Press

The Guardian: Olly Alexander on success, sanity and It's a Sin: 'All those hot guys. I loved it!'

11/1/2021

By Simon Hattenstone

He pays tribute to intimacy coordinator extraordinaire Ita O’Brien, who introduced the Intimacy on Set guidelines in 2017 and worked on Normal People as well as It’s a Sin. “Anything with sex in it, she’ll be involved. She’ll be on all fours at one point, saying: ‘Now I’m going to be like a cow and moo in ecstasy.’ She’s amazing, amazing, amazing.” And yes, he did start to enjoy the scenes.

Did he find them arousing? Now it’s my turn to blush and I apologise for the question. Did he start to enjoy it too much? “No, that’s what I want to know. What if someone gets a hard-on – how embarrassing would that be? Ita said: ‘It’s natural and normal for certain body parts to get excited and if you get an erection that’s absolutely fine, but it’s not appropriate for the workplace.’” He adds a caveat: “Depending on what kind of job you’re doing. And she said: ‘If that happens, you just take a time out. So you’re all there thinking, OK, how embarrassing – because you say time out and everybody knows it’s because you’ve got a hard-on. Hahahhaa!” Did he have to take a time out? “No!” Did anyone? “Not to my knowledge.”

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BBC Radio 5: Geoff Lloyd interviews Ita O'Brien

7/1/2021

Stylist: “In a year of lockdowns, TV sex scenes became our lifeline for intimacy and sexual realism”

30/12/2020

“When Normal People came out during that first lockdown, it was long enough for people to be feeling bereft of that physical contact,” explains Ita O’Brien, who worked as an intimacy coordinator on the show, in addition to Sex Education, I May Destroy You and Industry. “And I think it did help people to live vicariously through these characters.”

The shows were all shot in 2019 and released this year, says O’Brien, and so avoided any disruption from Covid. “The irony is that the intimacy coordination has allowed for better intimate scenes to be created – and then with our lack of touch, they [the scenes] have impacted so much more.”

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Metro: Thank you for coming: Why 2020 was the year TV gave us a sex education

23/12/2020

Ita O’Brien, who worked on the programme as well as 18 other shows in the last 12 months, explained how her work as an intimacy co-ordinator has made sex on screen both more enjoyable, as well as more educational, for actors and viewers.

‘We are now watching intimate content where actors have consented and feel comfortable performing well-choreographed scenes,’ she explains. ‘We’re not squirming internally because the actors involved aren’t squirming internally. Now, the intimate content helps tell the story and can have a huge impact, as the actor is now being cared for and their needs aren’t being compromised during sex scenes.’

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Screen Daily: Perspectives on 2020: Ita O’Brien on the new challenges for intimacy co-ordinators

21/12/2020

BY NIKKI BAUGHAN

The UK’s Ita O’Brien has become one of the industry’s most in-demand intimacy co-ordinators, with credits that include Normal People, I May Destroy You, The Dig and Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. She has spent six years developing best practices around scenes of intimacy, sexual content and nudity on stage and screen through her company Intimacy on Set, but it has been the rise of the #MeToo movement that has propelled her work into the spotlight. O’Brien is now working on Reed Morano’s adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel The Power and Sarah Adina Smith’s Birds Of Paradise, both for Amazon Studios.

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Entertainment Weekly: Best of 2020 (Behind the Scenes): How Normal People's intimacy coordinator made those sex scenes so sexy

21/12/2020

By Ruth Kinane

A TV show came out in 2020 that — quarantine or no quarantine — made us all sad and horny. We're talking, of course, about the BBC and Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney's best-selling novel Normal People, starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Since there's been enough sad this year to last us a lifetime, let's talk about sex instead. The show's intimacy coordinator, Ita O'Brien (founder of Intimacy on Set and author of the Intimacy on Set guidelines, which protect performers during scenes that involve sex or nudity), takes us inside the creation of those steamy scenes.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Before we get into Normal People, tell me about the role of an intimacy coordinator and why it's so necessary?

