Category: Evening Standard

Evening Standard: Finally women are having great sex on screen

22/1/2021

BY EMMA FIRTH

You could almost hear women across the nation nodding in recognition in an episode of Sex Education where Aimee Lou Wood’s character realises she doesn’t know what she wants as “nobody ever asked me”. Delightedly, she takes the time to touch herself and find out.

“Before that scene we were saying how important this was,” says the show’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien (who also worked on Normal People and I May Destroy You). “I met up with Aimee [after it came out] and at that point she would be getting about 100 messages a day from women saying ‘thank you for that scene, it’s liberated me. It’s educated me.’ Afterwards, I was then teaching drama students and I had a lady come up to me and go ‘that scene has changed my life.’ It gives you permission.”

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Evening Standard: From Normal People to Gentleman Jack: Sex on TV is getting better for everyone

22/5/2020

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And yet now, as the windows steam up, things in the background are changing. Movement and intimacy director Ita O’Brien has been developing best practice when working on TV sex scenes, founding Intimacy on Set to provide trained professional intimacy co-ordinators to the industry. She has since noticed a tonal shift in sex scenes, with moments of intimacy captured on camera now more commonly being used to propel the narrative rather than simply to titillate.

She believes that the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the upheaval it caused across the industry also led to questions about how actors can perform intimate content in a safe and a responsible way. “Intimacy guidelines are about taking away that mismatch of power on set,” O’Brien says. “The structure allows everyone to work to the best of their skill in order to create intimate content that serves the writing. After Weinstein, the industry said they had to do better and work with respect, and within that environment, they had to observe how to perform intimate content well.

“In newer productions, the intimate content is absolutely part of the core, the integral essence of what the storytelling is about... Through intimate content now, we’re able to better serve the writing and really serve storytelling.” She cites the example of Normal People, in which the intimate content tells as much about the characters as other scenes.

An influx of female talent into the television industry has also seen a further emphasis on women’s pleasure during sex scenes. Netflix’s Sex Education, written by Laurie Nunn, and Sally Wainwright’s Gentleman Jack are two examples to which O’Brien has brought her expertise.

“I worked with director Kate Herron for Sex Education’s masturbation montage, which I’m so proud of,” she says. “We spoke about how important it was that we showed that normalness and the joy of discovering yourself as a young woman. I met with Aimee Lou Wood, who acted the scene, and she was saying that she gets 100 texts a day about it.

"With Gentleman Jack, on our rehearsal day we had all the actresses doing the scene, and we had Sally Wainwright, the writer, and the director of the scene.” She says they all felt it was a “radical” moment.

“We were making sure this intimate content, particularly with a lesbian scene, had that female gaze and female perspective. We interrogated what is female love-making — and how different it looks from a male gaze.”

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Evening Standard: Sex Education creator Laurie Nunn: It’s so important that teens see themselves reflected on screen

28/1/2020

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This tussle — between reason and the hormone-addled monster of adolescence — is just one of the arresting themes strung through a season that also covers (deep breath) chlamydia, bisexuality, middle-aged desire, douching in the gay community and, memorably, baba ganoush-based dirty talk.

However, Nunn (who, alongside the show’s other writers, works closely with intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien) is conscious that Sex Education’s unflinching frankness never tips over into prurience that may worry actors.

“We’re constantly having open conversations, navigating the sensitive material, and if anybody did feel uncomfortable then it’s a very safe space for them to be able to voice that,” she says. “I also have a rule that sex scenes have to push the story forward or be educational in some way. That stops the show ever teetering into a gratuitous space or being titillating which, when you’re dealing with teenage characters [is a line] you have to tread very carefully.”

Last year, Game Of Thrones’s Emilia Clarke spoke of her “terrifying” early nude scenes on the show and inadvertently launched a wide debate about the pressure placed on inexperienced female actors to strip off on screen. Was Nunn conscious of this?

“It’s something I take very seriously,” she says. “Working with the intimacy coordinator is key to it. I feel that there’s a very interesting conversation to be had about whether we need as much gratuitous nudity on screen or whether we could pull back on that. Not just in our show but the industry in general.”

Nunn feels that there is a “purpose” to the show’s graphic content, both dramatically and — as per its name — educationally. Her decision to make horny sci-fi obsessive Lily (Tanya Reynolds) a sufferer of a sexually inhibiting condition called vaginismus has led to “quite a lot of messages” from grateful sufferers who didn’t realise they had a highly treatable medical condition. Tellingly, one of the most praised subplots from this new batch of episodes concerns a character who experiences a traumatising sexual assault that she initially tries to brush off with humour.

