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Bustle: ‘Normal People’s Intimacy Coordinator Breaks Down The Series’ Pivotal Sex Scenes

30/4/2020

By ROWENA HENLEY

As an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien is well versed in the art of sex as storytelling. As she explains via Zoom a few days after Normal People has landed on iPlayer, it’s her job to make sure the details provided by the writer and director are “honoured” in every intimate scene. Rather than rush through moments of sex or nudity for fear of embarrassment, O'Brien encourages actors and directors to take their time, to consider each touch, each subtle shift in tone, and to ask themselves how these moments can add to the narrative they've created elsewhere.

As well as offering creative support, intimacy coordinators provide practical guidance – they ensure the actors’ boundaries are respected. O’Brien begins each day by speaking to the director and actors about “agreement and consent.”

“We do that every single day because everybody is different every single day,” she tells me. “Even if [the actors have] worked with each other before, I always check in.” Although other aspects of her work will differ from project to project, the discussion around consent always comes first, O’Brien explains. It is the principle upon which her Intimacy on Set guidelines – the first of their kind in the UK – were built.

After this discussion, “I usually have the actors stand in close proximity, and have a hug,” O’Brien says. “That kind of icebreaker makes such a difference. People will instinctively always stand where it's socially OK – they won't break that. That's where, as the intimacy coordinator, I'm very consciously bringing them closer together.” But where do they go from there?

I asked O’Brien to talk me through three intimate scenes she helped choreograph for Normal People. Below, she offers rare, behind-the-scenes insight into the sex scenes that absolutely everyone is talking (and thinking) about right now.

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Vulture: How Normal People Does Sex So Good

30/4/2020

By Rachel Handler

O’Brien kicked off the process of structuring the show’s intimate scenes quite early on. As the actors remember it, they’d only known each other for three or four days when O’Brien asked them to participate in an ice-breaking movement workshop. Mescal, 24, and Edgar-Jones, 21, remember the workshops as slightly mortifying. “We had to do a physical warm-up where we would inhabit animals, which is incredibly useful for the work, but my embarrassment threshold is quite low,” says Mescal. “I’m doing this in front of somebody who I was going to be working with for the next five months. I didn’t want Daisy to judge me or think that I was borderline insane.” Edgar-Jones laughs. “I was bent over because I was trying not to look at you.”

But both agree that the warm-ups were essential for creating a lighter mood and a deep sense of mutual trust that they kept up over the months of shooting. “Filming [sex scenes], you have to be able to have a giggle because it’s a strange situation to be in. You’re friends with all the crew. We’re all having lunch together. So you have to be able to laugh. And Ita just created an environment that was pressure-free,” Edgar-Jones says.

When considering what the sex scenes might look like, O’Brien took her initial cues from Rooney, who co-wrote the script with playwrights Alice Birch and Mark O’Rowe. “There was such a clear charting of the progression of their intimacy, and also the quality of the intimacy, both in the scenes with Marianne and Connell, and then the scenes with the other people they had sex with,” she says. Sometimes the script’s stage directions would be explicit, but sometimes they’d be more vague, something like, “They make love.” In those murkier cases, O’Brien would sit down and discuss the scenes with Abrahamson, Macdonald, Edgar-Jones, and Mescal to find the answer to an essential question: “What shape might this lovemaking take?”

Abrahamson in particular knew exactly how he wanted the scenes to look and feel. He showed O’Brien the photographs of Nan Goldin as a sort of mood board, explaining that he wanted the scenes to feel “unglamorous, just natural and normal, with open nakedness.” He meant that both literally and figuratively: As Mescal puts it, Abrahamson “didn’t want them to feel different from a dialogue scene.” And then, of course, he wanted actual nudity, too, to make their relationship feel authentic. “Lenny spoke about the palette of nakedness,” says O’Brien. “Things like, when you come out of the shower, to not feel that you’ve got to hide — just take the towel off and naturally get dressed. Postcoitally, he wanted them to just naturally be lying there.”

Later in the series, when Marianne and Connell are more comfortable together and established as a couple, Mescal appears postcoital and fully nude with a flaccid penis; he laughs remembering how Abrahamson was “so nervous” about bringing up the nudity during his chemistry read with Edgar-Jones. “He was like, ‘Now you know, Paul, as you’ve seen in the book, we’re requiring and asking you for a full-frontal nudity clause,’” Mescal recalls. “I was totally surprised by the fact that there would be any other way of doing it. If you’re going to do the book correctly, I think that’s required.”

Both actors were thrilled but a little bit frightened by the volume and raw nature of the scenes. “Initially, when I read the scenes, I was really excited by them because they weren’t sex scenes that I had seen onscreen,” says Mescal. “And the prospect of bringing something to the screen that I felt was representative of the reality of young people in love having sex was really exciting to me.” He was admittedly wary, though, of the idea that his naked body would be forever immortalized on the internet. “That is going to be out there forever,” he says. “But then to know that the process was going to be in place with Ita and Lenny and Hettie, I felt totally safe and bolstered.”

