Press

The Guardian: Paapa Essiedu: 'Michaela Coel captures the reality of lives that I recognise'

25/5/2020

By Claire Armitstead - "I May Destroy You"

For Essiedu, this means a deep dive into what masculinity means when its boundaries are broken, not by racist thugs or harassing police, but by demons unleashed by its own desires. “I’m into everything,” boasts Kwame on another casual date, minutes before he is reduced to pleading: “Not that.” The representation of the moment when good sex turns bad is so up-close and personal that I wonder if he had any doubts about taking on the role?

“I’ve done scenes before where we’ve had nothing to support us and it’s so stressful,” he admits. “But I didn’t have any qualms, mainly because of how sensitively it was handled – like we have an intimacy coordinator at all times. We spent a lot of time in preparation for those scenes.”

The intimacy co-ordinator was Ita O’Brien, who also worked on the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. For all that it is being hyped as a #MeToo drama, Essiedu rejects the idea that I May Destroy You is “pandering to a zeitgeisty type thing”. Obviously, he says, “it’s a series that confronts and challenges our current ideas around sex and consent and romance, and our responses to trauma as well. But a lot of it is inspired by things that have actually happened.” In 2018 Coel spoke out about being assaulted. “Michaela is jumping from a place of authenticity,” Essiedu continues. “She captures the reality of lives that I recognise.”

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Evening Standard: From Normal People to Gentleman Jack: Sex on TV is getting better for everyone

22/5/2020

And yet now, as the windows steam up, things in the background are changing. Movement and intimacy director Ita O’Brien has been developing best practice when working on TV sex scenes, founding Intimacy on Set to provide trained professional intimacy co-ordinators to the industry. She has since noticed a tonal shift in sex scenes, with moments of intimacy captured on camera now more commonly being used to propel the narrative rather than simply to titillate.

She believes that the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the upheaval it caused across the industry also led to questions about how actors can perform intimate content in a safe and a responsible way. “Intimacy guidelines are about taking away that mismatch of power on set,” O’Brien says. “The structure allows everyone to work to the best of their skill in order to create intimate content that serves the writing. After Weinstein, the industry said they had to do better and work with respect, and within that environment, they had to observe how to perform intimate content well.

“In newer productions, the intimate content is absolutely part of the core, the integral essence of what the storytelling is about... Through intimate content now, we’re able to better serve the writing and really serve storytelling.” She cites the example of Normal People, in which the intimate content tells as much about the characters as other scenes.

An influx of female talent into the television industry has also seen a further emphasis on women’s pleasure during sex scenes. Netflix’s Sex Education, written by Laurie Nunn, and Sally Wainwright’s Gentleman Jack are two examples to which O’Brien has brought her expertise.

“I worked with director Kate Herron for Sex Education’s masturbation montage, which I’m so proud of,” she says. “We spoke about how important it was that we showed that normalness and the joy of discovering yourself as a young woman. I met with Aimee Lou Wood, who acted the scene, and she was saying that she gets 100 texts a day about it.

"With Gentleman Jack, on our rehearsal day we had all the actresses doing the scene, and we had Sally Wainwright, the writer, and the director of the scene.” She says they all felt it was a “radical” moment.

“We were making sure this intimate content, particularly with a lesbian scene, had that female gaze and female perspective. We interrogated what is female love-making — and how different it looks from a male gaze.”

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Metro: Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal weren’t actually naked in most sex scenes

20/5/2020

By Abigail Gillibrand

And while there might have been more than 40 minutes of sex scenes across the entire 12 episodes – it turns out the stars of the show Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones barely got their kit off IRL. Talking on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, Daisy, who plays Marianne in the soon-to-be iconic series, opened up on how they filmed the intimate scenes – with a little help from sex coordiator Ita O’Brien. ‘Ita would make sure Paul and I would discuss the boundaries and what we were and were not comfortable with,’ the 21-year-old explained. ‘We also agreed on touch and would say, “this area is fine but please stay off this area,” or, “I don’t feel comfortable with this.”‘ . .

Daisy went onto say how for the majority of the time they were covered up, and only took their clothes off for the wider shots. She added: ‘Depending on what shots they were filming we were allowed to wear modesty gear so for a large amount of it we were fully clothed. ‘Then for the wide shot we would make sure we felt comfortable and there was enough protection as possible and then yeah, from action to cut we were able to freestyle knowing what the boundaries were and we were able to act the scene.’