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Evening Standard: Aimee Lou Wood: Sex Education role made me embrace embarrassment

14/1/2020

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The show has been celebrated for its candid — read: graphic — depiction of sex. Netflix employed an intimacy director, Ita O’Brien, on set to ensure the cast always felt safe; consented without pressure; and were able to discuss where they were and weren’t comfortable being touched.

O’Brien’s methods include a workshop, where cast members could practise impressions of animals having sex. This wasn’t just a riotous icebreaker, Wood says. “[Ita’s] going, ‘Oh yeah, I do thrusts as a bonobo monkey’, and you’re like, ‘OK, that’s cool because it’s distancing me from the character’.

“So this is Aimee Gibbs having sex, not Aimee Lou Wood.” She adds that the sensitivity is game-changing. “You don’t want to feel vulnerable, like your skin has been stripped off, and then watch it back and go, ‘Why did I do that? I wasn’t comfortable, and now the whole world can see it’.” For that crumpet scene, “the vain part of me was like, ‘This is so embarrassing’,” says Wood.

“But then I was like, ‘I’d much rather this, wearing days-of-the-week pants, in a big pink T-shirt, in unflattering positions and grunting, so that girls feel seen’.” Rather than? “Rather than watching some person in Victoria’s Secret lingerie with a bit of sweat dripping down her chest. That’s bullshit.”

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Evening Standard - Emma Mackey admits fearing she was too ‘prudish’ for Sex Education role

1/11/2019

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In her role, Mackey's character has sex on screen numerous time and the actress, 23, said she was initially “taken aback” by the explicitness of the script.

Speaking on Belstaff’s The Road Less Travelled podcast, hosted by Reggie Yates, Mackey said: “The first time I even read the script, I was like ‘I don't know if I can do this’. Regardless, I never thought I was going to get the part in the first place.

“I was like ‘you might as well just try’ but reading the script, I was so taken aback by it. I was like ‘I can't, I don't know if I can’. I was quite prudish about it all anyway.

“Luckily like we were just really well looked after from start to finish, even before we started filming, we were given all of these tools by Ita O’Brien, who's the intimacy coordinator.”

She added: “The tools we were given were specifically to prevent any sort of like, trauma post-sex scene. We were given all these tools like psychical consent and we choreographed it quite significantly.”

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Evening Standard - Suranne Jones used 'intimacy expert' for lesbian sex scenes in period drama Gentleman Jack

1/5/2019

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The actress said she it was "liberating" to work with Ita O'Brien.

“I was quite nervous about the sex scenes we had to do, because I thought they should be approached as sensitively as they could be,” she told the Daily Mirror.

“One of the great things she brought was an articulacy – we could talk about the scenes.

“She just started talking about body parts and positions in a matter of fact way, which just liberated us all.

“As well as helping us sculpt the sex scenes, the positions, she’s also there to provide support to the artists.”

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Evening Standard - Up close - but not too personal: The 'intimacy workshops' giving actors guidelines for sex scenes

2/5/2018

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It’s mid-afternoon at Camden’s New Diorama Theatre and two actresses are practising a sex scene — without touching.

Instead, they’re saying every action out loud: “I’m looking at you and smiling, I put my hand between your legs, I turn my body and lift my buttocks, I go down.” Across the room, a male and a female actor are rehearsing an on-stage kiss as a director watches on. They begin by establishing boundaries: “Can I touch the side of your neck?” “Yes.” “The back of your neck?” “Yes.” “The front of your neck?” “No.” She doesn’t give a reason. They carry on, discussing whether the kiss should portray love or lust.

It sounds remarkably scripted but that’s the point. This is one of a new set of “intimacy workshops” for actors, producers and directors by professional movement director Ita O’Brien. . . .

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Evening Standard: Finally women are having great sex on screen

Evening Standard: From Normal People to Gentleman Jack: Sex on TV is getting better for everyone

Evening Standard: Sex Education creator Laurie Nunn: It’s so important that teens see themselves reflected on screen

Evening Standard: Aimee Lou Wood: Sex Education role made me embrace embarrassment

Evening Standard - Emma Mackey admits fearing she was too ‘prudish’ for Sex Education role

Evening Standard - Suranne Jones used 'intimacy expert' for lesbian sex scenes in period drama Gentleman Jack

Evening Standard - Up close - but not too personal: The 'intimacy workshops' giving actors guidelines for sex scenes

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