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Decider: The Stars of ‘Normal People’ Detail How an Intimacy Coordinator Helped Make Those Sex Scenes So “Empowering”

29/4/2020

By Lea Palmieri

Helping them navigate the many intense scenes, especially for Mescal, a theater actor who finds himself in his first major TV role, was Ita O’Brien, an intimacy coordinator responsible for being a liaison between the actors and crew in order to make those ever-awkward sex scenes just a little less uncomfortable for everyone involved. “She’s definitely at the forefront of that as a functioning member of the filming community,” Mescal told me before describing what the process of working with her was like. “We rehearsed with Ita prior to filming so that we knew the structure when it came to working on set. At the start of the day when we’d be doing sex scenes, we would sit down with her and Lenny and just discuss the scene. Emotionally was a really important thing to Ita, so the center of the scene was the emotional intimacy between them. Then the physical act of the scene, what was physically happening between Connell and Marianne. Then we would block the scene and shoot it and all the while it was about Ita and Lenny and Hettie being attentive to what me and Daisy felt comfortable with. Ultimately I think that liberates us as actors, that we don’t feel self-conscious, we’ve discussed it and we feel safe and comfortable, and I think it allows the scenes to be quite powerful and moving.”

“I completely agree,” Edgar-Jones added. “It’s a very vulnerable place to put yourself in, especially as a young actor. You want to please and do your best but Ita and Lenny and all the creatives made such an environment that never felt that we had to do anything that we didn’t feel 100% comfortable with. You are able to only do something if you feel it’s important to the story and it’s the right thing to be doing. She was wonderful and also she set the boundaries so there was never any gray area. It was always clear what we were doing. [The sex scenes are] so important to the story and so important to the book, it was really important to do them justice in the series and for them to be honest. They’re always furthering a narrative so Ita created an environment that meant all Paul and I had to worry about was what that story beat was rather than physical choreography.”

The addition of the intimacy coordinator was a win for Abrahamson as well. “I absolutely loved it and that’s coming from a position where I was initially kind of skeptical. I think everybody knows that directors are, I suppose, anxious about anything that gets between them and the actors which is this intimate relationship, which is the thing you protect. But what I realized very quickly after working with Ita is she’s not about getting between you and the actors, she’s about creating an environment where you can all do your best work, safe and protected and feeling like it’s this shared creative endeavor. [She] listens to everybody involved and where nobody needs to feel pressured or uncomfortable and that’s a really brilliant space to work in. When we met Ita, she initially comes in and gives a talk to the director and key production people and I found it really really useful because the actors have somebody else involved that they can really bring any concerns to. I don’t think there was a point where anybody was uneasy but knowing that there’s this bigger space within which that stuff can happen, it was very empowering for people.”

“What’s brilliant about the process of working with an intimacy coordinator,” Abrahamson said, “Is all that stuff’s out in the open. You’re not in those guessing games about whether people are comfortable or not, it’s done in an upfront and grown-up and mature way. I think it allowed us to work in such a way that we got to a level of truthfulness in those scenes that would be otherwise very difficult to get to.”

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Instyle: Normal People Star Daisy Edgar-Jones Says “Nothing Will Prepare You” for Onscreen Nudity

29/4/2020

By Isabel Jones

Obviously, there's a lot of sex and nudity in the show, which I know you've spoken to a bit. But what was the process of working on those scenes with Paul and an intimacy coordinator like?

Well, we had [intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien], who's an amazing person. She was the sort of forerunner of that job, of an intimacy coach, and she worked in sex education and stuff like that. And it was great having her, because she took the pressure off of us when it came to those scenes. Because you are a little trepidatious going into it. You know?

I hadn't really done anything like that before, so it's something you want to feel is well-handled, and it really was. She just created an environment that was incredibly safe, and it just meant that all Paul and I had to worry about was the acting of it. And they are very important scenes to the book. What I love about them is they're always carrying on a kind of story beat, they're always furthering on a narrative, and they're never just for the sake of it. And it was important to do them justice. And yeah, Ita just created an environment which meant that we could do that and we felt safe in it, which was so brilliant.

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Insider: What it's like to film a sex scene, according to the intimacy coordinator for Hulu's steamy show 'Normal People'

29/4/2020

By Libby Torres

Speaking to Insider via Zoom, O'Brien said that choreographing sex successfully is less about chemistry or the intrapersonal relationship between actors, and more about maintaining boundaries and an open line of communication between all parties, including the director.

She also stressed the power of a "positive no," wherein an actor can express their physical boundaries without fear of repercussions, and the importance of "agreement and consent." And for the intimacy coordinator, taking the character's sexuality, not the actor's, into consideration is key.

"It's not as if you have dialogue and then suddenly — now they're there, they're making love," O'Brien said. "All of it is just a continuation of the communication between characters, be it in the text or in physical dance."

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New York Times: Pondering ‘Sex Education’ When Touching Is Off-Limits

29/4/2020

“Young people don’t want to be patronized,” she said. “They want to be challenged and told difficult stories.”

