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The Cut: The Sex Director

30/7/2020

By Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz

Between Normal People and I May Destroy You, we get good sex, bad sex, and everything in between, with the latter focusing on sexual assault and non-consent. Ostensibly, these two shows are very different outside of this emphasis on intimate content, which is perhaps why they also find common ground in a shared production member: British intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien.

Intimacy coordinators play a new role in the entertainment industry; as the name implies, they oversee and help direct intimate scenes. When used correctly, they’re brought in early in the filmmaking process, while the scene in question is still on the storyboard. O’Brien describes her job as akin to the stunt coordinators’, which, if you’ve ever watched a Fast & Furious film, is requisite. “They listen to the director, read the script, find out what the storytelling is for that stunt, what the risks are and then teach their actors or stunt doubles techniques in order to make that stunt safe. They put in place things like crash mats and then choreograph the whole thing really clearly,” she said when we spoke over Zoom last week. “Just as a stunt coordinator does, we’re putting in our ‘crash mats.’”

Hiring an on-set intimacy coordinator became more common in the wake of the Me Too movement, but O’Brien had been working closely on sex scenes for years before. She used to work as a movement director — she created a set of guidelines and best practices around scenes with sex and nudity in 2014 — and in 2017, she was hired in that specific capacity for the first time.

The Cut spoke with O’Brien about her job, the film industry’s relationship to intimate content today, and how she built sex scenes for two shows that explore completely different kinds of intimate encounters.

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27/7/2020

Another great strength of the series is that the sex feels authentic and engaging but not at all exploitative. You were initially concerned that working with an intimacy coordinator might be a barrier between you and the actors, how did that role integrate into and assist the production?

Yeah, I was concerned about that. I had never heard of that role so I thought, what is this and are we sure we need it? There have been great sex scenes shot in the history of film, we do lots of difficult things so do we really need a special role there. But actually, when I met Ita O’Brien my feelings changed. What she’s trying to do is to take away all of this fumbly embarrassing conversation and provide a really open forum where you can all talk like grown ups. What are the images that we’re trying to create and how do we go about doing it involving everybody in a way that makes them feel heard. Ita’s very practical as well. She has all these garments and padding and she’s very good at devising how to support the actors’ body weight in ways that make it look like they’re in insanely close proximity but in reality not so much. She also provides a forum for us to talk. For example, for me to be able to say, “Oh I think this would be good”, without the actors feeling any pressure to say, “Oh yes of course. I’d love to do that.”

If you’re an established filmmaker, it’s understandable if young actors feel like they want to please and say “yes of course”, and do something because I think it’s right, not because they feel right about it. It would make me anxious to ask if I felt they were going to say yes just because they didn’t want to disappoint me. Ita’s brilliant, she has a way of talking about this stuff which makes it really clear to the actors that they are central to this and that we’re all working in a collegiate way around what they’re comfortable with. And so I never felt that there was ever any pressure which was a great thing to be able to know.

Did Ita’s presence and the back and forth between the four of you lead to the restaging of any of the planned sex scenes?

Well I tend to be pretty flexible, at least around script anyway, so I move things to different locations, I change dialogue. I do all sorts of things all the way through production including on the day. So actually that fitted with me really well because Ita would suggest that something might fit better with the meaning of the scene as she’s very involved in discussing character as well. We talked about every intimate scene in advance and if it ever felt like, it would be better to do this here or this doesn’t feel like a scene that should happen in this way as written let’s do it that way, we would always make that change.

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Who What Where: Unraveling Fashion, Beauty, and Trauma in I May Destroy You

20/7/2020

by DREW ELOVITZ

Not only was the BBC happy for Coel to write the entire series, but it also wanted her to star in it, direct it, executive-produce it, and maintain ownership rights over the original content. “This was a dream. … They really gave me what I needed, which is still quite hard to fathom,” she says, smiling. In addition to having more agency behind the camera, Coel advocated for both a full-time therapist on retainer for cast and crew members as well as an intimacy director, Ita O’Brien, to create a safe and supportive atmosphere on set.

