Blog Archives - Intimacy on Set

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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World News Network: People Are Praising A Sex Scene In BBC Drama Normal People – LADbible

30/4/2020

In the scene – in which Marianne has sex for the first time – Connell puts on a condom and reiterates to Marianne that they can stop at any time.

He says: “If you want to stop or anything, we can obviously stop… If it hurts, or, anything, we can stop, it won’t be awkward. You can just say.”

After watching the scene – ideally not with their parents – people flocked to social media to shower praise on it:

Much of the credit for this depiction must go to Ita O’Brien, an intimacy coordinator who also worked on Netflix’s hit comedy-drama Sex Education.

Speaking to LADbible about O’Brien’s role, Sex Education director Ben Taylor said: “The way she explained it is that if you have a fight scene on a show you have a fight coordinator, and if you have a dance scene in a show you have a choreographer, and why do we not approach intimacy scenes like that?

“That’s the role that she and her team fulfil, which they are there to help you do it really well, help you do it really safely and they take care of the cast and the crew before, during and after those scenes and hopefully take away some of the fear and anxiety that can come up around shooting sex scenes.”
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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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BBC Radio 4 Today Programme: Interview with Ita O'Brien on 'Normal People'

27/4/2020

The Guardian: Sex Education creator Laurie Nunn: 'You can't make sex scenes flowery!'

27/4/2020

The show has an “intimacy coordinator” called Ita O’Brien, who choreographs more explicit scenes. “Nobody is going to be touched anywhere they’re not prepared for. Everyone can speak up in a very open and safe way. I think a lot of the actors have felt empowered by that. It’s made them feel they can be braver in those scenes, because they have that back-up.”

Despite how explicit the show can be, Nunn says she’s never had anyone tell her they were upset. “I think the opening scenes of season one and season two are quite graphic, so if it’s not for you, then you’re probably not going to get to the anal douching bit.” She’s laughing, but she knows that really isn’t what Sex Education is about. “At its heart, the show’s about communication and honesty. There’s a sweetness to it. I think you’d have to work quite hard to get really offended.”

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The Playlist: Lenny Abrahamson On The Steps Taken To Capture The Intimacy Of ‘Normal People’

27/4/2020

Interview by Gregory Ellwood

Beyond that, we also worked with a wonderful woman Ita O’Brien, who’s an intimacy coordinator. She has developed a way of talking about and working on intimate scenes. A bit like a stunt coordinator might step in when you’re designing action sequences. This is entirely different in one way but it’s another person who has a way of working safely and positively around that sort of material. Ita came in. She talked to about how she worked [to the cast and crew]. It’s around consent. It’s around how you speak about these things. It’s about openness. It’s around understanding that what you’re doing is representing states of feeling and physical patterns and how that can be done in a way that feels safe and empowering for the people involved. And then myself, Ita and the actors would talk about each sequence and design it together, always having a process of consent and a way [in which] nothing would happen if [the actors] didn’t feel comfortable. And here’s a big advantage. I think, like a lot of directors, I like to be in control. And I was worried if somebody’s going to get between me and what I need this to be and to feel like as a filmmaker. But actually, it worked in a really positive way. Because the danger for me, I think, if we’d worked the traditional way. The “old way” where you just muddled through in interaction with actors. In fact, as an established director 30-years-older than the actors, I would worry that they feel pressured to do things because they thought I wanted them to. In a way, that would stop me from asking. Because I’d hate to feel like they would feel any pressure because I’d asked. However much I said, “Listen, it’s totally up to you but here’s how I see it.” I was worried that they would not want to say, “Listen, I don’t really feel good about that.” That they wouldn’t want to disappoint me. Having Ita there just meant there’s this other layer. And it means that they have a process and a context in which they can say when they don’t feel right about something or that they would like to think about it a different way. I hope people like the series. But I think one thing you’re going to have to admit if you see it is that those scenes are very natural, feel, I think, very real.

