively, feeling empowered,” she said. “That place of feeling safe and thus free creates really beautiful, intimate content.”

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Stylecaster: What Does an Intimacy Coordinator Do? They Make Actors Feel Safe ‘Just Like In A Fight Scene’

15/2/2023

Intimacy is a powerful and valuable storytelling tool, but it requires a great deal of care and can become problematic if not handled properly. When Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan’s film 50 Shades of Grey came out in 2015, it created a great deal of buzz around its steamy sex scenes and encouraged healthy conversations about kinks and consent—even though the film’s portrayal of such as been criticized by some experts.

Intimacy is a complex concept. At the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien, author Lisa Taddeo (Three Women, Ghost Lover) and Barry Jenkins (Producers, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Moonlight), participated in a frank discussion about what intimacy looks like in artistic collaboration and how to navigate a space of great closeness in a professional environment.

When talking about intimacy, we’re not just talking about sex. “There are different levels of intimacy,” said Jenkins at the panel. “It’s important to break down and distinguish the levels and kinds of sexual, spiritual, intellectual and emotional intimacy that exist and what they look like on screen.”

To ensure that certain scenes are shot in a way that is safe, respectful and consensual, many productions are now turning to intimacy coordinators, like O’Brien, to oversee the process. Intimacy coordinators are professionals who meticulously work with actors, directors and production teams to plan and execute “choreography” that all participants feel comfortable with. This also means creating scenes that follow the fundamental tenets of the Intimacy on Set Guidelines.

“The most important aspect of the guidelines is that intimate content is akin to a stunt or a fight. Just as in a fight scene, preparation, rehearsal and bringing good technique is vital,” O’Brien told StyleCaster. “An Intimacy Practitioner (IP) will work creatively with the director, just as a stunt coordinator does, to serve their vision and create a brilliant piece of work.”

When it comes to intimate content involving nudity, or simulated sexual content, O’Brien explains that there is a risk of participants feeling harassed, abused or awkward if not handled professionally. Therefore, the fundamental tenets of the guidelines are open communication and transparency, and agreement and consent of touch and consequently creating clear steps so that the actors are all aware of what will happen.

Even with clear instructions and choreography, coordinating intimacy onscreen can be intimidating for talent who are often shooting scenes where a number of people (cast, crew, lighting, camera operators, etc.) are watching or involved. Content that involves darker content like sexual assault or rape differs from coordinating consensual, loving moments between actors, in that it requires heightened awareness and care concerning the actor playing the victim and the actor playing the perpetrator.

“Before the filming of any non-consensual scenes begins, all of the discussions exploring areas that might make an actor feel vulnerable have already taken place and we create the risk assessment accordingly. Of course, there’s a possibility that this could be triggering and not just for the people who are performing, but possibly anyone who’s involved. It’s important that everyone involved feels safe and that actors can ask for ‘time outs’ during filming,” she added. She also intentionally checks in with the actors for any support they need a few days after the filming.

O’Brien is the implementer. She brings her skill and knowledge of anatomy and choreography to work with all involved participants to create a scene that is realistic. Sometimes that means creating scenes that are not frequently seen. “I worked with Michaela Coel on I May Destroy You and choreographed all the different intimate encounters and explored the different aspects of consent, power play and boundaries. The period sex scene was so exciting, showing the reality and the paraphernalia of engaging with intimacy whilst we are menstruating. This is rarely seen and yet is a fundamental part of all women’s lives. It’s this kind of content that really excites me as a practitioner and it’s so important this reality is shown on our screens.”

O’Brien’s work is not limited to adults, either. As part of her work with the hit show Sex Education, she worked with parents and guardians of minors to navigate the scenes and ask for their guidance. “I must remain open and flexible if it’s not quite right for that production or only a part of the process is required. I must then adapt to support the actors or director in a way that is right for them. Our job is to serve, to be a conduit and to facilitate open conversations,” she explained.

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LBC: Intimacy coaches on Hollywood film sets are 'absolutely essential' to protect young women, says Emma Thompson

10/2/2023

'The crew will be 90% men...'

