|
|
 But Normal People endeared him to fans who were patently less interested in his craft than in his body. Mescal never got comfortable with seeing naked pictures of himself across the internet, though he says he’s proud of the sex scenes because of their authenticity. He and his co-star, Daisy Edgar-Jones, worked closely with an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, who compares her job to teaching people to waltz.
More . . .
0 Comments
The New York Times: In ‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton Play the Game4/11/2022  The sex scenes could have made for more mortifying stories. But the actors worked closely with the show’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, to make them feel safe and liberating. “It was actually a really good bonding thing,” Denton said. And with sex out of the way — lots of it, especially in the first episode — they could navigate the riskier contours of Camille and Pascal’s relationship.
More . . .  Corrin was very much on board with de Clermont-Tonnerre’s vision, telling the director, “‘I want to explore that feeling of ecstatic freedom’...Emma’s such a free spirit and I think they wanted to express that through Connie.”
The film did have an intimacy coordinator on set, Ita O’Brien, who worked on Hulu’s Normal People, so viewers can enjoy the intimacy knowing there was a lot of communication and consent involved and a whole lot of rehearsal. Corrin told Vanity Fair that the “sex scenes would never feel gratuitous and it would always feel justified.” “I felt so in awe of it, and also of Connie’s whole journey with her sexuality and her own access to pleasure and her body,” Corrin added. More . . .  By Tori Brazier
Ita O’Brien has been working in the theatre, TV and film industry for almost 40 years – first as a dancer and actor before training as a movement director. However, it is her role as an intimacy coordinator that has seen her feted by actors and pushed to the forefront of a global conversation following the birth of the #MeToo movement five years ago this month. She is one of the most positive consequences in Hollywood of the downfall of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, since sentenced to 23 years in jail for his sex crimes against women in the industry. With the formation of the Time’s Up organisation in response to #MeToo in January 2018, productions started realising more formal processes were needed to protect both crew members and performers in the workplace. O’Brien – herself invited to join the Time’s Up UK women’s committee during its first month – seemed the perfect answer: her previously self-developed intimacy rehearsal protocols for sex scenes had already been warmly received by both Mountview drama school in 2015, and actors’ union Equity and the Personal Managers’ Association (the UK’s leading professional body for talent agencies and actors’ usual sole advocates) in the first half of 2017. And all before any hint of Weinstein’s misconduct openly surfaced. From Sex Education to It’s a Sin, and Normal People to I May Destroy You, most of the sex scenes that have caught viewers’ imaginations and fired up conversations on social media in recent years have been O’Brien’s work. While an intimacy coordinator’s role is reasonably self-explanatory as both an advocate for the actors and an aid in realising the director’s vision for any intimate content in a safe but creatively satisfying way (see credits above), there are also a fair few misconceptions floating around. ‘We are not sex experts. We are not sex therapists or couples’ therapists, that is what we are not!’ O’Brien tells Metro.co.uk, laughing at the misapprehensions people often have. ‘What we are experts at is supporting the actor-director process. And we’re experts in choreography, body knowledge and anatomy, and in supporting that choreography telling the right character story. I am not an expert in sexual content at all – that’s what I will research. I’ve got my books. When I did Gentleman Jack, I had to go and research. When I did It’s a Sin, I talked to people from that community, as any actor would with any subjects that they’re asked to do.’ In O’Brien’s eyes, the intimacy coordinator fulfills a role on set that is as vital as that of a stunt coordinator or choreographer – both experts in certain types of movement, and neither saddled with the assumption that they are purely there as some sort of overzealous health and safety monitor. She points out that people recognise those roles are there to make ‘exciting’ content, and it’s exactly the same for an intimacy coordinator, who also bears in mind an actor’s personal requirements and follows ‘a professional process’. A director also wouldn’t assume they could film a fight or dance scene without an expert on hand. ‘But the idea [with intimate content had been] we’re all sexual beings, so do we need a practitioner?’ adds O’Brien. As a movement specialist since 2007, O’Brien had the right mindset to understand how the role of an intimacy coordinator was both sorely needed and where it could be slotted into the creative process of a production. She had also recognised the dangers of continuing to ignore the vulnerability of actors and crew members expected to film and edit sex scenes without proper structure and guidance under the old adage of ‘just go for it’. ‘That was a statement that used to happen before Weinstein: If you’re an actor, that’s your job. You’re expected to be naked, you’re expected to perform sexual content. And if you’re a good actor, that’s what you’ll do.’ O’Brien is also very aware of the consequences of the pressures of an unguided intimate scene on its actors. ‘Asking them to explore any degree of simulated sexual content or degrees of their nakedness and degrees of touch, when it’s not done well, without agreement and consent, then injury can be physical – but it also can be emotional and psychological. And that injury actually has way more far-reaching effects than perhaps hurting an ankle.’ Taking it back to Me Too and Time’s Up, she adds: ‘And that’s the shift: while actors were speaking about how awkward intimate scenes were to do, the seriousness and the impact of that awkwardness actually being an injury wasn’t really taken into account. And that’s the difference with the women bravely speaking up about the Weinstein allegations. As Oprah Winfrey said at the Golden Globes that year, you are being listened to and heard. And then the industry was saying we cannot turn a blind eye any longer to predatory behaviour, we have to do better. And in that intention, then codes of conduct being drawn up – that was the difference, that was a turning point.’ As the UK’s first intimacy coordinator and one of the global leading experts, O’Brien is still taken aback at the ‘amazing coincidence’ of her developing her practice in her own work in the years before the industry’s watershed moment in 2017. ‘If you talk about your life being guided, all those different things that have brought me to this point, the fact that I happened to have been working on it, the fact that Meredith Dufton happened to ask me to come in and start teaching it [at Mountview] – all of those things just were put in place – and that I happened to have already shared the work [with agents] in June of 2017.’ O’Brien was accused by some of ‘jumping on a bandwagon’ with her work, who weren’t aware of the years of ongoing development. ‘That’s why I think what I was sharing had the impact, because it was underpinned by all of my years of a career,’ she explains, ahead of marking 40 years in the industry next year. She labels Sex Education’s release as one of the first major breakthroughs with getting the role of intimacy coordinator more accepted and appreciated in its different facets – and more understood. ‘In 2019 when Sex Education came out, the world was seeing the honesty that could come from the intimate content. And the actors being able to talk about not just the exciting and ground-breaking intimate content, but how it was created. That was the beginning of the industry beginning to understand the positive, [and] that’s a win-win all around.’ Despite this, she does reveal that it has not been the easiest road to industry-wide acceptance, but she has been lucky enough to have had prominent support along the way. Double Bafta TV award winner Michaela Coel dedicated her second gong for her ground-breaking show I May Destroy You at the 2021 ceremony – for her acting – to intimacy directors and gave a shoutout to O’Brien specifically. She thanked her intimacy coordinator ‘for making the space safe for creating physical, emotional and professional boundaries so that we can make work about exploitation, loss of respect and about abuse of power without being exploited or abused in the process’. O’Brien was, understandably, very touched by Coel’s public callout, and acknowledges that it has ‘gone a long way in the industry’, for which she is ‘utterly grateful’. However, she also reveals initial difficulties she faced with less invested producers and directors as the popularity of her role mushroomed in the immediate fallout after Weinstein – they wanted to be able to say they had hired her as an intimacy coordinator, but weren’t interested in following the process properly. ‘What was happening is that I was asked to come work on productions where it was just box-ticking, and actually nobody on the floor really wanted it. And I had a period when I was walking away from set and I’d come home and say, “I can’t keep doing this”. Because I was basically getting the pushback and the expectation that the actor would have got, and it was really, really, really challenging.’ Then came the unexpected saviour of lockdown in March 2020, where the public were confined to their homes and limited in social activities, leading to an increased focus on television, just when Normal People, I May Destroy You and It’s a Sin all hit our screens, again with O’Brien’s name attached. She remembers the further impact those shows had on the industry and audiences alike as they tuned in. ‘The industry has been a lot more open to really continuing to work on it,’ O’Brien shares of now. With her success in such a delicate role though, O’Brien understood pretty quickly that as a new – and as yet, unregulated – job, the position was open to potential abuse. As a professional that shares her self-developed guidelines, and was doing so on Zoom during Covid, she’s had to stamp down on people attempting to use her name in a pretence at official intimacy coordinator ‘training’ – which she does offer – in order to land a job with major networks. Now she gets attendees to sign to acknowledge that these sessions are not formal training because she knows just how ‘dangerous’ it is when fake practitioners declare themselves intimacy coordinators, which she says can often leave actors working with them ‘traumatised’. One of her (proudly) acknowledged official trainees though has been making headlines with her work on HBO smash-hit series House of the Dragon, the hotly anticipated prequel to Game of Thrones. ‘Most recently in the press has been one of my fully trained intimacy practitioners, Miriam Lucia. She was one of the practitioners who was with me right from the get-go. And she’s been the practitioner on House of the Dragon, one of the fully trained and accredited intimacy on-set practitioners on the show, and it’s been fantastic to see her work acclaimed!’ As with actors struggling to watch to watch themselves in something, is it difficult for O’Brien to watch sex scenes in other shows and films without analysing the work of colleagues or dwelling on a lack of intimacy coordinator if it’s something older? ‘It works both ways, actually. Sometimes I watch it and go, “Oh, yeah, they could have done with someone who was on that.” And sometimes I go, “Oh, that was so good. Who did that?”’ Generous with her praise, she immediately names two shows that have wowed her: Perry Mason for how ‘raw and messy’ it is, and Lovecraft County for its ‘exciting’ incorporation of magical realism. As someone who has been in high demand in recent years, O’Brien had two major new films debut at London Film Festival earlier this month, a new adaptation of DH Lawrence’s famously steamy novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, starring Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell, and Sam Mendes’ latest release, Empire of Light, with Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Toby Jones and Colin Firth. Taking in her new and current projects, as well as the gratitude she feels for her Gentleman Jack writer and director Sally Wainwright and Sex Education producers Ben Taylor and John Jennings all fully embracing her developing best practice for the first time on TV, O’Brien beams broadly. ‘I feel I have to pinch myself. I’m humbled and I feel so lucky to be able to work with these amazing people.’ Even with the stars aligning as they have throughout her career so far, the fact that O’Brien’s ambitious expectations from five years ago have been met seems to have slightly awed her. ‘I was saying in 2017, my hope is that within five years that nobody would dream of doing a scene without an intimacy coordinator. And that is what’s happened, which is incredible.’ More . . .  Ita O'Brien 's first time working as an intimacy coordinator was in 2018 for Sex Education . The result is brilliant as the series is a tremendous success. The mechanism is then launched for Ita , which surrounds more and more takes for Netflix , HBO , BBC or even Warner Bros. productions . Historical fictions such as Gentleman Jack or The Last Duel by Ridley Scott (film for which she collaborates with actors Matt Damon and Adam Driver ), to the triumph of the series. From I May Destroy You to marvelous adaptations of the works of Sally Rooney , Normal People and Conversations between Friends , Ita O'Brien is always on the lookout for cinematic nuggets where intimacy is at the heart of the narrative. In these last two programs, it is indeed intimacy, in its most vulnerable aspect, which drives the story forward. It's rare to see this on screen, but it's beautiful. Behind this authenticity, there is the confidence of the actors, free to play serenely because they are supported by their intimacy coordinator. A support that Michaela Coel does not fail to welcome in her speech when she received the 2021 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Best Actress award for her performance in I May Destroy You. “Thank you Ita for making our industry a safe space, for creating physical, emotional and professional boundaries so that we could do works about exploitation and abuse without ourselves being abused in the process.” This is how the creative industry welcomes intimacy coordination. In order to grasp all its facets, I spoke with Ita O'Brien .