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The Financial Times: Film-maker Lenny Abrahamson on adapting Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’

27/4/2020

By Horatia Harrod

When the idea of using an “intimacy co-ordinator” to help figure out the sex scenes was mooted, Abrahamson was dubious. “Part of me thought, when the intimacy co-ordinator comes in, everybody’s going to be swinging from the chandeliers. Or that it would be something that we’re doing as a sop to post-#MeToo film-making — like, a health and safety officer for the bedroom.”

But his scepticism melted away on meeting Ita O’Brien, who trained as a dancer before advising on programmes including Sex Education and Channel 4’s Humans. He credits her with helping his young, relatively little-known actors — Paul Mescal, in his TV debut, and Daisy Edgar-Jones, in her first leading role — to put aside any awkwardness.

“She takes the shyness away, and finds a way of negotiating touch and consent, which is really simple but which always goes back to the actors to make sure that they’re comfortable with what’s happening,” he says. “We did also have such a laugh because she’s got all these videos of different animals, from slugs to snakes to dogs to elephants, making love, so you can say, no, this is more of a sluggy moment. It’s a brilliant way of helping the actors to find an external language for it.”

It says something about Abrahamson that he embraced being disempowered: “The key thing is, if you’re a relatively well-established director, and you’re working with young actors, there is always a worry that the actors will say yes to things because you’re asking them to, and they don’t want to disappoint you. That’s all gone in the context of Ita [O’Brien].”

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The Tab: This is how Normal People got the sex and consent scenes spot-on

27/4/2020

By Greg Barradale

In particular, one early sex scene in Normal People – where Connell and Marianne first have sex and Connell says it won’t be awkward if she decides to stop – has won plaudits.

This isn’t an accident. Shows like this use someone called an intimacy co-ordinator. Sex Education did it, and as with that, the sex scenes just seem to land right. Ita O’Brien, who worked on the Normal People production as an intimacy co-ordinator, has revealed the process behind all this.

Sex scenes are planned out in meticulous detail before, using a host of tricks. “I’m bringing in techniques, like holding onto different body parts, looking at what we can push against each other,” O’Brien told The Times.

“You never want to have pubic bone against pubic bone,” said O’Brien.

As an intimacy co-ordinator, O’Brien also talks to the actors so everyone knows what’s off-limits – some actors might or might not be okay with kissing nipples, for example. In Normal People, Daisy Edgar-Jones, playing Marianne, wears a wig in early scenes. Consequently, co-star Paul Mescal was warned off running his fingers through her hair. More broadly, “Daisy, Paul and I would talk through where they could touch each other, where they could kiss each other,” O’Brien told The Guardian.

This means that by the time the actors get to film the scenes, they’re basically just acting out a routine. Wearing genital guards, they usually hug each other to break the ice, then start filming.

One particular challenge filming Normal People was not just the physical aspect of the sex, but also the emotional. After all, in the book, so much of the plot takes place essentially in the characters’ heads, with their remarkably self-knowing inner monologues. On screen, a lot of that is told visually. “That gaze is everything when someone is really connected — when do they look away?” O’Brien told The Times.

However, alongside loving gazes, Normal People does have a lot of shagging. However, it’s not there for its own sake, says O’Brien. “Those scenes chart the delicacy, the beauty, the openness of this incredible, something-other relationship. It was crucial for me to honour Sally’s writing. There is nothing gratuitous. But there is also a lot of sex,” O’Brien told The Guardian.

That really is no overstatement. By the end of shooting, O’Brien – who also worked on Sex Education – told Mescal and Edgar-Jones: “You have done the most scenes of anybody I have worked with.”

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The Telegraph: TV sex scenes 'to be subject to social distancing rules'

27/4/2020

By Anita Singh

The BBC’s latest drama, Normal People, is a tender tale of first love that features a number of intimate moments between its two leads, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal.

But the show’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, has said it may be among the last for some time to feature scenes in which the actors are within touching distance of each other.

Instead, dramas filmed during lockdown will have to rely on a healthy dose of imagination.

O’Brien’s job involves working with actors and directors to choreograph love scenes, ensuring that all parties feel comfortable.