Emma Thompson says there is absolutely no 'parity' on film sets, which makes it so important to introduce intimacy coordinators on set to 'protect' young women and help them feel comfortable.@AndrewMarr9 pic.twitter.com/TbbbUtNqG7
— LBC (@LBC) February 9, 2023

Time: Why Aren't Movies Sexy Anymore?

3/2/2023

Last Dance is the first post-#MeToo Magic Mike. It contends male strippers help women feel empowered. An entire dance is set to the song “Permission.” “We wanted to reflect the conversation that we’re hearing,” says Soderbergh.

Because sex scenes have long been made by and for men, studios may fear that sexy movies are inherently sexist movies. Revelations like Maria Schneider’s story of feeling violated while filming Last Tango in Paris changed the way Hollywood shoots a sex scene. Filming safely now involves hiring an intimacy coordinator to choreograph the scene and ensure the actors’ comfort.

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There’s more sex on TV than ever. The high schoolers on HBO’s Euphoria are having messy sex, joyless sex, and, occasionally, satisfying sex. White Lotus interrogated the interplay of desire, money, and power. On Netflix’s Sex Education teens explore their urges and sexuality. “Television for decades had to contend with standards and practices and pretty strict censorship,” says Kidman. “With streaming, there’s no ratings, no limitations.” TV has also broken out of the bounds of the straight, white relationships that still dominate film.

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Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien, who was on set for Last Dance, says it can be hard to tell a tale of intimacy in a two-hour format. She points to Hulu’s Normal People, which she also worked on, about young people who fall in and out of bed with each other as their circumstances shift. “Can you imagine that being a film?” asks O’Brien. “Twelve episodes allow you the chance to get at the depth, the complexity, the intensity of that relationship.” Similarly, Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You needs six hours to explore the gray areas of consent.

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Times Radio: Jane Garvey and Fi Glover interview Ita O'Brien

10/1/2023

The Hindu: Harriet Warner on ‘Dangerous Liaisons’: ‘I had to be sure there was something new to say’

7/1/2023

With all the steamy scenes in Dangerous Liaisons, work was cut out for the intimacy coordinator. “Intimate scenes are hard for everyone. For directors, it is wonderful to feel that they can focus on the story that is being told through the intimate scene, without worrying about the logistics.”

It is reassuring for the cast to have a safe space, Harriet adds. “The role of an intimacy coordinator is not only to coordinate the scene, but to make sure that people feel heard and they are comfortable with what they are doing. We were very lucky with Ita O’Brien who did an incredible job and was key to the show.”

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Screen Daily: Micheal Ward on ‘Empire Of Light’ nude scenes: “If Jude Law can do it, I can do it!”

13/12/2022

When filming began in February this year, Ward and Colman’s differing processes dovetailed neatly. Ward “had done a lot of work to understand Stephen — I knew the text and was super-prepared”. Colman “is incredibly raw — we go to set and read it once or twice, and she just knows it. It’s electric.”

The production brought in intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien (TV’s Sex Education) to guide the duo through several sex scenes. “It felt like a dance routine,” says Ward. “We would do counts — ‘and one, and two’. If you were getting too invested to the point where I’m becoming Micheal rather than Stephen, you just go back to the counts. It’s quite magical.”

This rhythm helped Colman overcome initial nerves about the scenes, which the actors again approached from differing perspectives that mirrored their characters’ emotions. “Olivia was so uncomfortable that I felt nervous for her,” remembers Ward, “so [the counts] got us to a place where we could tell the story in the most amazing way.” Conversely, Ward had few qualms about the scene where Stephen sprints naked onto an empty beach. “I’m there for the story,” he laughs. “I watched The Talented Mr. Ripley with Jude Law. He’s got an arse scene — if Jude Law can do it, I can do it mate!”

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The Guardian: ‘I want my monkey!’ Ruth Wilson on villainy, intimacy and returning to His Dark Materials

12/12/2022

It [True Things] feels like a radical statement, from a deceptively quiet film: not everything that goes wrong is because of some bad man. “A lot of people talk about it as a gaslighting toxic relationship. It wasn’t really – she’s the driving force. She’s the one that essentially chooses, decides to pursue him. She’s gonna get what she wants. And when she does get it, she’s, like: ‘Nah, I don’t want it.’ It’s not romantic at all,” Wilson concedes, “but it felt quite honest.”