I noticed O’Brien’s name in the credits, prompting me to ask Coel if she had ever worked with an intimacy director before. She hadn’t, and neither had Weruche Opia, the actress who plays Terry, Arabella’s best friend. “I’ve seen how complex things can get when you don’t have an intimacy director,” Coel explains. After first learning about O’Brien from an article in The Guardian, both Coel and her co–executive producer, Phil Clarke, felt that this off-screen role would be an essential element of the show, particularly given its subject matter. “It’s not just sexual intimacy,” Coel explains, “Some of it is sex without consent.”

O’Brien, who also worked on Hulu’s Normal People, played a significant part in empowering actors on set. This included Opia, who opted to use a body double for her character’s sex scene. “[O’Brien] was very inclusive,” recalls Opia in a separate Zoom interview. “She showed me what Terry would be doing as my character and made sure I was comfortable with what was being shown. I felt respected, and I felt heard,” Opia affirms, concluding, “I think it’s essential in filming scenes that are so intimate and vulnerable. I think it’s a brilliant idea and should be an industry standard.” Coel concurs, noting that it was important to her to create an environment in which her colleagues were supported. “You may be empowered [by O’Brien] to do the scene, but you’re also empowered to say I don’t actually want to do this,” she explains. “I love the fact that [Opia] felt she could express that. … To have that happen was incredible.”

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Tyla: Why The Period Scene In 'I May Destroy You' Was So Important

17/7/2020

By JOANNA FREEDMAN

Creating a scene so viscerally relatable to half of the UK's population, and showing it authentically, is no mean feat.

Of course, it's down to Michaela's writing, first and foremost; then there's the props department, the actors and the production team. But the one woman tying all of those departments together was the show's intimacy co-ordinator, Ita O'Brien.

Intimacy co-ordinators are a pretty new phenomenon, only emerging in TV and film in the wake of #MeToo, with a long way to go before their use is standardised.

But their work couldn't be more essential; not only ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the actors, but choreographing the sex scenes down to every fine detail, and ensuring that every tryst looks as real and honest as possible on screen.

During the creation of I May Destroy You, Ita worked with the cast in rehearsals where they'd discuss each scene moment by moment, ensuring "every touch had intention".

And, as she tells Tyla, it's for this exact reason that scenes like the period sex ring so true.

"With I May Destroy You, it was amazing having Michaela there [on set]," Ita tells Tyla. "Because she's seeing it play out detail for detail and we were discussing everything. I'd be like, that's amazing - why is that not happening here?'

"And she'd reply: 'Oh it felt too much'. We always had that dovetailing back and forth."

In the past, on-screen depictions of periods have warily cowered away from this very notion of being 'too much' - after all, it wasn't only recently that sanitary commercials stopped using blue liquid instead of red on screen.

And when films did dare to show blood, it would be used as a somewhat icky or shameful plot device - like the shower scene in Carrie, or when a horrified Emmeline thinks she's bleeding in Blue Lagoon, only to discover its just her time of the month.

But, Ita explains, I May Destroy You does quite the opposite, relishing in its own realism and showing us Arabella's blood so matter-or-factly we're left wondering why any TV producer had ever raised an eyebrow at such moments in the past.

"Isn't it incredible that half of the population spend 480 weeks of their lives in menstruation?" Ita says. "And yet think about how little we see it."

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Syfy: BRAVE NEW WORLD SHOWRUNNER: ALDOUS HUXLEY 'WOULDN'T BE VERY SURPRISED' BY THE CHANGES

17/7/2020

By James Grebey

One thing that didn’t change from the book? The sex. New London is a promiscuous society, something that Wiener says was always going to be part of the show, even when it was being developed for network TV rather than Peacock, which, as a streaming service, can show more than viewers might otherwise see while channel-surfing.

“I think [executives] realized there was no way to adequately serve the idea of New London without being able to show how New Londoners achieve pleasure and how they spend their time and how their attitudes in terms of modesty and sexuality are different than us,” Wiener says. But, in perhaps another way of showing how our culture has evolved, behind-the-scenes, he stresses that the series’ intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, was essential to bringing New London to the screen safely, respectfully, and consensually.

“She empowered everybody and everyone felt really secure, and it kind of demystified [the sex and nude scenes] in a way that allowed everybody to kind of be free in the way that New Londoners would be,” Wiener says, also complimenting his actors for being “brave enough to go there.”