More . . .  Having worked with intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien for Sex Education, Mackey says it was ‘helpful’ to bring the ‘invaluable lessons and tricks of the trade from the Sex Education "school of sex"', onto the set of Emily. ‘It gives you such a sense of control and reassurance,’ she notes. In one passionate scene from Emily, Weightman struggles to undo Brontë's corset – a moment that's been deemed feminist foreplay. ‘It’s funny, because it takes so long, but it’s a really lovely moment,’ Mackey recalls of the scene. ‘[Oli and I] decided to just kind of craft [the sex scenes] with Francis, and go through the beats together,’ Mackey adds of the process behind filming, noting the actors had trust for each other to explore those intimate moments in a choreographed way.
More . . .  We worked with an amazing intimacy coordinator, and it taught me so much about how phenomenal they are and how important it was. We worked with Ita O'Brien who also did Normal People. We spent two weeks rehearsing. It meant that Jack and I could get to know each other as friends and become comfortable. We sort of went through every scene and broke it down, like a dance, like with the stunts. It made everyone aware of our limits of where we can be touched or don't feel comfortable being touched. Once you have all these boundaries established and made clear, and once you mark through all the beats, then everyone knows where they're at, and so then you can have fun and freedom within it, which was so important for this because those scenes are so liberating for both of them.
More . . .  Whether onstage or onscreen, Ruth Wilson has never shied from intimate and demanding scenes, and she’s got plenty in her new film, True Things.
Based on the book by Deborah Kay Davies, it casts Wilson as Kate, a benefits worker who can’t resist a torrid affair with an ex-con known only as “Blond,” played by Tom Burke. Wilson says the pair and filmmaker Harry Wootliff loved working with “the queen of intimacy coaching,” Ita O’Brien. “She was brilliant,” recalls Wilson, who reportedly left The Affair over issues with the way nude scenes on Showtime series were handled, among other concerns. “I’m really hoping it results in more interesting sex scenes on our screens because there’s a dialogue now and there wasn’t one before. Having an intimacy coach now means the discussion can happen in a pragmatic, practical, rational way.” More . . .  Translated from Spanish
For the intimacy coordinator of the series, also Irish Ita O'Brien, all this duality of opinions lies in a change of perspective, in a generational leap when it comes to understanding sexual consent. It all depends on whose eyes you look at those scenes. "It's a matter of will and autonomy," she says in a conversation via Zoom, the person responsible for choreographing the intimate scenes on the set, for the performers to feel safe and secure during their creation. “This is not just sex. It's not the pum-pum-pumthat we used to see in the past. Here the meetings are not flat and isolated, each scene says something new about the relationship of the characters. There is a choreography of breathing, of details, of what it implies in its own story, ”she explains, and recalls a scene in the second episode in which it is the protagonist, Frances, who takes the initiative until orgasm with Nick. “She is the one who knows how to find the rhythm, she asks him what he likes and she guides him, she takes control. There is a power in that discovery,” she explains. Far from aligning herself with those who see it as something soporific, she says that Sally Rooney “writes about sex in a totally innovative way, especially when it comes to intimacy. I have no doubt that she writes for this era and generation.” O'Brien, who has become the guru who marks the new times of television sex —she has coordinated the sexuality and intimacy of Normal People , I could destroy you , Sex education , It's a Sin , Gentleman Jack , or the last season of Master of None —, considers that everything is due to a change of prism: the masculine gaze that prevailed in the erotic thriller of the nineties, that way of understanding sex in the noir style as in Basic Instinct, it has disappeared. “It influences that we now have more women writing about all the facets of sex, from erotic enjoyment, to the acceptance of their own sexuality or to abuse itself, as Laurie Nunn has done in Sex Education , Sally Wainwright in Gentleman Jack or Michaela Coel in I Could Destroy You . We are broadening our sights. And they don't just have to be women, there's Russell T. Davies, who brings a queer perspective to It's a Sin on relationships between men”, he concludes. More . . .  BY JESSICA DERSCHOWITZ
A pioneer in the field of intimacy coordinating, Ita O’Brien has brought her expertise and perspective to projects including “I May Destroy You” and “Sex Education.” Here, she guides us through working with the directors and stars of Hulu’s “Conversations With Friends.” Like “Normal People,” which she also worked on, the series is an adaptation of a Sally Rooney novel that examines a nexus of complicated (and extremely sexy) relationships. More . . .  As well as being all-round brilliant and landing you BAFTA and Emmy nominations, I May Destroy You was one of the first shows that was celebrated for using an intimacy co-ordinator, Ita O’Brien. And there were a lot of those intense, sexually rough scenes. What was that experience like for you?