Asked how sex scenes can co-exist with rules that bar people from close contact, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s absolutely something that we are considering, as intimacy coordinators… how we respect social distancing so we can support everybody’s health while also creating intimate contact.

“Intimacy coordination is about serving character, serving storytelling. So actually there is so much intimacy that we can still tell - intimate stories but through intention, sculpting the gaze and perhaps a movement towards each other that might not require actual touch but which can still generate all that intimacy.”

O’Brien also works on the Netflix show, Sex Education, which is known for dealing frankly with the sex lives of teenagers. The third series was due to go into production in May but has been postponed due to the covid-19 outbreak.

The second series of Gentleman Jack, the BBC drama which also featured scenes of a sexual nature, is also on hold. But if lockdown continues for several months, producers will have to consider whether they should commence shooting with social distancing rules in place.

Films and television series that will be shown this year and which do feature sex scenes were all filmed before the outbreak - including the new Bond film, No Time To Die, which was due for release in April but has been pushed back to October.

Normal People, an adaptation of Sally Rooney’s acclaimed novel, follows the relationship of two young people, Marianne and Connell, as they progress from school in the west of Ireland to university in Dublin.

The director, Lenny Abrahamson, was at pains to make the intimate scenes as comfortable as possible for the actors, particularly Edgar-Jones.

He told the Telegraph: “There are a lot of sex scenes and, 10 years ago, a shoot was very male. You’d have a male director, male assistant director, male sound department, male cinematographer, all looking at a woman naked with a man.

“I’ve never been a traditional shouty male director anyway, but this time I made sure Daisy wasn’t the only woman in the room.”

Intimacy coordinators have become commonplace since the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the advent of the #MeToo movement.

O’Brien said her role is “to provide clear communication around the intimate content and then to put in place a structure that allows for agreement and consent of touch, and then a process to choreograph the intimate content clearly so that everything is done in a professional manner… and the actors are able to separate out their personal selves and professional selves.

“In the past, invariably people were just embarrassed to talk about the intimate content, there wasn’t a professional structure so one of two things would happen: the director might talk about the scene and say, ‘You two go off and work it out for yourselves and come back and show me what you’ve created,’ or they’d just put them in front of camera and say, ‘Now go for it.’... leaving the actors in a vulnerable situation.”

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Stylist: Normal People: we need to discuss this BBC show’s portrayal of sex and consent

27/4/2020

BY KAYLEIGH DRAY

In a world still reeling from the #MeToo movement, it’s perhaps unsurprising that so many women have come forward to praise Normal People for its unflinching portrayal of sex and consent.

“The sex in Normal People is better than any sex,” tweeted one viewer.

“Safe, consensual and communicative sex should be included so much more in film and TV!” said another.

One more said: “I’m in awe of Normal People so far. It’s absolutely stunning and true to the book. And I also want to call out an actual sex scene on TV that involves a condom and doesn’t turn it into a joke either… they’re just practicing safe sex.”

Another agreed, adding: “This show is so good at showing consent and safe sex! And it’s still sexy and intimate! Yes!!!”

“The consent shown in this scene is just [perfect]… it’s so believable and well done. This is how sex scenes should be,” tweeted another.

One pleasantly surprised viewer tweeted: “Marianne and Connell doing a sex scene better than 98% of full time porn actors and actresses. Take a seat, Pornhub.”

Another insisted the show’s “depiction of safe sex and consent in episode two should be mandatory viewing for all teenagers.”

Still one more said: “I don’t think I’ve seen a sex scene like this ever in tv/film. Consent should be normalised just like this.”

The one we feel sums it up best, though?

“Whole lotta shagging for a Sunday morning but I am SO LOVING how much more consent and checking in with each other is being shown in young people’s sex scenes.”

It is worth remembering that every sex scene in the BBC’s Normal People was carefully choreographed by Ita O’Brien, an “intimacy coordinator” who makes sure actors are comfortable while filming scenes of a sexual nature.