Nor is it full of nude scenes, maybe contrary to the expectations set up by the fact that it had the same intimacy co-ordinator – Ita O’Brien – as Normal People. Wilson recalls that the director said: “I don’t really care about nudity. To me, that’s not where intimacy is. Yes, nudity is beautiful and wonderful and can be really ugly, and can be all the things you want it to be, but we’re exploring the dynamic between two people – they don’t have to be naked.”

The whole culture around sex scenes has changed a lot, even in the past couple of years. It was as recently as 2018 that Wilson left The Affair – the show, also starring Dominic West, for which she won a Golden Globe – and she’s reticent about it (citing, in the past, a non-disclosure agreement), but there were some allegations at the time of inappropriate behaviour.

Wilson says intimacy coaches have completely changed the game, too, though. “We have proper discussions: what the director is hoping to achieve, what the actors feel comfortable doing and not doing, and how do we really get that anyway? What is the scene actually trying to make happen between the two people in that moment? Because it should be as conversational as any other scene. Sex is so interesting, and so detailed, and so specific to the relationship you’re having with that person and yourself at the time within your life. It really should be as nuanced as that.”

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GQ: The Dangerous Liaisons Starz Prequel Has a Wickedly Toxic Valmont in Nicholas Denton

12/12/2022

You really have to make sure that the space is conducive to that flow state. In acting, it's only conducive when you're in a safe space that allows for freedom. [Intimacy coordinator] Ita O'Brien made us a space safe, and the intimacy scenes are really beautiful because of it. And then we can leave that set and be like, "See you later. We're done now, I'm going to go have a coffee and a hot dog." No emotional destruction or power play. We just made some really cool stuff, and then you go home.

I've done a little bit of intimacy stuff in the theater world, but [an intimacy coordinator] is an incredibly welcome addition to any kind of creative space. I'm learning a lot about how a film set can be run in a respectful way. There's so many stories—especially from Australia, where I'm from—where it's just gone awry. I hear stories about how sets have gone to shit, or theater spaces and rehearsals have been so unsafe.

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Interview Magazine: What You Should Know About Emma Corrin

5/12/2022

Interview with Paul Mescal on "Lady Chatterly's Lover":

MESCAL: When you say, “You’re going to like it,” the class structure of it comes sharply into focus. It’s always there in the background, but that was played so well.

CORRIN: Totally, and he really got that. He spoke a lot about the tenderness in Oliver, which is something that was previously unexplored. We were like, “Wow, there’s a real depth here.” And then he was signed on and we had two weeks of rehearsals with [intimacy coordinator] Ita O’Brien.

MESCAL: Oh, nice. I know Ita well.

CORRIN: We love Ita.

MESCAL: Did she do the animal work with you?

CORRIN: Oh yeah. [Laughs] And then we also did—one of us was blindfolded and led the other outside and touched things and it was about trust and all that jazz.

MESCAL: I have an image of Emma Corrin leading Jack O’Connell blindfolded around the streets of London touching lampposts.

CORRIN: Pretty much. We had two weeks to basically chart the emotional journey for sex scenes, because we didn’t want any of them to be gratuitous.

MESCAL: Those sex scenes feel incredibly modern, and that’s what lasts with me. It’s aesthetically set in that period, but the relationship, if you took the costumes away and the way that they talk to each other sometimes—there are moments where it feels really modern. I don’t know if that dialogue is lifted from the novel.

CORRIN: It’s from the book. It’s wild.

MESCAL: Really? Wow.

CORRIN: Yeah. He uses the word “fuck” and I’m like, I didn’t even think that word existed in the ’20s. It’s an amazingly modern book. Especially the way it talks about sex. But what helped both of us with everything was that we did the dancing in the rain scene the first week of shooting.

MESCAL: Oh whoa, what was that experience like?

CORRIN: The most terrifying but exhilarating thing I’ve ever done in my life. There’s a lot of stuff that can be cushioned with the magic of filmmaking, but in that scene we were literally just running around naked in the rain.

MESCAL: I was like fair fucking play to you both because that’s really hard. How long did you shoot that scene for?

CORRIN: All day. The novelty really wore off by hour 11. It got really cold.