All of this results in a version of Brave New World that feels both of-the-moment and indebted to its trailblazing, nearly century-old book. And, before you ask, Wiener is aware of the irony that, ultimately, Brave New World, a work about a populace who have been made complacent with titillating pleasure and entertainment, is now yet another new series on yet another streaming service.

“We don't expect that irony to be lost on the audience either,” Wiener says with a laugh. He actually leaned into it. The fake commercials for The Savage Lands and new varieties of Soma were intended to blend seamlessly with real commercials, back when Brave New World was being developed for ad-supported TV.

“On some level, we are part of what Huxley was concerned about,” Wiener says. “At the same time, I hope ultimately that awareness and that intentional irony allows people to ask the questions that I think Huxley would want them to ask.”

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TV Insider: 'Brave New World' Takes a Dark Turn

17/7/2020

By Martin Holmes

Let's start with that sex scene, shall we? Actually, let's talk about Brave New World's obsession with sex, nudity, and orgies in general. Do they serve a thematic purpose or are they merely cheap titillation? Honestly, it's probably a bit of both. But it's not as if any of this is widely off-book from Aldous Huxley's version, which was full of frivolous fornication. What should be noted is how the show worked with intimacy coordinators Ita O'Brien (who also consulted on I May Destroy You and Normal People) and Kate Lush. I think this goes a long way in giving the actors agency in scenes which can be rather exposing and uncomfortable.

"Kate and Ita gave our actors such confidence, command and ownership of the experience of being vulnerable," showrunner David Weiner told Drama Quarterly. "You're exposed, and they just embraced it." You can definitely tell how much it helped with Lenina's (Jessica Brown Findlay) sex scenes. Lenina's character remains present in these vulnerable moments. She's not just a naked body thrown in for the raunchy thrill of it all. You're still emotionally connected to her and her reactions to what is happening in the moment.

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Vogue: ‘I May Destroy You’ Star Weruche Opia Is Nobody’s Sidekick

16/7/2020

BY HAYLEY MAITLAND

One area in which Coel went out of her way to make Opia feel safe? The scene in which Terry has a threesome while visiting Arabella in Ostia, Italy. Opia planned to turn down the role – her dream part – if any form of nudity was required. Under other circumstances, that might have lost her the job. On a set run by Coel, it meant that Opia was not only provided with a body double, but that the programme’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, kept Opia abreast of the plans for every shot to make sure that she felt happy with the way the scene would appear on film.

Notably, Coel also had dedicated counsellors on hand throughout filming in case either talent or crew members struggled with the more graphic material – and it’s no accident that Terry’s decision to institute a veritable self-care regime for Arabella post-assault is a major plot point in the series. “It’s definitely becoming clearer right now what a vacuum there is in terms of support for Black mental health,” Opia says, nodding to the experiences of the Black community following the death of George Floyd. “As a generation, we’re more conscious of how important mental health really is – not just in terms of what’s happening in our own lives, but in terms of the residual effects of the past as well. We’re only just starting to realise how much we’ve internalised the mistreatment of Black people from so far back.”

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Stylecaster: How Shows Like ‘Normal People’ Are Normalizing Consent

16/7/2020

by EMILY BELFIORE

Part of the reason why Edgar-Jones and Mescal were able to portray this level of affection with such accuracy was because the actors had worked with intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien when choreographing each sex scene. To create a climate on set where both actors felt comfortable and safe, O’Brien constantly checked in with them to receive their consent before proceeding with the directions for the scene, which further contributed to Edgar-Jones and Mescal’s palpable onscreen chemistry.

In fact, in an interview with Vanity Fair, O’Brien said that Normal People directors Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald’s approach to sex scenes had changed considerably in response to the #MeToo movement, noting, “With #MeToo and Time’s Up, and all the industry going, ‘We have to do better,’ and then suddenly the codes of conduct are going, ‘We can no longer as an industry tolerate abusive predatory behavior.’

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New Statesman: Meet the woman behind sex scenes in I May Destroy You, Normal People and Sex Education

14/7/2020

Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien choreographs some of television’s most impactful moments with her straightforward, yet pioneering, approach.