To be fair, I actually loved it. Ita is a very weird and wonderful woman. She’s absolutely integral to the creative process. All the scenes that have been much heralded after the fact, or that people have talked about as having had an impact on them, wouldn’t have been possible without her work and process. We prepared those scenes three or four months before we shot them – that’s how she works. It’s about creating a dynamic on set where everyone is pulling in the same direction, and everyone feels safe and comfortable to go the extra mile to recreate something that is hard to do off the bat. More . . .  While there are fewer steamy moments to linger over in Conversations With Friends, Alison and co-star Joe did have to navigate filming some sex scenes, as Frances and Nick embark on an affair. Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien – who’s worked on I May Destroy You, I Hate Suzie, It’s A Sin, and yes, Normal People – was on set to oversee the process, much to Alison’s relief.
‘It’s so mad to me that having an intimacy coordinator is a relatively new thing. I can’t imagine doing those scenes and not having an expert to guide you through it,’ she says. ‘Ita choreographs it like you would a stunt – the shapes we are trying to make, and the story we are trying to tell. But it was never too serious; we really celebrated the silliness and the awkwardness of it. We could laugh about it. Because those scenes are kind of odd.’ More . . .  In ELLE.com’s monthly series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke with Ita O’Brien, a pioneering intimacy coordinator who’s brought her expertise to groundbreaking shows like Sex Education, Normal People, I May Destroy You, Gentleman Jack, and, most recently, Conversations with Friends, out now on Hulu. O’Brien, a trained dancer and actor who received her Master of Arts in movement studies, was one of the first in the U.K. to develop guidelines for intimate scenes, creating best practices for working with any kind of nudity and sexual content.
In her role now, she helps to carefully choreograph scenes on set, ensuring all actors feel safe and comfortable, while also serving the vision of the project’s director and writers. “There’s a brilliant system in place for it,” Alison Oliver, who plays Frances on Conversations with Friends, told ELLE about working with O’Brien. “We’ll discuss the scene: What’s the trajectory, and what’s the quality of intimacy? And why is it happening? It’s a continuation of dialogue, in a sense.” Below, O’Brien discusses what it was like shooting the highly-anticipated show, how she first came into this line of work, and the way she copes with the psychological toll that comes with the profession. More . . .  Conversations with Friends executive producer Lenny Abrahamson and director Leanne Welham consulted doctors and women living with endometriosis to ensure their depiction of the disease was as accurate as possible. Given that endometriosis can also cause pain during sex and infertility, intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien advised on the way Nick and Frances’ lovemaking might be impacted by her chronic pain condition. “The concern when the pain first started was, had she been pregnant, and what was this all about?” O’Brien says, adding that she factored Frances’ emotional journey into staging sex scenes “that further discovery of herself ... and all the complexity it brings.” After her diagnosis, Frances feels broken, sick, and unlovable and her relationship with Nick changes. She decides that she will figure out how to function with a body that actively revolts against her, alone, away from prying eyes.