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New Yorker: How “Normal People” Makes Us Fall in Love

18/5/2020

By Anna Russell

The series was directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald, and adapted by Alice Birch, Mark O’Rowe, and Rooney herself, which might explain why it hews so faithfully to the novel. Rooney has sometimes likened writing sex scenes to writing dialogue, in the sense that every beat counts. The same care is evident onscreen, where every fumbling and tentative caress seems heavy with meaning. These scenes were achieved with the help of Ita O’Brien, an intimacy coördinator who also worked on Netflix’s “Sex Education.” O’Brien helped the actors to discuss things frankly, and to avoid euphemisms. “She would say, ‘We’ll just discuss exactly what the emotional beats are here,’ ” Edgar-Jones said. “The whole point of those scenes is never to have just a moment for the sake of it. They’re always carrying on some form of narrative.”

O’Brien also helped with the physical logistics, Mescal added. Sometimes, to get a scene right, Mescal would need to hold himself in a kind of plank above Edgar-Jones for minutes on end, his arms locked out, sweat dripping from his nose. (“That was really great,” Edgar-Jones joked.) “There was this wonderful thing where she would use her hands,” Mescal said, of O’Brien, holding up his hands to demonstrate. “She’d be like, ‘So, Paul, I need you to give more thrust!’ ” Edgar-Jones made the same motion with her hands, and they both burst into laughter.

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The One Show (BBC): Alex Jones and Alex Scott are joined by actors Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones, the stars of the hugely popular BBC Three drama ‘Normal People’

18/5/2020

Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones on shooting intimate scene for Normal people and working with Intimacy Coordinator, Ita O'Brien @ 21 minutes

Hot Press: Normal People, Teenagers and Sex

15/5/2020

BY: TANIS SMITHER

One of the other triumphs of Normal People in its portrayal of sex is the relatively equal ratio of female-to-male nudity created by directors Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald. There is little doubt that the involvement of Ita O’Brien, Normal People’s on-set intimacy coordinator (a profession that has exploded in popularity and necessity in the wake of the #MeToo movement) made a real difference here.

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Austin Chronicle: Review: Normal People

15/5/2020

BY SELOME HAILU

The production team includes Ita O’Brien as Intimacy Coach, who directed the on-screen believability and off-screen ethics of the sex scenes. Unsurprisingly, as O’Brien also coordinated intimacy in Netflix’s hit series Sex Education, her work pays off here. Sex in Normal People is unlike anything on TV in recent memory. Time in bed begins and ends, unlike impersonal and all-too-common sex montages that fail to communicate what intimacy really means to each character.

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Shoot: Perspectives From Directors Derek Cianfrance, Lenny Abrahamson, Morten Tyldum On Their Emmy-Contending Series

15/5/2020

BY ROBERT GOLDRICH

The revelation for Abrahamson was the invaluable contribution of intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien. Abrahamson confessed that he didn’t even know about the intimacy coordinator role going into Normal People and he was skeptical about its worth. He discovered otherwise. “I came to really value her. She was brilliant at setting a way of working, a structure, helping actors to feel safe and listened to. We could not have achieved that level of candidness in shooting otherwise.”

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Irish Examiner: Normal People director talks sex scenes and doing justice to Sally Rooney's novel

15/5/2020

By Marjorie Brennan

The sex scenes between Connell and Marianne, which are such an integral part of the book Normal People are particularly striking in their authenticity in the screen version.

The presence of intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien — whose work has been increasingly in demand since the advent of #MeToo — on set helped greatly with the filming of the scenes, despite Abrahamson’s initial reservations.

“That role is new to me, and initially I was probably sceptical, thinking ‘I don’t want someone to get between me and the cast’. I wanted to be able to move from dialogue into intimacy really seamlessly, because the intimacy continues the conversation, it’s not something separate — that’s what’s great about the novel.

"And Ita really helped there because she creates an environment in which everyone feels very safe and listened to. I don’t want to be in a situation where the actors wouldn’t feel able to say no to something I wanted…. And Ita is not out to get in the way of my relationship with them and what we’re trying to do dramatically or artistically, she’s there to make that happen in a way that keeps everyone safe and happy.

"So the reason those scenes feel truthful and real is a lot to do with the environment Ita creates. She’s brilliant and I’d work with her again in a heartbeat.”

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RTE: Paul Mescal on Normal People: "I am very proud of what we have done"

15/5/2020

By Donal O'Donoghue

The show also used the same intimacy co-ordinator, Ita O’Brien, as Sex Education when filming the scenes between Marianne and Connell. "I was worried about using the co-ordinator initially, thinking that it might get between me and the actors, but in fact we found it quite liberating and empowering," says Abrahamson. "And I also had the certainty that the actors were comfortable with what we were doing."

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