Press

Decider: ‘Foundation’ Star Leah Harvey on Gender-Flips, Action Scenes, and Shipping Salvor and Phara

16/10/2021

Salvor does have a romance. I’m really struck by how in the show, sexuality and intimacy is just romantic. In other shows, it’s for shock value or it’s racy. Every single moment of intimacy felt earned, it felt dreamy and passionate. And in this case, it’s your character’s relationship with Hugo (Daniel McPhearson). Can you talk to me about how Salvor sees that relationship, and how you saw and approached those kissing scenes and more intimate moments with the other actors?

We had an amazing intimacy coach, Ita O’Brien, and some of the people that worked with her worked with us, and she made those scenes very, very easy and comfortable, and I think that we ended up with the best result. But yeah, I think that they are beautiful, and I think that it shows what Salvor’s fighting for, actually. When you get to see the connection she has with Hugo and her parents and just anyone, because, you know, a hug is intimate. A kiss on the cheek is intimate. It shows what we’re all fighting for, and that’s why I think it’s so earned and it’s so beautifully put in the show. It’s humanity, and it’s wonderful to be able to do that, to show that.

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The Times: BBC makes sex scene co-ordinators mandatory

15/10/2021

Ita O’Brien worked as an intimacy coach on Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You

The BBC has made intimacy co-ordinators mandatory for all its television programmes after actors including Michaela Coel said they were essential to filming sex scenes safely.

Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s director of television, has told external production companies that co-ordinators “must be engaged” when filming scenes of an intimate nature.

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Stylist: Jodie Comer exclusive: “The Last Duel holds a mirror up to society”

15/10/2021

The rape scene is particularly traumatic. How did you approach filming that?

We had an amazing intimacy coordinator called Ita O’Brien and she’s worked on Sex Education, I May Destroy You and I Hate Suzie; so many incredible things that have tackled really difficult subjects. We were so lucky to have her on board, and so it was having conversations with her about what I was comfortable with, what I wasn’t. The night before shooting those scenes, Adam and I went to set with Ridley and blocked out the physicality of it. Then the next day me and Adam had a conversation and said: if there’s anything that either of us aren’t comfortable with, we’ll let each other know. But we had a respect for each other and trust in one another and we both felt very safe.

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Grazia: Interview with Jodie Comer on The Last Duel

14/10/2021

The Jakarta Post: Ita O'Brien: in-demand on-screen intimacy coordinator

31/7/2021

By Charlotte Durand

Britain's Ita O'Brien is one of cinema's unsung stars, ensuring actors are comfortable filming their most sensitive scenes in a job she has made her own.

The 56-year-old intimacy coordinator has been a key figure behind the sex scenes in acclaimed series such as "I May Destroy You", "Sex Education" and "Normal People".

Preserving the intimacy of an artist filming a rape depiction, setting up a sex scene with a virgin actor and identifying the limits each actor is comfortable with are all issues that O'Brien is regularly confronted with.

A typical conversation she regularly has with stars, she told AFP, goes along the lines: "He is going put his hand here, you put yours there and then you start the fellatio."

She sees her role as one of ensuring "open communication" between the director and the actors on all intimate scenes that may include kissing, nudity or sex.

"This is a process by which we bring our professional structure to intimacy" allowing the on-screen stars to "bring all of the skills of the actor to this moment," she added.

"We agree on a consent of touch and then a clear process by which we choreograph the intimate contact clearly. So it's just like dance."

Each scene will be discussed then rehearsed beforehand, away from the glare of the dozens of people usually present on a set.

"When the camera rolls or they're up on stage, they know that they can perform that intimate contact, knowing where they're going to be touched," she said.

At the heart of her philosophy is consent, in an industry which has been rocked in recent years by sexual assault claims.

Her motto, which she says she often repeats to actors, is "your 'no' is a gift. Tell us your 'no', so that we can trust your 'yes'".

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Collider: Emily Mortimer on Directing 'The Pursuit of Love's Sex Scenes and Assembling a "Super Band" For the Show With a Bad Seed's Help

30/7/2021

By Liz Shannon Miller

That's wonderful. To wrap up, as an actor, you've had plenty of experience with nudity and sex scenes — what was it like directing sequences like that?

MORTIMER: It was really interesting. I mean, I was very set in that I wanted something like that, because the story was sort of Linda's journey, through her romantic life, was about coming to a place where she was sort of sexually liberated and felt quite awakened sexually. And that it was something that she could embrace without feeling ashamed of it. So I wanted that sex scene between her and Fabrice [Assaad Bouab] to be really sexy, but yet feel... I mean, I find sex scenes often very embarrassing to watch, and I wanted it to be sexy without being cringe-y and also to feel like it was kind of from a woman's point of view somehow.

And so, they have these things now called intimacy coordinators. And we had this incredible woman who did the love scenes from Normal People, Ita O'Brien, who's a real artist. It's almost like choreographing a dance, and we spoke at length with her, and I thought of great moments in sex scenes that I've loved in movies, and I used that a bit and we kind of put them all together in this kind of strange... Really, the most electric moment in falling in love with someone or getting into a sexual relationship with someone is that first touch, when they first touch you, or you first touch them, and you know that you're both thinking about the thing. And I wanted to kind of riff on that moment. And so, then I developed this whole kind of flash-forward thing.

