Press

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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BBC News: Actors advised to set nudity boundaries before filming

9/4/2021

New guidelines published by the Time's Up campaign advise actors to set out their boundaries for scenes involving sex and nudity before they are filmed.

The campaign says a so-called "nudity rider" or "simulated sex waiver" should be in place before filming begins.

Luther actress Ruth Wilson is among those to welcome the initiative.

"Everyone deserves to feel safe at work and these [guidelines] offer a huge step towards that becoming a reality," the His Dark Materials star said.

Riders are conditions or provisos added to something already agreed, like a contract of employment or a job offer.

Bond actress Naomie Harris also backed guidelines she said would "help arm people with the resources and information needed to determine the best path forward".

Time's Up was established in 2018 by members of the entertainment industry including Shonda Rhimes, Natalie Portman and America Ferrera to protest against sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry.

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Ita O'Brien, founder of Intimacy On Set , said she wanted it to be "standard practice" to have an intimacy coordinator present at auditions.

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Elle: What Can An On-Screen Intimacy Coordinator Teach Us About Our Own Sex Lives?

12/3/2021

BY BECKY BURGUM

In the wake of the #MeToo movement and Hollywood’s continuing reckoning with sexual misconduct, intimacy coordinators have become a fixture on film and television sets. Their role is to ensure the safety, consent and comfort of performers when executing the vision of writers and directors.

And no one has received more attention and credit for doing so than Ita O’Brien, widely considered the original intimacy coordinator.

She spent years developing Intimacy on Set Guidelines, before founding Intimacy On Set, a service that provides intimacy coordinators, consultancy, advocacy and training for TV, film and theatre sets. She was first hired as an official intimacy coordinator on Sex Education season one in 2018 (a show widely praised for its realistic and inclusive portrayals of sex) and has since worked on other hit shows including Normal People, I May Destroy You, Industry and It’s A Sin.

‘I take no credit in the incredible writing that is already in the shows I’ve worked on, but my role is to help facilitate. I make sure the sexual content isn’t gratuitous, that it’s serving the character and storyline,’ says Ita O’Brien over Zoom. ‘I make sure the actors are fully aware on what is being asked of them and I create clear choreography for them to follow, so they feel safe and empowered.’

With the help of better scripts and more female directors, O’Brien is leading the charge ensuring there are more relatable, un-glamorised portrayals of sex on screen which directly transcend to what viewers are home can learn, consider and put into practice in their own lives.

Here she talks to ELLE UK about seven lessons we can learn about our own relationships and sex lives through the overhauling and updating of tiresome, outdated and harmful depictions on TV.

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Vox: Choreographed sex, 6 feet apart

3/3/2021

By Abigail Glasgow

Cue Alicia Rodis (High Maintenance, The Deuce), who, in her intimacy coordinator role at HBO, is the first intimacy coordinator in the US to be employed by a mainstream network. She and Ita O’Brien (Normal People, I May Destroy You) are widely considered to be the original intimacy coordinators, simultaneously having developed their techniques on opposite sides of the world.

Though the job is only in its third year in the limelight, Rodis underlines that the “industry has grown considerably and continues to today.” And while not every network requires its projects to retain an intimacy coordinator on set, the industry’s evolution is evidenced by coordinators’ employment beyond HBO at Netflix, Hulu, and elsewhere — like Lena Waithe’s production company, which announced last summer that it will use intimacy coordinators on all of its projects. Schachter estimates that there are 80-plus intimacy coordinators in training or graduated in the US as of late 2020.

Since production in Hollywood has restarted after a wave of shutdowns earlier in the pandemic, intimacy coordinators like O’Brien, Rodis, and Schachter have seen their work in communication, consent, and boundaries become an important pillar of successful Covid-19 prevention measures. On what is to be expected of the intimacy coordination role for the remainder of the pandemic and even after it, HBO’s Rodis anticipates being called in more frequently. “It’s even more important to define consent and be specific. I think we’re going to find a lot of those tools being used.”

“Since March [of 2020], a lot of my time has been devoted specifically to the protocols and processes around reopening the industry,” says Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, general counsel and COO of the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the labor union commonly known as SAG-AFTRA. These protocols are vast and granular, specifically tailored to alleviate risk as much as possible in an environment where central workers have to take off their masks to successfully perform their jobs.

SAG-AFTRA has brought in outside consultants, epidemiologists, and industrial hygienists. And according to Crabtree-Ireland, it was having pre-production meetings for every project — up until the unions reached an agreement with the studios and streamers in September. This diligence stems from the fact that reopening affected every staff member, from the camera crew to the wardrobe department to the showrunner and producer.

“With Covid,” Schachter says, “what we’re doing is predicting a lot more.” Now, there’s a need to go beyond the questions of consent and comfortability embedded in sexual choreography, with coordinators facing the question of health and actors’ anxiety when re-entering work after isolation.

When asked about this responsibility, O’Brien — who is renowned for her intimacy work, perhaps most famously on Normal People — dovetails the pandemic and sex in a way that could melt any gender studies theorist: “We are not health experts, but we can pose to the actor, ‘Are you happy with this? Do you have any concerns we can help facilitate?”

O’Brien explains that the beauty of the intimacy coordinator role in the Covid-19 era is that it was already established prior to the pandemic, unlike newer roles created to oversee Covid-19-specific safety protocols and provide their stamp of approval for, say, staff bringing their own masks to work. Intimacy coordinators’ training has set them up for success; their onus to communicate comfortability and safety can now incorporate actors’ health apprehensions, making them well-suited and prepared for a Covid-19-conscious set.

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Daily Express: Behind Her Eyes: Which sex scenes is the show's intimacy co-ordinator most proud of?

26/2/2021

By HAYLEY ANDERSON

In the first episode of Behind Her Eyes, subscribers get a taste of the awkward relationship between David and Adele.

As she tries to seduce him, David reluctantly gives in and there is an intense sex scene where she says she loves him and her husband doesn't respond.

There is then a shift in the scene where the camera goes from one end of the mattress to the other and the next thing viewers know, it's gone from the evening to the following morning.

When talking about her favourite sex scenes, Behind Her Eyes' intimacy co-ordinator Ita O'Brien said this was one of the best.

O'Brien explained to Express.co.uk: "The scene in the first episode, we were going 'yes!'

"It's juicy, it's fun and I loved it because we had the intimate content, the detail of that and then [it went] from night to day.

"That felt like a really exciting moment when setting up and there were a couple of those, back when they [David and Adele] were young in Scotland.

"That again was another one on the track that goes around, so those things that are complex but you nail it and everyone feels like they've got something really special."

Another key moment for O'Brien is when David and Louise are having sex on the sofa in her flat.

Once again, this is because of the unique camera angles used where viewers get to see what's happening from a birds-eye point of view.

O'Brien said: "One of the many things that I loved about this was the voyeuristic aspect of all the intimate scenes.

"So it sometimes meant that you would have a scene and they would want to have a camera roving up and that's what made it challenging.

"You had the scene and then it's about where you shift the bed, where you shoot it all. "

O'Brien continued: "It's this image that you're always being watched and that was an added aspect of this production which I loved.

"The very fact that you saw it from that view and you see her go 'oh' and then you go 'so who is watching from that view?'"

Another key moment in the series for O'Brien is the dream sequence where Louise and David are having sex in her childhood bedroom.

She added how actors Brown and Bateman "nailed it", during this performance.

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