Category: Vogue

Vogue: 5 years after #MeToo, Ita O'Brien explains why the job of intimacy coordinator is essential in cinema

17/10/2022

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.”

MICHAELA COEL

This is how the creative industry welcomes intimacy coordination. In order to grasp all its facets, I spoke with Ita O'Brien .

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Vogue: ‘I May Destroy You’ Star Weruche Opia Is Nobody’s Sidekick

16/7/2020

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BY HAYLEY MAITLAND

One area in which Coel went out of her way to make Opia feel safe? The scene in which Terry has a threesome while visiting Arabella in Ostia, Italy. Opia planned to turn down the role – her dream part – if any form of nudity was required. Under other circumstances, that might have lost her the job. On a set run by Coel, it meant that Opia was not only provided with a body double, but that the programme’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, kept Opia abreast of the plans for every shot to make sure that she felt happy with the way the scene would appear on film.

Notably, Coel also had dedicated counsellors on hand throughout filming in case either talent or crew members struggled with the more graphic material – and it’s no accident that Terry’s decision to institute a veritable self-care regime for Arabella post-assault is a major plot point in the series. “It’s definitely becoming clearer right now what a vacuum there is in terms of support for Black mental health,” Opia says, nodding to the experiences of the Black community following the death of George Floyd. “As a generation, we’re more conscious of how important mental health really is – not just in terms of what’s happening in our own lives, but in terms of the residual effects of the past as well. We’re only just starting to realise how much we’ve internalised the mistreatment of Black people from so far back.”

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Vogue: How Do Sex Scenes On Film Actually Work? Normal People’s Intimacy Co-ordinator Shares All

7/5/2020

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BY RADHIKA SETH

Having worked as a dancer, actor and movement director for over a decade, O’Brien began developing best practice for intimate scenes, sexual content and nudity across film, TV and theatre six years ago. “I started looking at how we can keep actors safe and what we need to put in place to help them enter into the work and also leave at the end of the day in a good place,” she says. Her role, she adds, is akin to that of a stunt coordinator, encompassing risk assessments, rehearsals and on-set supervision to ensure performers have a clear structure within which to experiment.

As the show’s popularity soars — it has already been watched 16.2m times on BBC iPlayer — we spoke to O’Brien via Zoom to discuss planning productions around menstrual cycles, workshops that look at animal mating rituals and how intimacy coordinators are changing the industry.

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Vogue: The Consent-Based Sex In ‘Normal People’ Brings To Mind These 8 Memorable On-Screen Love Scenes

5/5/2020

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The revolutionary handling of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People by directors Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald has offered some sex-on-screen revelations these past few weeks — not only for the TV show’s depiction of consent-first sexual encounters but for raising public awareness of the role that intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien played during the Hulu/BBC Three series, ensuring the comfort of actors Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal at all times.

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Vogue: Normal People Is Pioneering the Post-#MeToo Sex Scene

1/5/2020

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BY MICHELLE RUIZ

It was never a question for Lenny Abrahamson, who directed Normal People along with Hettie Macdonald, that in order to truly capture the novel, the onscreen sex would have to feel intensely realistic. “You can’t suddenly become coy and prim about the human body,” Abrahamson told Vogue. “You need it to feel like when they went from talking into making love, that the conversation hadn’t ended.”

But executing that erotic vision and navigating nudity with two young actors (Edgar-Jones is 21 and Mescal is 24) in their first major roles in a much-anticipated adaptation—and in an industry scarred by serial predators like Harvey Weinstein—meant Abrahamson approached sex scenes with a meticulous level of care. Moments like Marianne losing her virginity to Connell in his cramped bedroom or the couple fervently reuniting in her Dublin apartment may look completely natural, but were discussed and planned at length by Abrahamson, Edgar-Jones, Mescal, and intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien to ensure the actors were comfortable and consenting.