Lily was just incredible and so open and up for it. And I was very careful to make Lily and Emily [Beecham] feel that in any moments where there was nudity that they could watch it with me and come back into the monitor. And we watched it together and worked out what looked good and what didn't. It was a collaboration really. I guess that's what it was. It was all of us talking and all of us working it out and being very open about it.

I've done a lot of those kinds of scenes in my life. And it often can feel like somebody just died or something. It's very funereal and there's this sort of hush sort of church-like sort of atmosphere on a set when people have to take their clothes off, which makes it much more embarrassing. And nobody's talking, and nobody's looking you in the eye. It's something that we really feel so sort of, I don't know, awkward and self-conscious, and I just wanted it to not be like that. I wanted it to be like, we're all chatting and we're here.

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The Guardian: Top intimacy coach says too many TV bosses still do not value role

8/6/2021

By Mark Brown

Too many film and television bosses still do not understand the value of intimacy coordinators and hire them purely as a box-ticking exercise, one of the industry’s leading figures has said.

Ita O’Brien was celebrated on Sunday by the actor and writer Michaela Coel, who dedicated her best actress Bafta to the “essential” work she did on I May Destroy You. Coel spoke powerfully of the “internal devastation” she had felt working on shows that had no intimacy coordinator.

It was a description O’Brien was familiar with. “It is so fantastic that she put it like that because that is absolutely what happens,” O’Brien told the Guardian. “In every single workshop I do, everyone will have a story.”

After the Harvey Weinstein revelations and the #MeToo movement, demand for O’Brien’s services increased from 2018. But she said she had been hired for productions where the director did not want her involved.

“Really I was just a box-ticking exercise for the producers. I was told check in with the actors … and then do nothing,” she said. Was that still the case? “Yes, yes, yes … absolutely.”

O’Brien recalled one production where she asked for gender parity in the crew filming a sex scene, which otherwise would be almost all men. “I got told ‘don’t ask for that. What you’re doing is now impacting on the production adversely and we’ll have none of it.’ There have been many times I’ve walked away from sets and it has so been hard and I’m feeling: can I keep doing this?”

She said there had also been shows where the experience was a positive one, including Sex Education, It’s a Sin, Normal People and, of course, I May Destroy You, which was the standout show at Sunday’s Baftas.

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The Telegraph: Intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien was the real star of the Baftas – and could save the TV industry

7/6/2021

The standout winner at the 2021 TV Baftas was Ita O'Brien, and she wasn't even nominated for an award. O'Brien was the intimacy coordinator on Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You, which won best mini-series and Leading Actress for Coel. But O'Brien also worked on Normal People (with Leading Actor winner Paul Mescal) and Sex Education (for which Aimee Lou Wood won Best Female Performance in a Comedy Programme) as well as The Third Day, Gangs of London and I Hate Suzie, all of which were nominated.

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The Guardian: Baftas 2021: Michaela Coel dedicates win to intimacy coordinator

6/6/2021

Michaela Coel and her hit drama I May Destroy You won big at the 2021 television Baftas on Sunday – with Coel dedicating her acting award to the series’ intimacy coordinator.

Accepting awards for a show that dealt with sexual abuse and consent, Coel said film and television sets were vulnerable places for actors and crew members. Not to have intimacy experts was “thoughtless” and showed a “lack of mindfulness”, she added.

I May Destroy You was one of the cultural events of 2020, in any genre, described by the Guardian’s Lucy Mangan as “astonishing, beautiful, thrilling”. The BBC and HBO series was inspired by Coel’s own experience of sexual assault by strangers after her drink was spiked. It is about the aftermath of a rape and is often called a “a sexual consent drama” but it is also a story of fun, friendship and more.

Coel was named best actress and dedicated her Bafta to the series’ intimacy director, Ita O’Brien. “Thank you for your existence in our industry, for making the space safe, for creating physical, emotional and professional boundaries so that we can make work about exploitation, loss of respect, about abuse of power without being exploited or abused in the process.

“I know what it is like to shoot without an intimacy director. The messy, embarrassing feeling for the crew. The internal devastation for the actor. Your direction was essential to my show and I believe essential for every production company that wants to make work exploring themes of consent.”

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Toast Podcast: Ita O'Brien

22/5/2021

"I was once asked to define movement. I reflected, if you are alive, you move.
We look for the rise and fall of the breath in the lungs.
Our fundamental dynamo is the heart beat, each one unique.
We inhabit a universe where rhythm is everything, the turning of the earth, the pull of the tides, the progression of the seasons, against which we experience ourselves in the chaos of life!"

The role of an intimacy coordinator is still fairly new in the world of film and TV but one that is fast gaining adoption in production houses including the BBC and Netflix. A pioneer and principal practitioner in the field, Ita O’Brien works to choreograph the complex rhythms of intimate scenes and ensure best practice on set and stage when performances include nudity and sexual content. Ita has worked on productions including Normal People, Sex Education, I May Destroy You, The Dig and It’s a Sin.
Joining Laura Barton from her home in Kent, Ita speaks about her work, physical rhythm and how she moved from dancing to acting to intimacy.

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