Category: The Guardian

The Guardian: Joe Alwyn on Conversations With Friends and sex scenes

30/4/2022

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.”

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The Guardian: Theodora review – bombs, a brothel and a brilliant cast

1/2/2022

By Tim Ashley

Handel considered Theodora the greatest of his oratorios. Few today would disagree with him, though it was surprisingly unsuccessful at its Covent Garden premiere in 1750, and the Royal Opera’s new production effectively marks its overdue homecoming. Notoriety, however, began to cling to Katie Mitchell’s staging well before opening night, thanks to trigger warnings about “explicit violence” on the Royal Opera website, and the much reported employment of intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien to ensure the performers felt comfortable with the sex scenes. All this has to some extent been a bit of a distraction, as the production is for the most part a reined-in affair, and neither particularly explicit (either sexually or in its depiction of violence) nor quite as inflammatory as anticipated.

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The Guardian: Royal Opera House hires intimacy coordinator for sex scenes

30/1/2022

By Nadia Khomami

Love, power, agony and death – throughout its history opera has been cherished for its displays of unbridled passion. But for those enacting scenes of murder, sex and sometimes even rape, words like consent and agency have rarely come up.

Now, in what’s thought to be a British first, the Royal Opera House (ROH) is consulting with Ita O’Brien – an intimacy coordinator who ensures actors feel comfortable during such scenes – for Katie Mitchell’s new production of Theodora, opening on Monday.

George Frideric Handel’s oratorio – about a Christian martyr who is forced into prostitution, threatened with rape and executed by Roman authorities – first premiered at the Covent Garden venue 250 years ago. For Julia Bullock, a soprano who plays the titular role, it’s a symbolic and vital moment.

“I’ve been in so many rehearsal spaces where usually it’s the performers who are making complaints about scenes, but to have that preemptively addressed was such a relief,” she said.

“In opera, there’s so much attention given to the craftsmanship of the music, the set design, the direction of the singing and choreography, in order to allow human moments to become amplified on stage. But that also means we need to take care of the human beings who are embodying those moments.”

Bullock said she’s had a number of challenging experiences in the past, when she was put at unnecessary physical and psychological risk during intimate scenes.

“One of the first things Ita talked about was how only those directly involved in an intimate scene should be in the room for its staging. But I remember during my first ever intimate performance, my partner and I were being witnessed by 50 people, and the conductor was asking, ‘Shouldn’t Julia be simulating more noises on stage?’”

And where traditionally, she’s been left alone with a partner to explore how to stage a scene, now those conversations take place before anyone takes to the stage.

“You explore whether a man can touch your breasts, whether it’s comfortable. You go step by step over parts of the body that may be exposed or are going to be subjected to intimate touch, allowing your body to register if there’s anything that is hypersensitive, or if there’s a place where you might potentially be triggered.”

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The Guardian: Top intimacy coach says too many TV bosses still do not value role

8/6/2021

By Mark Brown

Too many film and television bosses still do not understand the value of intimacy coordinators and hire them purely as a box-ticking exercise, one of the industry’s leading figures has said.

Ita O’Brien was celebrated on Sunday by the actor and writer Michaela Coel, who dedicated her best actress Bafta to the “essential” work she did on I May Destroy You. Coel spoke powerfully of the “internal devastation” she had felt working on shows that had no intimacy coordinator.

It was a description O’Brien was familiar with. “It is so fantastic that she put it like that because that is absolutely what happens,” O’Brien told the Guardian. “In every single workshop I do, everyone will have a story.”

After the Harvey Weinstein revelations and the #MeToo movement, demand for O’Brien’s services increased from 2018. But she said she had been hired for productions where the director did not want her involved.

“Really I was just a box-ticking exercise for the producers. I was told check in with the actors … and then do nothing,” she said. Was that still the case? “Yes, yes, yes … absolutely.”

O’Brien recalled one production where she asked for gender parity in the crew filming a sex scene, which otherwise would be almost all men. “I got told ‘don’t ask for that. What you’re doing is now impacting on the production adversely and we’ll have none of it.’ There have been many times I’ve walked away from sets and it has so been hard and I’m feeling: can I keep doing this?”

She said there had also been shows where the experience was a positive one, including Sex Education, It’s a Sin, Normal People and, of course, I May Destroy You, which was the standout show at Sunday’s Baftas.

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The Guardian: Baftas 2021: Michaela Coel dedicates win to intimacy coordinator

6/6/2021

Michaela Coel and her hit drama I May Destroy You won big at the 2021 television Baftas on Sunday – with Coel dedicating her acting award to the series’ intimacy coordinator.

Accepting awards for a show that dealt with sexual abuse and consent, Coel said film and television sets were vulnerable places for actors and crew members. Not to have intimacy experts was “thoughtless” and showed a “lack of mindfulness”, she added.