“If you go back a decade or more, it was all about the contract,” Abrahamson said of past nudity clauses established upfront, locking actors (often actresses) in before filming even started. But with the dawn of #MeToo exposing the sexual abuse and harassment endemic to Hollywood, Normal People is part of pioneering a new way to treat the sex scene.

“A person has to be calm when it comes to this sort of material, otherwise it will backfire on everybody,” Abrahamson said. “The only way to go into it is to create the environment where people can talk and come to an agreement that feels right for everybody. There’s no way of guaranteeing it in advance by a set of contracts. That stuff that can’t work anymore.”

For the sex scenes on Normal People, Abrahamson abided by an entirely new set of rules. To avoid gratuitous onscreen sex, he challenged himself: “to make sure that every time there’s a sex scene or we’re working with nudity, it’s there for a reason.” After establishing that the show’s intimate scenes were as integral to the characters’ on-and-off love story as any other, the director, actors, and O’Brien would have a frank talk: “What does the sex look like in this scene? What’s it telling us? Is it slow and gentle? Is it intense and immediate? Is it connected or disconnected?” Abrahamson recalled. “Let’s talk about when climax happens.”

O’Brien, a dancer and movement teacher, brought a discerning eye toward reality. “I hate it when there’s intercourse and there’s never been a moment of penetration,” she told Vogue of typically contrived onscreen sex. Likewise, “When’s the moment of withdrawal?” (O’Brien urged the crew against cute nicknames for genitalia, using instead the proper “penis” and “vagina.”)

With input from the actors, Abrahamson and O’Brien choreographed the onscreen sex practically down to the thrust, and rehearsed with the actors clothed, encouraging them to establish personal boundaries. “We’d agree on touch, so Paul and I were clear,” Edgar-Jones told Vogue. The result was no “fear of overstepping boundaries, as we knew exactly what the other was comfortable with.”

O’Brien, who has also served as intimacy coordinator on shows including Netflix’s Sex Education, Watchmen, and Gentleman Jack, says it’s all part of an industry shift. “We’re inviting a positive ‘no,’” she added of actors’ consent. “Where is your ‘yes’? Where is your ‘no?’” (“Maybe,” she notes, counts as a “no”—as there can be no room for ambiguity.) After #MeToo and Time’s Up, she said, “my phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”

Abrahamson admits he was initially skeptical about the production hiring O’Brien, worried she could interfere with his relationship with Edgar-Jones and Mescal. But the director quickly realized that the presence of an intimacy coordinator protects not only the actors, but the filmmakers too.

“I would always worry that if I’m interested in doing something and if the actor wasn’t comfortable with it, maybe they would feel like they wouldn’t want to disappoint me and therefore they might say, ‘Sure, let’s do it,’” Abrahamson said. (At times, he wouldn’t bother to make the ask, not wanting to put the actor in a difficult position.) But an intimacy coordinator, he said, takes that lingering worry “out of the equation, because it is so focused on rooting out anything that the actor doesn’t feel comfortable with and encouraging them not to do it.”

Abrahamson was so attentive to the potentially vulnerable dynamic of directing young actors engaging in nudity and vivid sex scenes, that he all but gave Edgar-Jones and Mescal final-cut privileges. “We had a thing where they had the right to see everything we shot at any point. They also had the right to watch the show before it gets broadcast,” he said. “I can tell you if there was anything that they didn’t want to be in it, I would have taken it out.”

The irony may be that Normal People’s serious and structured approach to sex allowed the actors to be “more natural and free,” Edgar-Jones said.

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Vogue: 5 years after #MeToo, Ita O'Brien explains why the job of intimacy coordinator is essential in cinema

Vogue: ‘I May Destroy You’ Star Weruche Opia Is Nobody’s Sidekick

Vogue: How Do Sex Scenes On Film Actually Work? Normal People’s Intimacy Co-ordinator Shares All

Vogue: The Consent-Based Sex In ‘Normal People’ Brings To Mind These 8 Memorable On-Screen Love Scenes

Vogue: Normal People Is Pioneering the Post-#MeToo Sex Scene

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