France’s endometriosis might start as a side plot, but by the end of the series, it’s clear that the condition is inextricably linked emotionally and thematically to her affair with Nick. Her diagnosis arrives just as Nick starts sleeping with his wife again, and Frances learns of his desires to be a father, making her feel both broken and unwanted. “Many women contend with that question of: Is my body going to serve me?” O’Brien says. “Frances has to ask, ‘How will the endometriosis affect if I want to get pregnant, if I want to have a baby. Is my body as a woman going to do what it’s supposed to do?’” Frances may be grappling with friendships and relationships, but by the end of Conversations with Friends, it’s clear that there is no more intimate and frustrating relationship than the one she has with herself. More . . .  By Emma Firth
Indeed, these brushstrokes of authenticity are alluring. I cast back to when Normal People was first released two years ago, dissecting the frenzy around these ‘graphic’ scenes with girlfriends over WhatsApp. “They’re realistic,” one posted in the chat. There’s the build-up, the taking off of underwear (again, a televisual rarity), grabbing condoms, consent-affirming dialogue, pre-and-postcoital laughter, lounging nude and happy-drowsy in bed together. It feels up close and personal and, above all, joyful, even in those flickering embers of awkwardness. The characters in Sally Rooney’s adaptations are so viscerally present in their bodies, and in synergy with someone else’s, it’s impossible not to be entranced by its magnetism. Credit here goes to O’Brien’s physical storytelling. “I’m looking at the details, how body parts meander into each other, such as the spines moving together, pulling the hip towards a thigh [and] bringing the energy down to the pelvis during intercourse so that, anatomically, we believe them,” she says. “That allows us to stay more connected to the emotional journey.” More . . .  “I found that really interesting, that we could explore that too, of how the different sides of a relationship would bring out different qualities of intimacy,” Oliver says.
To help out in that department, Conversations hired Ita O’Brien, the same intimacy coordinator who worked on Normal People. That intimacy coordinators is still a relatively new thing and shows like Conversations used to film sex scenes without them is “so mad,” Oliver says. “In terms of the difficulty of it, it’s probably always the initial stuff of the embarrassment in the beginning of, like, ‘Oh, god. We’re doing this,’” she continues. Luckily, director Lenny Abrahamson—who also worked on Normal People (notice a pattern?)—encouraged the actors to embrace “the weirdness of it” from the start. “When you have someone like that, it really, really puts you at ease, more so than someone to make light of it.” More . . .  Intimacy on a television or movie set can be many things. It may include a hug between an older married couple, someone changing a nappy, a medical or historical scene that involves nudity, a fleeting hand graze, a simulated sex scene.
When the director of photography is focused on getting the best shot, the producer is making sure production is on schedule and on budget, and the actor is fixated on giving their best performance, consent can get lost or diluted. Until the #MeToo movement, the job title 'intimacy coordinator' was virtually non-existent, and the work mainly existed in diluted forms. Even now, there's just a handful of accredited intimacy coordinators in Australia. But demand is growing, intimacy coordinator Chloe Dallimore told The Feed. "Now for many of the big organisations we are embedded in the OH and S (Occupational Health and Safety) policy," Chloe said. “I challenge everyone to actually sit and watch the credits on productions and see how many have an intimacy coordinator because it's on almost every production.” More . . .  Award-winning film director Lenny Abrahamson has said the industry has to “clean up its act” when it came to shooting sex scenes.
Lenny has directed a second TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, which airs next Wednesday on Rte One. The ‘Room’ director who previously found global success with Normal People opened up about filming sex scenes – saying having Intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien on set helped make actors more comfortable. He told us: “I think we have all heard stories from actors who haven’t had good experiences on set. Not necessarily abusive but situations where people feel uncomfortable and not supported. “There was a feeling the industry had to clean up its act around a lot of this stuff. "Normal People was the first show of scale where an intimacy co-ordinator was used. I think the danger is, if you’re a renowned director that’s a bit older than the cast, as an example, you might say what you want to happen in this scene to a young actor. “And maybe the actor doesn’t feel comfortable but doesn’t want to upset you? You don’t want people to feel like I’d better do it because I don’t want to upset. I have worked with actors who can tell stories about how it’s been. Directors who have said look I’m embarrassed to talk about this to the actors. “You guys figure it out. That’s way too much pressure on two actors who may not know each other very well". However having Intimacy co-ordinator Ita on set helped actors have comfortable conversations about sex scenes while filming Conversations With Friends. Lenny said: "I have been always very tentative about approaching those scenes. Having an intimacy co-ordinator just provides a way of talking which gets past that. "Separately who is really encouraging the actors to be complexly candid about what they might feel good about doing. “Then because nobody is feeling awkward or embarrassed it allows you to do good work. The actors are lending their bodies to the making of these shapes. “On a practical level too, an intimacy co-ordinator knows about every form of padding and cover up on set which is good for the crew as well who could feel embarrassment". More . . . Independent.ie: Lenny Abrahamson leaves door open for TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s third book11/5/2022  He also spoke about the importance of bringing back intimacy coach Ita O'Brien for the new mini-series, which was majority funded by the BBC and Hulu in association with RTÉ.