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Insider: 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' star Jack O'Connell says he wishes he had an intimacy coordinator as a teen on 'Skins'

4/12/2022

Jack O'Connell has called intimacy coordinators "necessary" after working with one for the first time in "Lady Chatterley's Lover," and said that "in hindsight," he wishes there was one on the set of his teen drama series, "Skins."

The British actor spoke to Insider ahead of the release of Netflix's new adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's seminal novel, in which he plays the role of Oliver Mellors, the taciturn but tender working-class gamekeeper who embarks on a passionate affair with his employer's wife, Lady Constance Chatterley (Emma Corrin).

Staying true to the story's erotic nature, the film features several intimate scenes between the two, culminating in a euphoric sequence in which they dance completely naked in the rain.

Full-frontal nudity was required of the actor and his costar, and O'Connell said that such scenes were only possible thanks to the help of "fantastic" intimacy coordinator and movement director Ita O'Brien, who previously worked on the BBC/Hulu series "Normal People."

Noting that it was his "first experience" of working with someone who has been specifically employed on set to facilitate the filming of sex scenes, he said he was glad to have them there.

"I think that it is necessary," he told Insider. "To have someone who's officially appointed to oversee that everyone is comfortable, I think it is vital."

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W Magazine: How Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre Crafted Lady Chatterly’s Lover for 2022

30/11/2022

What I enjoyed so much about your Lady Chatterley’s Lover is just how sexy it is. There’s a real lack of eroticism and sexuality on-screen and, as you say, human touch and connection. What’s your perspective on the state of sex and romance on-screen?

I thought [the sex] was very faithful to Lawrence because this is what he always wanted to bring. I felt I needed to bring this as well, but as a revitalization of a human being, as something that heals. Especially the scene where they’re running under the rain naked—there’s something so erotic and so liberating. When I was reading the script, I had forgotten that scene, and I was like, “Well, this is what I want to experience and explore, and bring this ecstatic freedom.” The actors felt the same way.

I saw that you used intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien—who’s worked on Normal People and I May Destroy You—for the sex scenes.

She helped us dive into those scenes and face them as an emotional narrative, to be shameless and not awkward about details. She was there to explain and guide us through it and make it authentic. We had two weeks of rehearsals—Jack, Emma, Ita, the cinematographer [Benoît Delhomme] and I—and we found the right shapes, the right emotions, the best choreography.

Emma and Jack were really involved in this process. It cemented our trust and bond. [The process was] desexualized, which was important—because when you’re rehearsing the scene, there’s always a fine line between reality and fiction, and it can be awkward. As a former actress, I have to say that I was on set a while ago and I had to face this kind of scene. No one would tell me anything and guide me through it. I was petrified. It’s not only that it’s not pleasant, but you also don’t do a good job because you are not fully prepared in a safe space.

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Sky News: Emma Corrin: 'Questions about class, sex and pleasure are still relevant today'

26/11/2022

She also says that making a movie with so much sex in it "was a challenge, because sexual intercourse can be really boring on-screen".

However, with the help of intimacy coordinator and movement director Ita O'Brien - who has a background in dance - Clermont-Tonnerre says they used "choreography" to "say something about the emotional growth" of each scene and avoid anything "gratuitous or redundant".

The filmmaker also says the book was well ahead of its time.

"DH Lawrence was the first writer to address female sexual pleasure. And I think this is always important to glorify the body of a woman and what he really wanted to say was that sexuality is pure and beautiful and nothing shameful and dirty," she said.

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The Guardian: An explosive act of violence: why Britten’s Rape of Lucretia speaks to our brutal times

11/11/2022

Finally, directing is about drawing the best from performers: a function not only of rigorous and precise work, but also of a supportive and safe rehearsal room. We worked closely with intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien and movement director Sarita Piotrowski on making scenes that honour the truth and continued relevance of this story, while respecting human feelings of discomfort and vulnerability. In the old days, performers and audience alike had merely to accept traumatic material: today we place similar emphasis on alerting our audience to what they will see and hear, treating subjects with the sensitivity they deserve.

The Rape of Lucretia will never be an opera like Carmen or The Marriage of Figaro, drawing in large crowds. It is a strange, unsettling, at times unbearably private piece, but it will remain a work whose originality and unique force will continue to trouble audiences for as long as the awful crime at its centre blights humankind.