By ANOOSH CHAKELIAN

A professional intimacy coordinator, O’Brien seems to be behind every memorable sex scene on our screens this year – from “ugly” orgasm faces and dysfunctional masturbation in kooky Netflix high school drama Sex Education to menstrual blood and rape flashbacks in the innovative BBC One comedy-drama exploring consent, I May Destroy You.

The latter series ended this week with a characteristically complex and unpredictable finale: a stream of consciousness narrative punctuated with the jarring beats of a deliberately unsettled storytelling structure. And, of course, sex.

O’Brien calls it a “joy” to have worked with Michaela Coel, the show’s writer and lead actor. “She was phenomenal,” she tells me. “Watching her ability to swap hats – her centredness and humility, her ordinariness and inclusiveness, while also doing this ground-breaking intimate content, exposing assaults in so many places and confronting them, and the period sex, I was going, ‘Yes! Thank you!’”

These scenes, some based on the writer’s own experience, can be harrowing. O’Brien makes sure that the majority of the work is done before the day the scene is shot – speaking separately to each actor, checking up with the director and crew to avoid any surprises, marking each beat of the scene’s choreography in the script, and ensuring consent for every touch. For example, if the scene requires a reach for genitalia, the actor decides where precisely on their body the touch can land instead – a specific point on their thigh, perhaps.

This method brings a calm, professional atmosphere to scenes that can otherwise be nerve-racking to the cast. In episode six of I May Destroy You, for example, a schoolboy called Ryan attempts without permission to film the girl he’s having sex with in a disused schoolroom.

“He was really nervous, it’s quite a confronting scene,” O’Brien says of the actor, Josiah Mutupa. “But we did a full-day rehearsal, and it’s just choreography, you have all that structure to rehearse, so by the time you come back on set, you have absolute clarity.”

She reads out a text she received from Mutupa afterwards. “‘Filming that scene was so much fun, and I’m so glad I met you.’ That’s the kind of response I’m looking for, so that you know actors are proud of what they’ve done, empowered.”

Accustomed to working on set and stage since she started out as a dancer in musical theatre at 18, the 55-year-old has been stuck indoors during lockdown, watching her scenes unfold along with TV audiences.

“I’ve been sitting here at my desk and all of this has been happening out in the world,” she tells me from her dimly-lit bohemian study, which has midnight blue walls and is laden with patterned throws. “These series are so timely and so perfect, you couldn’t have predicted that when we were making them.”

Taught to dance from the age of three, O’Brien was brought up by Irish parents in Bromley, south east London. Her mother had moved to London to train as a midwife, and her father was from a family of horse trainers who moved to England when he was ten.

Working as a movement director since 2006, after ten years dancing and eight years acting, O’Brien noticed a lack of direction during intimate scenes. Actors were usually told to just “go for it”, she says with a wince, imitating humiliating instructions from clueless directors: “Go harder, harder! Go faster, faster!”

“If you’re going to do a stunt, you have a stunt coordinator,” she says. “If you want a fight to look good, you rehearse it, you put down crash mats – you don’t say: ‘Here’s a sword, now jump in front of the camera.’”

“And we know there’s a danger that someone will get hurt or break an ankle if they’re just told, ‘get up and do a waltz’ – they need to be choreographed.”

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Esquire: Inside the Necessary Work of Intimacy Coordinators, Who Make Hollywood Sex Scenes Safe

13/7/2020

BY ADRIENNE WESTENFELD

You may not know Ita O’Brien’s name, but if you’re at all in the loop about prestige television, you know her work. O’Brien is a pioneer in the emerging field of intimacy coordinators, a new category of Hollywood professionals who work on film and television sets to choreograph simulated sex between actors. Yet this challenging and necessary work is so much more than choreography—it’s also a constant negotiation of consent and communication, with intimacy coordinators balancing the safety of performers alongside the vision of writers and directors. In the wake of the #MeToo movement and Hollywood’s continuing reckoning with rampant sexual misconduct, intimacy coordinators have become a fixture on film and television sets, yet O’Brien argues that the role has yet to reach a necessary point of saturation in the industry, with a long road still ahead in the way of standardizing how we keep actors safe.