Speaking to The Guardian about her role, O’Brien reminded viewers that Rooney herself has likened sex scenes to just another form of dialogue.

As such, the sex in Normal People “isn’t just there to show us sex – those scenes chart the delicacy, the beauty, the openness of this incredible, something-other relationship.”

“It was crucial for me to honour Sally’s writing,” she says. “There is nothing gratuitous. But there is also a lot of sex.”

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Dazed: The stars of Normal People on sex scenes, first loves, and Sally Rooney

25/4/2020

By Brit Dawson

There’s been a lot of talk recently about intimacy co-ordinators and the importance of consent while filming sex scenes – how were you made to feel comfortable on set?

Daisy Edgar-Jones: Paul and I hadn’t done many of those scenes before starting, but Ita (O’Brien, the show’s intimacy coach) was so wonderful. She took the pressure off completely. The scenes ended up being quite positive, and it was like we got a day off because you didn’t need to remember any lines! (Laughs).

Paul Mescal: The first day in particular, they made us feel as safe as humanly possible doing something that is slightly bizarre in the context of the normal world. The fact that they put policies and structures in place allowed me to go about doing the things that are really important to the book as honestly as possible. Also, we were given guidelines in terms of the physical blocking, but it never felt like there was a disconnect from the emotional part of the scene – it never felt clinical or creatively dead.

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HuffPost: Normal People Is The BBC's Latest Book Adaptation For Hopeless Romantics – Here's What You Need To Know

25/4/2020

By Ash Percival

Director Lenny Abrahamson says: “The opportunity is to show that physical connection and intimacy in a beautiful and non-exploitative way, and that is quite a wonderful and radical thing to be able to do, especially in a world that is saturated in degraded images of sex.”

In order to do this, the show used an intimacy co-ordinator.

He says: “Having [Ita O’Brien] involved allowed us to talk so freely about what people felt comfortable with, how they would negotiate consent in the context of the simulation that you’re doing on set, the best way to shoot it, and how to choreograph it in a way that makes people feel empowered and not uncomfortable - and of course how to protect everybody involved.”

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The Guardian: Sexy beats: How Normal People’s ‘intimacy coordinator’ works

25/4/2020

(Sian Cain)

Once on set, “Daisy, Paul and I would talk through where they could touch each other, where they could kiss each other – as an example, in the early scenes Daisy had to wear a wig, so she had a rule about Paul not running fingers through her hair,” O’Brien explains. “While that might sound banal, it is really important because an actor doesn’t want to have to worry about that while filming sex, they want to be relaxed.”

Then, when everyone is ready, time for a quick hug as an icebreaker – and filming can begin.

In interviews, Edgar-Jones and Mescal have raved about O’Brien. “She’s the go-to,” Mescal told the Observer, while Edgar-Jones called her “brilliant … it was her job to worry about how it would work and we just turned up, did the choreography and carried on”. But director Lenny Abrahamson has cheerfully admitted that he was anxious about working with O’Brien, “because I thought the most subtle and important moments would be between me and the actors.”

“But working with Ita, it was a lovely creative conversation and there was always a way in which they could say no. They were encouraged to talk about whether they felt OK or not. “It was never, ‘Will you do that?’” he told the Observer.

O’Brien laughs: “I didn’t know that Lenny was sceptical when we first met. But he knew very quickly that I wasn’t there to get between him and Daisy or Paul. I’m there to provide some professional structure that hasn’t been there before.”

Not all of her experiences are as happy as Normal People. She recalls one director shouting at his actors: “Give her a good rogering, harder, harder, harder!” (“I had to say, ‘Can we maybe pause and talk about penetration and the rhythm of intercourse?’” she said). And while demand for her skills is higher, O’Brien feels that she is often viewed as a tick box by producers and directors who want to be seen as observing best practice in the wake of #MeToo, but don’t want to provide it.