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Daily Mail: 'You shouldn't do intimacy scenes without a coordinator': Emma Corrin weighs in on debate about intimacy coaches as they discuss filming racy scenes for Lady Chatterley's Lover

10/11/2022

Addressing the sex scenes on the radio show, Emma gushed over their intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien, who also worked on Normal People, saying her role was vital during filming.

The introduction of intimacy coaches have caused much debate, with Emma weighing in on the issue as they said they are pleased the film industry has started to use them.

'We worked with an amazing intimacy coordinator, Ita O'Brien, who also did Normal People and that's something that the industry has really woken up to,' they said.

'I always compare it to like, you wouldn't do a fight sequence or a stunt sequence without a stunt coordinator, and you shouldn't do intimacy scenes without an intimacy coordinator.'

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Netflix Queue: EMMA IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

7/11/2022

Corrin was attached to the project before the search for the right Mellors began. Given the levels of intimacy required, the actor had to be someone who could balance great vulnerability and rawness with physical magnetism — not just “the gruff guy who lives in the woods, who represents sex,” as Corrin puts it. O’Connell, whose career from the days of Skins and Starred Up onward has tended toward explorations of the sensitive spots that lie beneath hard, masculine exteriors, was the perfect fit. “We got on well, we’re very good friends,” Corrin says, adding that they rehearsed intensively with Sex Education and Master of None intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien beforehand, blocking every sex scene beat by beat like a dance. “I think [they] are just the most brilliant people, and so essential. You wouldn’t do a stunt without a stunt coordinator, so why would you do a sex scene without an intimacy coordinator?”

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The Guardian: ‘Masculinity can be expressed in many ways’: actor Paul Mescal on luck, sex scenes and risk taking

6/11/2022

But Normal People endeared him to fans who were patently less interested in his craft than in his body. Mescal never got comfortable with seeing naked pictures of himself across the internet, though he says he’s proud of the sex scenes because of their authenticity. He and his co-star, Daisy Edgar-Jones, worked closely with an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, who compares her job to teaching people to waltz.

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The New York Times: In ‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton Play the Game

4/11/2022

The sex scenes could have made for more mortifying stories. But the actors worked closely with the show’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, to make them feel safe and liberating. “It was actually a really good bonding thing,” Denton said. And with sex out of the way — lots of it, especially in the first episode — they could navigate the riskier contours of Camille and Pascal’s relationship.

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W: The New Lady Chatterley's Lover Trailer Is Unbelievably Steamy

3/11/2022

Corrin was very much on board with de Clermont-Tonnerre’s vision, telling the director, “‘I want to explore that feeling of ecstatic freedom’...Emma’s such a free spirit and I think they wanted to express that through Connie.”

The film did have an intimacy coordinator on set, Ita O’Brien, who worked on Hulu’s Normal People, so viewers can enjoy the intimacy knowing there was a lot of communication and consent involved and a whole lot of rehearsal. Corrin told Vanity Fair that the “sex scenes would never feel gratuitous and it would always feel justified.”

“I felt so in awe of it, and also of Connie’s whole journey with her sexuality and her own access to pleasure and her body,” Corrin added.

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Metro: Pioneering intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien on being an industry trailblazer in the wake of #MeToo: ‘I didn’t jump on a bandwagon’

23/10/2022

By Tori Brazier

Ita O’Brien has been working in the theatre, TV and film industry for almost 40 years – first as a dancer and actor before training as a movement director. However, it is her role as an intimacy coordinator that has seen her feted by actors and pushed to the forefront of a global conversation following the birth of the #MeToo movement five years ago this month.

She is one of the most positive consequences in Hollywood of the downfall of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, since sentenced to 23 years in jail for his sex crimes against women in the industry.

With the formation of the Time’s Up organisation in response to #MeToo in January 2018, productions started realising more formal processes were needed to protect both crew members and performers in the workplace.

O’Brien – herself invited to join the Time’s Up UK women’s committee during its first month – seemed the perfect answer: her previously self-developed intimacy rehearsal protocols for sex scenes had already been warmly received by both Mountview drama school in 2015, and actors’ union Equity and the Personal Managers’ Association (the UK’s leading professional body for talent agencies and actors’ usual sole advocates) in the first half of 2017.