O’Brien has lent her talents to projects including Normal People, The Great, Watchmen, Sex Education, and most recently, I May Destroy You, where she faced one of her most provocative and boundary-shattering assignments yet. With Chewing Gum genius Michaela Coel spearheading the project as writer, director, and star, the show centers on Arabella, a gregarious young writer in London who must question her reality and rebuild her life after she is drugged and sexually assaulted. Inspired by Coel’s own experience of suffering a sexual assault after her drink was spiked, I May Destroy You threads a breathtaking needle in depicting the messy, non-binary nature of consent, as well as in showcasing sexual encounters not often seen on television: an assault involving two men, an assault involving the removal of a condom mid-intercourse, and period sex, just to name a few. O’Brien was instrumental in bringing these scenes to life, working closely with Coel and other performers to fully and safely realize what existed on the page.

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O'Brien's path to becoming an intimacy coordinator started at the tender age of three, when she began training as a ballerina. She trained all the way to adulthood, working as a musical theater dancer and actor before she completed a Master of Arts in Movement Studies at the Central School of Speech and Drama. When she put on her own play in 2009, while working as a movement teacher and movement director, she began exploring processes and practices by which she could keep her actors safe as they performed intimate content. Those processes and practices grew into her Intimacy on Set Guidelines, which are increasingly becoming standard throughout the industry.

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Esquire: Tell me about your path to becoming an intimacy coordinator and developing your Intimacy on Set Guidelines.

Ita O'Brien: I taught from 2008 to 2015. I gradually honed what I taught and how I taught it, then developed guidelines, which I was asked to share with Equity in the UK in the summer of 2017. Then Weinstein happened, and the industry said, “We have to do better.” But even at that point, intimacy coordinators weren’t standard. Sex Education was the first program that employed me purely as an intimacy coordinator; they said, “We need you because of the content and the young cast.” We worked together to integrate how the process of the intimacy guidelines worked, particularly when it came to rehearsal time. When I say we need to rehearse, people always say, “You're taking up too much time.” In the early days, it was always that feeling of coming in and having to push back to get the time and space we needed.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
There’s some irony in people comparing intimacy coordinators to stunt coordinators. I'd say, “I need time to rehearse,” and then I’d see a note in the rehearsal schedule about a stunt rehearsal. I’d say, “That's what I need.” They would never talk about a stunt and say, “We'll give you the swords, we'll put you in front of the camera, and you'll just get on with it.” Everybody knows that's ridiculous, but that's the equivalent of what's happening with intimate content. Since April 2018, there’s been huge learning and huge development. There’s been constant professional interrogation of rewriting intimacy coordinators into the processes and protocols, but we're now consistently having the joy of acting as bystanders on amazing productions, and then producing the work safely.

ESQ: Walk me through the process of choreographing a scene with actors.

IO: This situation is best practiced before the filming event starts. The work is always about honoring the writing and the director's vision. In the case of I May Destroy You, for the scene of sexual assault in episode four, we were there with Paapa and Samson [Ajewole, who plays Malek], as well as with Sam Miller [co-director] and Michaela. Michaela kept saying, “And then this happens,” but I said, “That's not written. You've got every single detail absolutely clear, but why isn't this written?” She said, “I don’t want everybody to be reading that.” I said, “That’s what I need, and then I can give you the scene that you want.” Once we get all that detail, we can create a basic shape. What’s so important with a scene is what the positions will be. Once we know the shape, we agree on touch. Where can we touch? Where's your yes? Most importantly, where’s no? What's not in play? Once you know what body parts are in play, we walk through the scene, getting agreement and consent about positions and where to touch. We also put safety cushions in place—if you've got genital to genital contact, we'll put cushions in place so that during the rehearsal process, you’ll feel more comfortable.

It’s also about making sure that the details are right. One of the details with anal sex, for example, is the difference of legs parallel to legs in turnout. Samson would say, “It’s got to be legs in parallel.” If those details are wrong, the queer community will know. We have to make sure we’re honoring those details and getting them right. That much is all rehearsed, and then when it comes to the day on set, which is months later, I always reconnect with the director the night before, reconnect with the actors, evaluate any concerns, and reconnect with wardrobe. Back on set on the day of, it’s the same thing—touch base with the script, reread it, redefine it physically, and re-agree on consent. It’s about choreographing the beats and making sure that every single beat in the scene is honored and clocked, so that there's an absolutely clear and known physical structure. Once the performers know that and it comes time to film it, they can inject it with emotional beats.

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