“This year, more than ever, I’ve worked for producers who don’t actually want me there, who say to me, ‘Come in, get our nudity waivers ready and then stand back and do nothing’,” she says. She describes one set, where an actor asked for help while performing her first ever oral sex scene. “The director refused her a rehearsal and I stepped in and the director said, ‘Well, you’re directing now.’ It’s absolutely awful and the poor actors are then working in this terrible atmosphere. I’m still encountering this and it feels like I’m on the frontline of a war.”

Rooney herself has likened sex scenes to just another form of dialogue; for O’Brien, the sex in Normal People “isn’t just there to show us sex – those scenes chart the delicacy, the beauty, the openness of this incredible, something-other relationship. 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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Hot Press: Interview: Lenny Abrahamson On Adapting Sally Rooney's Normal People

24/4/2020

BY: ROE MCDERMOTT

To plan and film the sex scenes so that everyone knew exactly what would happen and so that everyone was safe, the production employed an intimacy co-ordinator – a role that has become more popular on film and television sets since MeToo. Intimacy co-ordinators’ jobs are multi-faceted. They start by speaking to the directors and producers to establish what the scene is trying to do for the story; to establish what kind of tone, dynamic and acts the scene requires. They also deal with actors’ management, checking contracts for nudity clauses. Ita O’Brien acted as the intimacy co-ordinator on Normal People, and Abrahamson can’t sing her praises highly enough.

“When I heard about this role, my first reaction was to be sceptical, thinking, ‘This isn’t stunts or car chases, it’s just human behaviour'. And then I thought: is this just like having a health and safety person on set, or just a response to MeToo – and of course I’m totally responsible and would never do anything to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But then I met Ita and she’s so great, funny, down-to-earth and brilliant at setting up a way of working that gives you space as a director to shoot in a way that’s really safe and positive for the crew and cast.”

The director reveals the simple tricks and communication techniques O’Brien used, and notes her skill at processing consent and being tuned into whether something is comfortable or not for an actor.

“She has brilliant tricks for making it look like things are happening when they’re not, she has pads and devices to make people comfortable but to make it look like things are real. She also has brilliant videos of all different types of every sort of animal having sex, so that if it’s useful for the actors, they can say, ‘Oh this is like slugs, it’s about twisting and turning around each other'. It gives a vocabulary and gets rid of that fear of people being asked to express things about their own sexual life, which is not something that anybody should be asked to do. It turns it into choreography, and we can talk about it very clearly, with no euphemisms, every body part is named. And after a while, it just feels real and grown-up and not silly and coy and worrying.”

For Abrahamson, this role is also vital for ensuring that the inherent power dynamics on set never leave his actors feeling under pressure to do anything they’re uncomfortable with – a reality all directors should be aware of and account for.

“As a relatively well-known director working with young actors, I don’t want to think that they’re doing things just to please me, or that they’re ever uncomfortable and don’t want to say. It creates an environment where everyone is totally tuned in to what everyone else is feeling.”

It’s remarkable to think of how many film sets have eschewed using intimacy co-ordinators, and what a vulnerable position it leaves actors in. Apart from the possibility that actors will feel physically violated, not being given clear direction puts them in a very vulnerable position as their options are to try and create an entirely new dynamic onscreen – or do what they personally would do in bed, which is an incredibly violating expectation of vulnerability.

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Digital Spy: Normal People is a masterclass in nudity on screen

24/4/2020

(Abby Robinson)

But through sex and those moments of quiet that follow it, Normal People succeeds in doing what the book does so well, capturing that electricity which fizzes between them and beaming it through the pixels on your screen.

Edgar-Jones and Mescal both credit intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien, who also worked on Sex Education and Gentleman Jack, in helping them to create that fine-tuned atmosphere.

"She was in charge of choreographing those scenes in terms of physical beats, which was really brilliant because it meant that Paul and I were able to just concentrate on the acting part of it," Edgar Jones told Digital Spy and other press.

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RTE: Lenny Abrahamson on bringing Normal People to the screen

23/4/2020

The Oscar-nominated director chatted with Seán Rocks about the new series. Excerpt below on the intimacy work.

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Irish Examiner: A labour of love: Lenny Abrahamson on taking Normal People from page to screen

23/4/2020

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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