Blog Archives - Intimacy on Set

Esquire: Paapa Essiedu Felt a Sense of Responsibility in Showing a Sexual Assault He'd Never Seen on TV

30/6/2020

ESQ: What does the process of working with an intimacy coordinator look like?

PE: I honestly cannot imagine a world where you do scenes that demand this level of intimacy without an intimacy coordinator. To me, it’s insane. You would never film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without someone on set whose job it is to make sure you don't cut someone's head off. I think intimacy coordinators are crucial in that same way. Ita O’Brien was our intimacy coordinator; we had some sessions with her long before we started filming. Those sessions were all about us being clear with what we were comfortable doing and what we weren't comfortable doing. We talked about how we could navigate our individual safe zones emotionally, mentally, and physically in order to create a scene that does justice to what's written on the page. Ita is all about empowering, safeguarding, and liberating performers. It felt like a liberated, freeing environment to do what is on the surface a very demanding task for an actor.

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BAFTA Guru: The Making of I May Destroy You with Michaela Coel and Co-Stars! | TV Q&A

27/6/2020

i-d: Michaela Coel’s bloody tampon scene is disrupting the period-sex narrative

24/6/2020

By Rosie Humphrey

Working behind the scenes on achieving this realism is Ita O'Brien, an intimacy co-ordinator who recently worked on the similarly-acclaimed Normal People. Over Zoom she broke down what made the scene so very powerful and disruptive. "When you look for intimate scenes that feature menstruation, I haven’t found any where you can actually see the journey through to intercourse, with all the paraphernalia, the pads, the tampons and the clot being acted out," Ita says. “I have to thank Michaela for writing this for all the women in the world. What I love about the scene is that it’s not a big deal. She mentions it, it’s not sensationalised, it’s not horrific. In fact, the character of Biagio, his curiosity and interest is just so ground-breaking."

The scene was not just groundbreaking or educational for audiences either. "In my preparation with Marouane, who plays Biago, he was asking 'really, really does this happen?', and we were having a laugh about it", says Ita. "I said to Marouane, who is just the most beautiful soul, the madness is that half of the population in the world spend on average 40 years of their lives menstruating. That’s roughly 480 weeks in the lives of every person who menstruates and of course, that’s going to include our love-making and our sexual expression within some of those 480 weeks -- and when have we seen that on screen?"

Ita’s right. With options ranging from the scene in Superbad, which shows Jonah Hill’s character repeatedly gagging after finding period blood on his trousers, to the “heavy flow and a wide-set vagina” classic in Mean Girls, relatable period-sex content is hard to come by. This is why, as Ita explains, “it was very clearly written that, as the pants are coming off, Michaela wanted the pad to be seen. And then, as she's sat on the toilet, she’s seen putting the pad in [her pants], so again all of that paraphernalia that women go through is written as part of the fabric of Arabella’s everyday life and then in her intimate content. That is so important.”

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Vulture: I May Destroy You’s Weruche Opia Became Instant Friends With Michaela Coel

22/6/2020

By Monica Castillo

Since the show focuses on issues around consent, what was it like preparing for intimate scenes on set? Were there intimacy coordinators involved?

I prefer not to act out sexual scenes, so I had a body double in that scene — a very great body double, because some people think it was me. So I certainly didn’t act out any of that, but there was an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, and she was really great. It was a very respectful environment. Only the people involved were there. Though I wasn’t allowed in the room at that time, I did get to know what was going on. I was told what was going to go on, as it was my character who was going to be portrayed. It was a very comfortable and safe space.

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Evening Express: Nicholas Hoult: Intimacy coordinators a good thing for the industry

22/6/2020

The actor, 30, said he had been stripping off on screen for a long time, including, aged 17, in Channel 4 drama Skins.

Having an intimacy coordinator oversee sex scenes on The Great, a new TV miniseries about Catherine The Great, was a refreshing development, he said.

“This is the first job I’ve had that on and it’s a very positive change in the industry. It’s almost like having a stunt coordinator,” Hoult told GQ Hype.

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Hollywood Reporter: 'Sex Education' Star Asa Butterfield Says Working With Intimacy Coordinator Helped Cast "Find Our Boundaries"

21/6/2020

by Lesley Goldberg

Sex Education was the first Netflix show to use an intimacy coordinator (Ita O'Brien). How did that help you play out scenes in which Otis becomes more comfortable with masturbation and his girlfriend, Ola (Patricia Allison)?

It was helpful to have someone to talk to if you don't feel comfortable or if you don't necessarily want to bring something up or you're embarrassed. A lot of my scenes were me, by myself. For my five-minute masturbating scene, I didn't actually feel like I needed to work with her because I had a good idea of how that might play out. (Laughs.) But for scenes with Patricia — we met at the end of season one, but we didn't know each other before then — Ita helped us find our boundaries.

