Blog Posts

Digital Spy: It's a Sin director Peter Hoar on censorship, authenticity, and that sex controversy

4/2/2021

BY DAVID OPIE

Then along comes an intimacy coordinator, and the first thing I thought was, "Why on earth had we never done this before?" The funnel of information was perfect. Not only did they have rehearsals, but they did talks. They're actors, most handily. They're actors, these intimacy coordinators, so they understand the process of performance.

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The Irish Times: The best sex scene ever? The puppet copulation in Team America

30/1/2021

By Donald Clarke

The arrival of the #MeToo movement in 2017 accelerated that critical shift. In the succeeding years, the role of intimacy co-ordinators – hired to ensure that actors are comfortable in sex scenes – increased on film and TV sets. Ita O’Brien, who performed that task on Normal People, had been making the case for years. “Everything shifted on the dime, and everything that I was calling for then was welcomed,” she said about the #MeToo aftermath.

O’Brien’s work with directors Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald on the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel helped create sex scenes charged with emotion, awkwardness and excitement. Far from constraining creativity, the new arrangements, by providing discernible limits, free film-makers from moral and creative tensions. They can feel more confident in depicting explicit acts. They no longer need to show fingernails digging suggestively into satin pillow cases. Fewer edits are required of trains powering into tunnels. No longer need anybody close the relevant scene with a montage of gushing oil wells.

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Digital Spy: Why It's a Sin's groundbreaking sex scenes are more important than you realise

29/1/2021

By David Opie

Thankfully, there was no shame in this scene – and there was no shame involved for the actors working on set either. Everyone I've spoken to who's worked on It's a Sin has sung the praises of all the intimacy coordinators involved – and Callum even goes so far as to describe them as "vital".

Elaborating more on their work, Peter explained that they helped create a safe space through a mix of carefully choreographed rehearsals and deeper talks about the process:

"They took the guys aside, and they asked some questions about the scene, how they felt about it. They also talked about it from a performance perspective. It brought up a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, but they did it in a safe space."

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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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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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BBC Radio 5: Geoff Lloyd interviews Ita O'Brien

7/1/2021

Stylist: “In a year of lockdowns, TV sex scenes became our lifeline for intimacy and sexual realism”

30/12/2020

“When Normal People came out during that first lockdown, it was long enough for people to be feeling bereft of that physical contact,” explains Ita O’Brien, who worked as an intimacy coordinator on the show, in addition to Sex Education, I May Destroy You and Industry. “And I think it did help people to live vicariously through these characters.”

The shows were all shot in 2019 and released this year, says O’Brien, and so avoided any disruption from Covid. “The irony is that the intimacy coordination has allowed for better intimate scenes to be created – and then with our lack of touch, they [the scenes] have impacted so much more.”

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Metro: Thank you for coming: Why 2020 was the year TV gave us a sex education

23/12/2020

Ita O’Brien, who worked on the programme as well as 18 other shows in the last 12 months, explained how her work as an intimacy co-ordinator has made sex on screen both more enjoyable, as well as more educational, for actors and viewers.

‘We are now watching intimate content where actors have consented and feel comfortable performing well-choreographed scenes,’ she explains. ‘We’re not squirming internally because the actors involved aren’t squirming internally. Now, the intimate content helps tell the story and can have a huge impact, as the actor is now being cared for and their needs aren’t being compromised during sex scenes.’

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Screen Daily: Perspectives on 2020: Ita O’Brien on the new challenges for intimacy co-ordinators

21/12/2020

BY NIKKI BAUGHAN

The UK’s Ita O’Brien has become one of the industry’s most in-demand intimacy co-ordinators, with credits that include Normal People, I May Destroy You, The Dig and Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. She has spent six years developing best practices around scenes of intimacy, sexual content and nudity on stage and screen through her company Intimacy on Set, but it has been the rise of the #MeToo movement that has propelled her work into the spotlight. O’Brien is now working on Reed Morano’s adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel The Power and Sarah Adina Smith’s Birds Of Paradise, both for Amazon Studios.

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Entertainment Weekly: Best of 2020 (Behind the Scenes): How Normal People's intimacy coordinator made those sex scenes so sexy

21/12/2020

By Ruth Kinane

A TV show came out in 2020 that — quarantine or no quarantine — made us all sad and horny. We're talking, of course, about the BBC and Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney's best-selling novel Normal People, starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Since there's been enough sad this year to last us a lifetime, let's talk about sex instead. The show's intimacy coordinator, Ita O'Brien (founder of Intimacy on Set and author of the Intimacy on Set guidelines, which protect performers during scenes that involve sex or nudity), takes us inside the creation of those steamy scenes.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Before we get into Normal People, tell me about the role of an intimacy coordinator and why it's so necessary?

ITA O'BRIEN: Think about it this way, if you're reading a script and there's a waltz, you realize people don't necessarily know how to waltz, so we need a specialist choreographer to teach that. Or if we're going to put swords in someone's hands, of course, people don't just know how to do sword play, we're going to need a practitioner. Then there was this gap. Just like a waltz, a sex scene is also a body dance and just like a fight, there's a risk and the risk is it makes someone vulnerable about being naked or being touched in places that aren't suitable. There was this sense that, well, everybody does sex, so we don't need to teach technique. Then there's the realization of, actually, no, people are vulnerable. And, as with any choreographed dance, you need a specialist practitioner to help everybody talk about it properly and professionally and not gloss over consent. Consent is needed both for touch and nudity, and of simulated sexual content. So there's need for a prep practitioner. Just like a choreographer, that practitioner puts clear choreography into place and brings in techniques. Of course, at the beginning, I had no idea that I'd end up helping to create a role of a practitioner that's now known as the intimacy coordinator.

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