And all before any hint of Weinstein’s misconduct openly surfaced.

From Sex Education to It’s a Sin, and Normal People to I May Destroy You, most of the sex scenes that have caught viewers’ imaginations and fired up conversations on social media in recent years have been O’Brien’s work.

While an intimacy coordinator’s role is reasonably self-explanatory as both an advocate for the actors and an aid in realising the director’s vision for any intimate content in a safe but creatively satisfying way (see credits above), there are also a fair few misconceptions floating around.

‘We are not sex experts. We are not sex therapists or couples’ therapists, that is what we are not!’ O’Brien tells Metro.co.uk, laughing at the misapprehensions people often have.

‘What we are experts at is supporting the actor-director process. And we’re experts in choreography, body knowledge and anatomy, and in supporting that choreography telling the right character story. I am not an expert in sexual content at all – that’s what I will research. I’ve got my books. When I did Gentleman Jack, I had to go and research. When I did It’s a Sin, I talked to people from that community, as any actor would with any subjects that they’re asked to do.’

In O’Brien’s eyes, the intimacy coordinator fulfills a role on set that is as vital as that of a stunt coordinator or choreographer – both experts in certain types of movement, and neither saddled with the assumption that they are purely there as some sort of overzealous health and safety monitor.

She points out that people recognise those roles are there to make ‘exciting’ content, and it’s exactly the same for an intimacy coordinator, who also bears in mind an actor’s personal requirements and follows ‘a professional process’. A director also wouldn’t assume they could film a fight or dance scene without an expert on hand.

‘But the idea [with intimate content had been] we’re all sexual beings, so do we need a practitioner?’ adds O’Brien.

As a movement specialist since 2007, O’Brien had the right mindset to understand how the role of an intimacy coordinator was both sorely needed and where it could be slotted into the creative process of a production.

She had also recognised the dangers of continuing to ignore the vulnerability of actors and crew members expected to film and edit sex scenes without proper structure and guidance under the old adage of ‘just go for it’.

‘That was a statement that used to happen before Weinstein: If you’re an actor, that’s your job. You’re expected to be naked, you’re expected to perform sexual content. And if you’re a good actor, that’s what you’ll do.’

O’Brien is also very aware of the consequences of the pressures of an unguided intimate scene on its actors.

‘Asking them to explore any degree of simulated sexual content or degrees of their nakedness and degrees of touch, when it’s not done well, without agreement and consent, then injury can be physical – but it also can be emotional and psychological. And that injury actually has way more far-reaching effects than perhaps hurting an ankle.’

Taking it back to Me Too and Time’s Up, she adds: ‘And that’s the shift: while actors were speaking about how awkward intimate scenes were to do, the seriousness and the impact of that awkwardness actually being an injury wasn’t really taken into account. And that’s the difference with the women bravely speaking up about the Weinstein allegations. As Oprah Winfrey said at the Golden Globes that year, you are being listened to and heard. And then the industry was saying we cannot turn a blind eye any longer to predatory behaviour, we have to do better. And in that intention, then codes of conduct being drawn up – that was the difference, that was a turning point.’

As the UK’s first intimacy coordinator and one of the global leading experts, O’Brien is still taken aback at the ‘amazing coincidence’ of her developing her practice in her own work in the years before the industry’s watershed moment in 2017.

‘If you talk about your life being guided, all those different things that have brought me to this point, the fact that I happened to have been working on it, the fact that Meredith Dufton happened to ask me to come in and start teaching it [at Mountview] – all of those things just were put in place – and that I happened to have already shared the work [with agents] in June of 2017.’

O’Brien was accused by some of ‘jumping on a bandwagon’ with her work, who weren’t aware of the years of ongoing development.

‘That’s why I think what I was sharing had the impact, because it was underpinned by all of my years of a career,’ she explains, ahead of marking 40 years in the industry next year.

She labels Sex Education’s release as one of the first major breakthroughs with getting the role of intimacy coordinator more accepted and appreciated in its different facets – and more understood.

‘In 2019 when Sex Education came out, the world was seeing the honesty that could come from the intimate content. And the actors being able to talk about not just the exciting and ground-breaking intimate content, but how it was created. That was the beginning of the industry beginning to understand the positive, [and] that’s a win-win all around.’