I May Destroy You was one of the cultural events of 2020, in any genre, described by the Guardian’s Lucy Mangan as “astonishing, beautiful, thrilling”. The BBC and HBO series was inspired by Coel’s own experience of sexual assault by strangers after her drink was spiked. It is about the aftermath of a rape and is often called a “a sexual consent drama” but it is also a story of fun, friendship and more.

Coel was named best actress and dedicated her Bafta to the series’ intimacy director, Ita O’Brien. “Thank you for your existence in our industry, for making the space safe, for creating physical, emotional and professional boundaries so that we can make work about exploitation, loss of respect, about abuse of power without being exploited or abused in the process.

“I know what it is like to shoot without an intimacy director. The messy, embarrassing feeling for the crew. The internal devastation for the actor. Your direction was essential to my show and I believe essential for every production company that wants to make work exploring themes of consent.”

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The Guardian: Olly Alexander on success, sanity and It's a Sin: 'All those hot guys. I loved it!'

11/1/2021

By Simon Hattenstone

He pays tribute to intimacy coordinator extraordinaire Ita O’Brien, who introduced the Intimacy on Set guidelines in 2017 and worked on Normal People as well as It’s a Sin. “Anything with sex in it, she’ll be involved. She’ll be on all fours at one point, saying: ‘Now I’m going to be like a cow and moo in ecstasy.’ She’s amazing, amazing, amazing.” And yes, he did start to enjoy the scenes.

Did he find them arousing? Now it’s my turn to blush and I apologise for the question. Did he start to enjoy it too much? “No, that’s what I want to know. What if someone gets a hard-on – how embarrassing would that be? Ita said: ‘It’s natural and normal for certain body parts to get excited and if you get an erection that’s absolutely fine, but it’s not appropriate for the workplace.’” He adds a caveat: “Depending on what kind of job you’re doing. And she said: ‘If that happens, you just take a time out. So you’re all there thinking, OK, how embarrassing – because you say time out and everybody knows it’s because you’ve got a hard-on. Hahahhaa!” Did he have to take a time out? “No!” Did anyone? “Not to my knowledge.”

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The Guardian: Paapa Essiedu: 'Michaela Coel captures the reality of lives that I recognise'

25/5/2020

By Claire Armitstead - "I May Destroy You"

For Essiedu, this means a deep dive into what masculinity means when its boundaries are broken, not by racist thugs or harassing police, but by demons unleashed by its own desires. “I’m into everything,” boasts Kwame on another casual date, minutes before he is reduced to pleading: “Not that.” The representation of the moment when good sex turns bad is so up-close and personal that I wonder if he had any doubts about taking on the role?

“I’ve done scenes before where we’ve had nothing to support us and it’s so stressful,” he admits. “But I didn’t have any qualms, mainly because of how sensitively it was handled – like we have an intimacy coordinator at all times. We spent a lot of time in preparation for those scenes.”

The intimacy co-ordinator was Ita O’Brien, who also worked on the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. For all that it is being hyped as a #MeToo drama, Essiedu rejects the idea that I May Destroy You is “pandering to a zeitgeisty type thing”. Obviously, he says, “it’s a series that confronts and challenges our current ideas around sex and consent and romance, and our responses to trauma as well. But a lot of it is inspired by things that have actually happened.” In 2018 Coel spoke out about being assaulted. “Michaela is jumping from a place of authenticity,” Essiedu continues. “She captures the reality of lives that I recognise.”

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The Guardian: Sex has as much meaning as words: how Normal People handles intimacy

6/5/2020

By Zoe Williams

The sex, though, was its own conundrum, televisually speaking, and much was made of the hiring of an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien (she’s the best in the business, apparently – which comes across a bit droll, if you didn’t realise that was a business). How do you tell the story of two characters whose entire journey is sexual, without just making a soft-porn film? These two questions – how do you present a story so clear without telling it too simply? How do you put the sex in the centre, without making it the point? – are in fact the same question. I only realised that when I saw this quote of Rooney’s: “When I hear the phrase ‘sex scene’, I think about a dialogue scene.” There is no such thing as some sex that just happens, it is as freighted with meaning as words are. The characters are saying something important to one another, something that will propel them forward. If sitcom characters chat and characters in drama talk, then by extension, in the Rooney school, sitcom characters shag, and these characters, well, they do something other than shagging. I wouldn’t say “make love”, so let’s just say “fuck” and let its Anglo-Saxonness transmit the vitality of that. I found their first sex scene really moving, and not especially erotic. I wouldn’t write off anyone else finding it erotic – and there have been some complaints about the volume of sex scenes – but I think I’d defy anyone not to be moved by it.

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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 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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