The series’s straightforward approach to sex is also particularly timely, given increasing cultural awareness about the unrealistic male fantasies perpetuated by online porn.

“It’s tackling different sexual topics with an honesty I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere, embracing the awkwardness of teenagers’ first exploring themselves as sexual beings,” said Ita O’Brien, the show’s intimacy coordinator. (In his review of “Sex Education” for The Times, the TV critic James Poniewozik wrote that “sex, in this show, isn’t an ‘issue’ or a problem or a titillating lure: It’s an aspect of health.”)

Nunn acknowledged that working on the new season during a pandemic has not been easy. But she has found comfort in the show’s comedy, which helps her stave off the “constant sense of low-level anxiety and dread in the air that is difficult to ignore,” she said.

As a writer, Nunn added, she is accustomed to working mostly in isolation. And that work continues to feel necessary.

“The main message of the show is the importance of honest communication,” she said. “Hopefully that will always be something worth writing about.”

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The Washington Post: ‘Normal People’ is the soaring, achy, authentic cure for anyone who’s sick of rom-coms

28/4/2020

By Hank Stuever

So they base it on sex. This is another aspect to the show that is perfectly handled, even if some viewers might find it bracingly frank. Hats off to the show’s intimacy coordinator on this one — the intimacy has not only been duly coordinated, it transcends anything that might get in its way. (In other words, they’re beautiful and it’s beautiful. Enjoy!)

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Drama Quarterly: Intimate relations

28/4/2020

By Michael Pickard

It’s impossible to imagine a sword fight or a battle scene being filmed without actors spending many hours choreographing and rehearsing the action in detail beforehand. Similarly, a dance routine would also be the subject of meticulous planning before being recorded.

So, why is the way sex scenes are filmed only now coming under greater scrutiny? For the past few years, intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien (pictured top on set) has spearheaded a shift in the industry and led a new approach to intimacy on screen, one that invites greater communication and transparency during filming, puts in place a structure that allows for agreement and consent between actors and directors and that allows time for intimate scenes to be choreographed clearly.

“In the past, there wasn’t a sense of bringing a professional structure to the intimate work,” she explains, speaking during a keynote session at the Berlinale Series Market in February. “If you had a fight, you certainly wouldn’t just say, ‘Okay, we’ll hand you the swords and then just go for it.’ That wouldn’t be reasonable as you’re in severe danger of an injury happening. So you make sure a stunt coordinator or a fight director is there; they teach techniques and they choreograph the fight content. They will have spoken to the director and made sure they’re serving the director’s vision. If there’s a dance, of course, you’re not going to just talk about it and then throw the people on and say, ‘Right, just do the tango.’ You’re going to have a choreographer, who’s going to listen to the director, hear their vision, choreograph clearly and then make sure you create a scene that serves the storytelling.”

It’s that approach that O’Brien is now bringing to intimate content, having worked on series such as Sex Education, Normal People, Gangs of London, Bulletproof, Pennyworth, Gentleman Jack and Watchmen.

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Glamour: BBC’s 'Normal People' powerfully portrays sexual consent in a way we've never seen before

27/4/2020

BY CHLOE LAWS

I’ve not seen sex like this on TV before. There’s no glossy filter. It’s not sanitised. They have a cup of tea before. They have some awkward small talk. They fumble, and laugh, and talk. It’s not fireworks, a bra perfectly falling off, a bottle of champagne open. But just because it isn’t ‘Hollywood’ romantic doesn’t mean it isn’t romantic.

As the series continues, as does their sex life - a perfect illustration of how growing up, and finding yourself, means your tastes change. Marianne, around the age of 21, develops an interest in BDSM. The physicality of their sex changes, but the dialogue never does - it is always judgment-free, and sensitive. Every sex scene in Normal People was guided by an “intimacy coordinator”, Ita O’Brien, to make sure the actors were comfortable - that level of care, on set, shows on screen. O’Brien told The Guardian “It was crucial for me to honour Sally’s writing. There is nothing gratuitous. But there is also a lot of sex.”

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i-d: Daisy Edgar-Jones: “It’s very real to what a relationship is really like”

27/4/2020

By Britnee Meiser

“It’s really important to be truthful with the nudity,” Daisy explains. “Often it’s not even in a sexual capacity. It’ll be incidental, like Connell coming out of the shower and getting changed, and it just happens to be a moment. But it’s not about [the nudity] at all, it’s just very real to what a relationship is really like.”

Filming such raw sex scenes in Normal People was a new experience for Daisy, and she credits her gripping performance (my words, not hers) to a relaxed on-set environment established by Lenny, who was conscious of having a gender-balanced crew, and Ita O’Brien, the show’s intimacy coordinator. Ita, who has worked on shows like Netflix’s Sex Education and HBO’s Gentleman Jack, stressed the importance of consent and clarity when working through a sex scene, and Daisy said it took all the pressure off. “All Paul and I had to think about were the story beats,” she says. “It was her job to worry about the choreography. She was wonderful, she always made sure that we were comfortable with everything and we felt safe and were well looked after.”

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