Despite this, she does reveal that it has not been the easiest road to industry-wide acceptance, but she has been lucky enough to have had prominent support along the way.

Double Bafta TV award winner Michaela Coel dedicated her second gong for her ground-breaking show I May Destroy You at the 2021 ceremony – for her acting – to intimacy directors and gave a shoutout to O’Brien specifically. She thanked her intimacy coordinator ‘for making the space safe for creating physical, emotional and professional boundaries so that we can make work about exploitation, loss of respect and about abuse of power without being exploited or abused in the process’.

O’Brien was, understandably, very touched by Coel’s public callout, and acknowledges that it has ‘gone a long way in the industry’, for which she is ‘utterly grateful’.

However, she also reveals initial difficulties she faced with less invested producers and directors as the popularity of her role mushroomed in the immediate fallout after Weinstein – they wanted to be able to say they had hired her as an intimacy coordinator, but weren’t interested in following the process properly.

‘What was happening is that I was asked to come work on productions where it was just box-ticking, and actually nobody on the floor really wanted it. And I had a period when I was walking away from set and I’d come home and say, “I can’t keep doing this”. Because I was basically getting the pushback and the expectation that the actor would have got, and it was really, really, really challenging.’

Then came the unexpected saviour of lockdown in March 2020, where the public were confined to their homes and limited in social activities, leading to an increased focus on television, just when Normal People, I May Destroy You and It’s a Sin all hit our screens, again with O’Brien’s name attached.

She remembers the further impact those shows had on the industry and audiences alike as they tuned in.

‘The industry has been a lot more open to really continuing to work on it,’ O’Brien shares of now.

With her success in such a delicate role though, O’Brien understood pretty quickly that as a new – and as yet, unregulated – job, the position was open to potential abuse. As a professional that shares her self-developed guidelines, and was doing so on Zoom during Covid, she’s had to stamp down on people attempting to use her name in a pretence at official intimacy coordinator ‘training’ – which she does offer – in order to land a job with major networks.

Now she gets attendees to sign to acknowledge that these sessions are not formal training because she knows just how ‘dangerous’ it is when fake practitioners declare themselves intimacy coordinators, which she says can often leave actors working with them ‘traumatised’.

One of her (proudly) acknowledged official trainees though has been making headlines with her work on HBO smash-hit series House of the Dragon, the hotly anticipated prequel to Game of Thrones.

‘Most recently in the press has been one of my fully trained intimacy practitioners, Miriam Lucia. She was one of the practitioners who was with me right from the get-go. And she’s been the practitioner on House of the Dragon, one of the fully trained and accredited intimacy on-set practitioners on the show, and it’s been fantastic to see her work acclaimed!’

As with actors struggling to watch to watch themselves in something, is it difficult for O’Brien to watch sex scenes in other shows and films without analysing the work of colleagues or dwelling on a lack of intimacy coordinator if it’s something older?

‘It works both ways, actually. Sometimes I watch it and go, “Oh, yeah, they could have done with someone who was on that.” And sometimes I go, “Oh, that was so good. Who did that?”’

Generous with her praise, she immediately names two shows that have wowed her: Perry Mason for how ‘raw and messy’ it is, and Lovecraft County for its ‘exciting’ incorporation of magical realism.

As someone who has been in high demand in recent years, O’Brien had two major new films debut at London Film Festival earlier this month, a new adaptation of DH Lawrence’s famously steamy novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, starring Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell, and Sam Mendes’ latest release, Empire of Light, with Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Toby Jones and Colin Firth.

Taking in her new and current projects, as well as the gratitude she feels for her Gentleman Jack writer and director Sally Wainwright and Sex Education producers Ben Taylor and John Jennings all fully embracing her developing best practice for the first time on TV, O’Brien beams broadly.

‘I feel I have to pinch myself. I’m humbled and I feel so lucky to be able to work with these amazing people.’

Even with the stars aligning as they have throughout her career so far, the fact that O’Brien’s ambitious expectations from five years ago have been met seems to have slightly awed her.

‘I was saying in 2017, my hope is that within five years that nobody would dream of doing a scene without an intimacy coordinator. And that is what’s happened, which is incredible.’

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