By JOANNA FREEDMAN
Creating a scene so viscerally relatable to half of the UK's population, and showing it authentically, is no mean feat.
Of course, it's down to Michaela's writing, first and foremost; then there's the props department, the actors and the production team. But the one woman tying all of those departments together was the show's intimacy co-ordinator, Ita O'Brien.
Intimacy co-ordinators are a pretty new phenomenon, only emerging in TV and film in the wake of #MeToo, with a long way to go before their use is standardised.
But their work couldn't be more essential; not only ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the actors, but choreographing the sex scenes down to every fine detail, and ensuring that every tryst looks as real and honest as possible on screen.
During the creation of I May Destroy You, Ita worked with the cast in rehearsals where they'd discuss each scene moment by moment, ensuring "every touch had intention".
And, as she tells Tyla, it's for this exact reason that scenes like the period sex ring so true.
"With I May Destroy You, it was amazing having Michaela there [on set]," Ita tells Tyla. "Because she's seeing it play out detail for detail and we were discussing everything. I'd be like, that's amazing - why is that not happening here?'
"And she'd reply: 'Oh it felt too much'. We always had that dovetailing back and forth."
In the past, on-screen depictions of periods have warily cowered away from this very notion of being 'too much' - after all, it wasn't only recently that sanitary commercials stopped using blue liquid instead of red on screen.
And when films did dare to show blood, it would be used as a somewhat icky or shameful plot device - like the shower scene in Carrie, or when a horrified Emmeline thinks she's bleeding in Blue Lagoon, only to discover its just her time of the month.
But, Ita explains, I May Destroy You does quite the opposite, relishing in its own realism and showing us Arabella's blood so matter-or-factly we're left wondering why any TV producer had ever raised an eyebrow at such moments in the past.
"Isn't it incredible that half of the population spend 480 weeks of their lives in menstruation?" Ita says. "And yet think about how little we see it."
More . . .
Creating a scene so viscerally relatable to half of the UK's population, and showing it authentically, is no mean feat.
Of course, it's down to Michaela's writing, first and foremost; then there's the props department, the actors and the production team. But the one woman tying all of those departments together was the show's intimacy co-ordinator, Ita O'Brien.
Intimacy co-ordinators are a pretty new phenomenon, only emerging in TV and film in the wake of #MeToo, with a long way to go before their use is standardised.
But their work couldn't be more essential; not only ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the actors, but choreographing the sex scenes down to every fine detail, and ensuring that every tryst looks as real and honest as possible on screen.
During the creation of I May Destroy You, Ita worked with the cast in rehearsals where they'd discuss each scene moment by moment, ensuring "every touch had intention".
And, as she tells Tyla, it's for this exact reason that scenes like the period sex ring so true.
"With I May Destroy You, it was amazing having Michaela there [on set]," Ita tells Tyla. "Because she's seeing it play out detail for detail and we were discussing everything. I'd be like, that's amazing - why is that not happening here?'
"And she'd reply: 'Oh it felt too much'. We always had that dovetailing back and forth."
In the past, on-screen depictions of periods have warily cowered away from this very notion of being 'too much' - after all, it wasn't only recently that sanitary commercials stopped using blue liquid instead of red on screen.
And when films did dare to show blood, it would be used as a somewhat icky or shameful plot device - like the shower scene in Carrie, or when a horrified Emmeline thinks she's bleeding in Blue Lagoon, only to discover its just her time of the month.
But, Ita explains, I May Destroy You does quite the opposite, relishing in its own realism and showing us Arabella's blood so matter-or-factly we're left wondering why any TV producer had ever raised an eyebrow at such moments in the past.
"Isn't it incredible that half of the population spend 480 weeks of their lives in menstruation?" Ita says. "And yet think about how little we see it."
More . . .
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