He said that the "risky thing" in the old way of doing things is that a younger actor may automatically agree to something as they don't want to upset a more experienced director. "There's always that worry so previously I've been very tentative about approaching those scenes. What having an intimacy co-ordinator does is just to provide a way of talking. You just get past that. The actors have somebody that they can talk to, separately, who is really encouraging them - as am I and everyone else - to be really candid that they might not feel good about doing. "And with that confidence, you can actually go about thinking about the scene. It's like dance choreography. We are all about the making of images we are all collaborating on that. "The actors are lending their bodies to the making of the shapes. And when you think about it like that, it stops it becoming an awkward, embarrassing pretend. it becomes more of a dignified thing where all of you are very respected in that context and very listened to." More . . .  By Ella Kemp
Normal People was so affecting because of the microscopic focus on Marianne and Connell, with empathetic performances from Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal somehow capturing everything Rooney confessed on the page. Conversations has a more difficult job – as did the book – to honour the inner lives of four different people, led by the most reluctant, pessimistic and guarded of the group. There are still tender moments, and brief flashes of light – intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien teams once more with director Lenny Abrahamson to give sex scenes, mainly between Frances and Nick but also Frances and Bobbi, great emotional heft, telling their own story just as clearly as the dialogue and unspoken yearning of everyone’s body language. Kirke and Lane prove just how vital satellite characters can be to a story of knotty, difficult romance. Alwyn struggles to rise to the material at times, at his best when Nick is finally given permission to break down and finally feel something, anything. More . . .  By Aaron Tinney
Ciaran Hinds has revealed an intimacy coordinator choreographed a sex scene with his wife on the set of his new TV show. The Belfast-born actor (69) said the supervisor also worked with his actress daughter Aoife on the popular BBC show Normal People. Ciaran and his French-Vietnamese actress wife Helene Patarot (68) are seen having sex against a wheelie bin in an alleyway in episode three of Irish-set comedy drama series The Dry. He said about working with his partner of 34 years: “I did have a long chat with Paddy [Breatnach — the director] about that whole episode, and about the idea of people of a certain age getting it on behind the bins. “But he convinced me not to be embarrassed by it because it had to be something quite shocking, but also odd and quite funny too. “The odd thing is that we had an intimacy coordinator on set. You talk about how to deal with sexual situations and sexual issues, and how to feel comfortable together on set. “She knew that we were married and said that we probably wouldn’t need any supervision. “And indeed Helene had the time of her life, having such a laugh at it. “But the curious thing was that the intimacy co-ordinator had been the intimacy co-ordinator for Aoife, too, on Normal People. “So basically she has sexed up the whole family.” Ciaran and Helene’s daughter Aoife (31) played Helen, the “other woman”, in Normal People. More . . . Irish Examiner: Meet Alison Oliver - the Cork star of Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends7/5/2022  BY MARY CATE SMITH
The first TV adaptation of Rooney’s work marked a huge departure for sex scenes on Irish and international television and in so many ways, it paved the way for more honest, raw storytelling around relationships. Conversations with Friends hit the ground running by hiring the Normal People intimacy coach, Ita O’Brien. While a whole host of film sets pre-dating the #MeToo era have been mired in controversy regarding sexual misconduct, Oliver says that this set was very professional and that she felt “100% safe at all times.” Not only did O’Brien pioneer the role of intimacy coordinator on film and television sets, she also established a set of best practice guidelines for practitioners in the industry and introduced genital-shielding props to film sets. So, what exactly does an intimacy coordinator do? According to Oliver, there’s a lot of discussion around consent and expectations before any touching ever happens and to ensure that nothing touches anything it shouldn’t. “Once you meet her, you’ll talk in depth about scenes that have an intimate nature and why we’re doing them. She’ll talk a lot about the quality of intimacy and the kind of story we’re trying to tell with this intimacy, which I think is really important. It’s very much about storytelling rather than showing – it’s very narrative-driven.” O’Brien looks at the beats of the scene says Oliver, and the “shapes you make to tell that story,” settling on a set of pre-agreed movements that look and feel authentic to the action and allow the actors to feel safe. “By the time you actually do the scene, you’ve choreographed it so much and you feel the most safe you can. There’s such a respect and it’s handled in such a brilliant way.” More . . .  By Rebecca Nicholson