ITA O'BRIEN: Think about it this way, if you're reading a script and there's a waltz, you realize people don't necessarily know how to waltz, so we need a specialist choreographer to teach that. Or if we're going to put swords in someone's hands, of course, people don't just know how to do sword play, we're going to need a practitioner. Then there was this gap. Just like a waltz, a sex scene is also a body dance and just like a fight, there's a risk and the risk is it makes someone vulnerable about being naked or being touched in places that aren't suitable. There was this sense that, well, everybody does sex, so we don't need to teach technique. Then there's the realization of, actually, no, people are vulnerable. And, as with any choreographed dance, you need a specialist practitioner to help everybody talk about it properly and professionally and not gloss over consent. Consent is needed both for touch and nudity, and of simulated sexual content. So there's need for a prep practitioner. Just like a choreographer, that practitioner puts clear choreography into place and brings in techniques. Of course, at the beginning, I had no idea that I'd end up helping to create a role of a practitioner that's now known as the intimacy coordinator.

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Harpar's Bazaar: The 10 best TV shows of 2020

18/12/2020

Intimacy on Set provided Intimacy Coordinators for four of the ten listed shows here, I May Destroy You, Normal People, I Hate Suzie, and Industry!

On Normal People:

"It's also first time we've seen sex on-screen performed so authentically and non-gratuitously, thanks to intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien, marking a new way in which sex scenes will be safely handled in the future."

More . . .www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/entertainment/a34985140/best-tv-shows-of-2020/

NME: David Jonsson: “Black bankers have told me ‘Industry’ represents their experiences”

14/12/2020

By Toby Earle

One fascinating aspect of Gus is that he’s outwardly risk-averse yet risks so much in his affair with Theo (Will Tudor). How did you find working with an intimacy co-ordinator, particularly in the scene where he turns up drunk at Theo’s house?

I’m too young to understand what it would have been like before intimacy co-ordinators came along but I’m so grateful for them. Ita O’Brien and Miriam Lucia did an amazing job across the whole season and we do have our fair share of intimate moments.

They did a wonderful job of breaking down every single beat and every single movement. I know it sounds awkward, but actually it was the least awkward part of the entire process, because they managed to find a way of normalising everything and making sure you were entirely comfortable. You’re playing with something that’s very, very personal and we’re all very young, so we had to find where we were comfortable, especially when we go to places that are so uncomfortable. It’s a wonderful leap forward in the industry and I’m super grateful to experience it in one of my first roles.

That scene was the last scene on a day’s filming. We did it about four different times and every time we did it all the way through. In that scene I cross the threshold of Theo’s house. Now, Will used to play rugby and I’ve messed about with it as well, so in that scene we genuinely just scrummed, pushing each other across the threshold, back and forth, for about 15 seconds.

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GQ: Paul Mescal breaks down the final episode of Normal People (and, yes, the chain)

28/11/2020

By Ben Allen

“We had an intimacy coordinator [Ita O’Brien], who was amazing and ultimately the fact that the scenes look really true and organic,” he explained. “But the main thing is me and Daisy felt safe because we had an amazing crew and amazing set of directors on this and it just gave us an opportunity to make something that felt like two young people in a really healthy relationship.”

While the scenes still makes him squeamish, he says he’s happy that they are out in the world. “It’s not nice to watch for me, but nice to be involved in. It’s something that I’m really proud that the world gets to see, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of in any way, shape or form.”

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Link: Safe sex on set. Interview with Ita O'Brien

19/11/2020

BY ALGERINO MARRONCELLI

An intimacy coordinator is a professional figure, halfway between the choreographer and the stunt coordinator , who takes care of setting up the scenes with sexual content, making sure that a creative process is always transparent and based on consent. Until a few years ago, she was a rather unknown figure. But in a short time, especially as a consequence of the #metoo movement, it has become a very popular profession on the sets of films and television series.

(Translation from Italian)

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