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Hollywood Reporter: On the Set of 'Normal People': Cast, Crew on Creating "Close, Intimate" Places for an On-Again, Off-Again Romance

21/6/2020

by Natalie Jarvey

Nailing those scenes was crucial given how much Marianne and Connell's relationship is grounded in sex. To create the right environment, production brought in intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien. Once both actors were comfortable, Abrahamson says he tried to shoot the sex scenes like he would any other scene. "If anything, what's radical about Normal People is that they move from conversation to lovemaking in a way which doesn't involve a split stylistically," he says. "I'm primarily interested in their faces. I'm primarily interested in tracking their emotions."

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The Telegraph: 'Rogue' sex scene experts threaten progress made by MeToo, warns Normal People intimacy director

20/6/2020

By Craig Simpson

Rogue sex scene experts on film and television sets threaten the progress of the #MeToo campaign, the intimacy coordinator for BBC series Normal People has warned.

Ita O’Brien, who also choreographed intimate scenes for Gentleman Jack and Sex Education, prevents actors crossing personal boundaries and ensures they do not feel victimised by their co stars.

She believes romantic scenes should be treated "like a stunt of a fight" and is training a generation of sexual stunt workers to ensure performers can act without inhibition or exploitation.

Ms O'Brien noticed a rise in dubious practitioners on sets encouraging actors to take part in scenes without appropriate consent and warns it will ruin progress made by the #MeToo movement.

“People have jumped on the bandwagon,” Ms O’Brien told The Telegraph.

“I’ve had people that started training with me who then felt ‘I know what I'm doing’ and set themselves up as fully accredited.

“I feel aghast, because I know they are not, and haven’t got the experience.

“We don’t want to have situations where someone is going on set who is claiming that they have experience that they don’t have, and something concerning happens.”

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“We don’t need to pussyfoot or feel embarrassed about the intimate content,” Ms O’Brien added.

“We need someone with skills and body awareness to choreograph hand holds, rhythm, how we physically make this.”

By not having these skills rogue practitioners risk compounding awkwardness and the risk of sexual transgression on set.

Ms O’Brien believes by making actors feel more comfortable actors sex scenes will become more realistic, diverse, and more celebrated, without viewers being offended or cringing on their sofas.

She said: “We need more of the reality and the beauty of our sexual loving on screen.

“It allows stories like Normal People and Gentleman Jack to be told.

“Writers tell me they can now write the scenes that I want because there is structure that means it can be created professionally.”

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Arts Review: Friday essay: training a new generation of performers about intimacy, safety and creativity

19/6/2020

The training sector must embrace the important role of the intimacy director. Like fight directors, choreographers or stunt co-ordinators, this role focuses on the need to remove risk and ensure the highest possible standards of safety on film and theatre sets as well as in the TV studio.

Excellent work is being done in this area by organisations such as Intimacy on Set which offers a range of training packages as well as advice on ensuring safe working practices and protocols.

Ita O’Brien, the organisation’s founder, stresses the importance of establishing a safe working environment:

An injury can go from purely physical, to emotional and psychological – when someone’s body has been handled and touched in a way that is not suitable for that person … intimacy coordination work is about everybody being in agreement and consent … and about absolutely every detail serving character, serving story telling.

Referring to her work as Intimacy Coordinator on the BBC/Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s award winning novel, Normal People, O’Brien points to the vulnerability of the drama’s young leading actors (Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal) and offers an insight into how she approached early rehearsals.

Actors want to give their best. They want to say yes, but we had to create an atmosphere where they didn’t just say yes because they felt like they needed to …Everyone had the novel, so they knew what was required, but were they happy with it?

In my first rehearsal with director Lenny Abrahamson, and leading actors Daisy and Paul, I gave a presentation and showed all of them our intimacy guidelines. Then we worked on a scene that felt like a body dance. When we were done, everybody left knowing that everything would be handled in a professional way.

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Express Digest: Forget Normal People! Millennials rave over new edgy BBC drama I May Destroy You

19/6/2020

With scenes of threesomes, drug use and sexual assault, I May Destroy You is the ‘brilliant’ and ‘dark’ drama millennials are watching now that Normal People is finished. . .

Ita O’Brien is a British movement director and intimacy coordinator for film, TV and theatre. She coached the actors in the BBC Three series Normal People and BBC One’s I May Destroy You and Netflix’s Sex Education.

In 2017 she released a set of Intimacy On Set Guidelines outlining procedures to keep actors safe while filming scenes of nudity or sex.

She told FEMAIL: ‘Working with an Intimacy Coordinator will start in pre-production, during the rehearsal process.

‘A production brings in an intimacy coordinator to choreograph the intimate content. I will first talk with the actors and director about the scenes, about the characters and storyline and what the creative vision is.

‘Then I will talk to the actors and establish agreement of consent and touch and most importantly, where is the “no”.

‘With this knowledge of boundaries, we are able to create a safe structure within which to choreograph the intimate content, the beats of the scene, the shapes, and the actors are then free to do what they do best: act.’

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