Alwyn had read Conversations With Friends and Normal People already, long before his involvement in the former. “I read Normal People before I knew they were making a show out of it, and I remember when I saw it thinking, I’d love to be in something like that.” Normal People’s sex scenes between Connell (Paul Mescal) and Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) became such a talking point that people began to lust over Mescal’s silver chain, as if everything else about him had been exhausted. In Conversations With Friends, Nick has a heated affair with Frances, and Alwyn is fairly regularly, if tastefully, naked in it. “We were guided through it with an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, who is great,” he says. “They’re essentially choreographed. So they’re like fight scenes. They’re quite mechanical. And obviously they’re weird, funny, strange things to do with your friends. But when Lenny’s in the room, cracking jokes, and there’s 10 crew members around, and it’s freezing cold or boiling hot, it just takes all the sexiness out of it.” More . . .  By LAUREN PUCKETT-POPE
In the new Hulu series Conversations with Friends, Alison Oliver and her co star Joe Alwyn spark an onscreen chemistry too intense to ignore. Walk me through what it was like working with your intimacy coordinator. How do you make those scenes feel as real as they do in the books? AO: There’s a brilliant system in place for it, where [intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien] will come into a rehearsal with us. We’ll discuss the scene: What’s the trajectory, and what’s the quality of intimacy? And why is it happening? It’s a continuation of dialogue, in a sense. It just becomes physical. So, from the get-go, [sex scenes] were presented to us as you would do a stunt and you’d choreograph that. We’d rehearse it loads. Ita would come in and suggest—Lenny would always talk about them as “shapes,” making different “shapes.” She would try out different ones, and then we’d copy her. JA: Lenny always spoke about the [sex scenes] as extensions of conversations. They weren’t just there for the sake of it. Obviously, they’re funny and awkward things at the beginning. But once you get over that and you’re working with people you trust—and Lenny’s in the room, and Lenny is hilarious. You would want him on set in any scene. More . . .  While the movie primarily revolves around the investigation of a hijack, it features a crucial intimate scene with Henry (Pine) and Celia (Newton) in the heart of it. The scene is an important turning point for the on-screen couple and the movie. Speaking about shooting the film, Pedersen revealed that an intimacy director was brought on sets for the shot and it was his first time working with an intimacy coordinator.
“This is actually the first time I worked with an intimacy coordinator because it is a fairly new thing in the industry and it was just a really great experience because you creating a situation where there’s a lot of, we really have to trust each other and feel that what we do together is safe and the fact that you have someone whose sole job is to talk to the actors about what feels good for them and what they like and where their personal boundaries are and also someone who could actually help to make it feel more sensual and more real because that’s her expertise, it’s almost like a stunt coordinator with specific expertise in doing intimacy work so for me it was a great help and I feel very proud and I know that Chris and Newton too (are) with what could achieve with that scene," he said. The director revealed that the scene took two days to shoot. “We shot for two days, including rehearsals for that scene and it was such a wonderful moment of sharing something that was so important to the story and that’s also a real challenge to achieve, make and feel as real and profound as it does in this film," he said. Pedersen explained that the scene was crucial for the film as the scene forms the ‘heart of the story’. Asked if Pine and Newton felt any hesitation before filming, the director said, “My sense was and how I remember it was we were all very humble and curious about how we could make that moment feel as profound as it is for Henry and Cilia and the story. It’s a great feat of acting for both of them, I was very honoured and proud that we could go to that length together to create that scene." More . . . |
By publication
All
Archives
November 2024
|
RSS Feed