Blog Posts - Intimacy on Set

Harpers Bazaar: Ruth Wilson: Queen of all she surveys

5/4/2022

Indeed, for True Things, she hired Ita O’Brien, the intimacy coordinator who has worked on Normal People, Sex Education and I May Destroy You. "In the past, people would avoid the subject of a sex scene and not talk about it until the day before, so you’d be left on the day to make it up as you went along," Wilson says. "At best, people felt awkward, and at worst, exploited or unsafe. An intimacy coach demands that the conversation happen with the director and actors in advance, so together you find a way to express that part of the story in a really honest, specific and safe way."

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i news: Ruth Wilson on True Things: ‘People don’t like seeing women being crazy’

1/4/2022

Wilson’s abrupt exit from The Affair in its fourth season in 2018 was reportedly down to issues with its frequent sex scenes and a “toxic environment” on set. True Things employed intimacy director Ita O’Brien, something Wilson, who is also one of the film’s producers, believes is crucial.

“It will help people be more adult about sex scenes,” she says. “Sex can be incredibly sexy. It can be also painful and really isolating and lonely – all sorts. Having an intimacy coach encourages frank conversations and provides a safe environment.”

“Sex is such a mystery! Such a wonderful, complex mystery,” she continues with a laugh. “Each time you have it, it can be incredibly different, even if it’s with the same partner for years. That’s so interesting, you know? Often, I don’t think people manage to be really truthful about what those experiences are like.”

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Independent: Ruth Wilson: ‘Sexuality is part of human nature. We have to put it on screen’

12/3/2022

By Sarah Crompton

“In True Things each sex scene depicts the journey of the relationship. Sexuality is part of human nature. We have to put it on screen so it’s not about taking it out. It’s about making it really specific and honest.”

On the film, Wilson called in the intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien and they choreographed the encounters in advance. “If people are able to have conversations and talk about the intent, and where their boundaries are and what the director wants, it’s a really great thing. It’s not just two actors getting on with it.

“Invariably, doing that you feel uncomfortable. At best its awkward, at worst it can become quite exploitative and you’re not getting it right anyway. Weirdly, by talking about it, by choreographing it, you can probably get scenes that are safer for the actors, but also more explicit and interesting, natural, real, honest portrayals of sex.”

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Opentapes: All the Old Knives: Thandiwe Newton nervous about sex scene with Chris Pine

11/3/2022

While previewing the film at Beverly Hill’s The London West Hollywood, Thandiwe Newton confessed to ET’s microphones that she felt a little embarrassed during the love scene she had to shoot with Chris Pine for All the Old Knives:

“We had a really intense scene right in the middle of the movie, it was really important and required to be naked. I had just glimpsed Chris and I thought ‘Oh no, no, no'”

The actress, however, explained how Chris Pine is kind and thoughtful and, in the end, put her at ease:

“But it’s such a treasure. And the intimacy was handled so beautifully, it was handled well because we had an intimacy coordinator. So everyone knew what was going on.”

Thandiwe Newton explained that the roles of intimacy coordinators have become very important for productions, especially those that include scenes involving nudity and physical intimacy:

“That’s why we have the co-ordinator of intimacy. Everyone agrees to every detail of what’s happening. Everyone agrees … and then we go to work.”

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Harpers Bazaar: Ruth Wilson: “It’s not about taking sex off the screens, it’s about showing it in a more truthful and respectful way”

11/3/2022

BY BROOKE THEIS

Her latest project, True Things, is the first film Wilson has both co-produced and starred in. Adapted from the novel by Deborah Kay Davies, the psychological drama is set in modern-day Ramsgate, and follows a benefits officer whose life becomes entwined with that of an ex-convict through mutual infatuation. She explained that it was important for her to employ an intimacy coach, Ita O’Brien, when filming, to help work through the sex scenes. “For so many years in TV and film there was the sense that if you were an actress, you’d just get naked, that’s what you do, and that wasn’t brought into question much,” she said. “Women and young girls weren’t being asked if they were comfortable or not – and very often they weren’t. And they were being encouraged, and sometimes coerced, into being in those vulnerable positions.

“It’s not about taking sex off the screens, it’s about showing it in a more truthful and respectful way,” she added. “Having intimacy coaches means that you can talk about your boundaries, or what you feel uncomfortable about, and you can actually get much better sex scenes as a result.”

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Variety: Chris Pine Talks Working With an Intimacy Coordinator on ‘All the Old Knives’ and Waiting to See a ‘Star Trek 4’ Script

10/3/2022

By Marc Malkin

Janus told me it was the first time you ever worked with an intimacy coordinator.

I had never done that before. You’re doing a sex scene in a bedroom and you have this older woman that’s watching and giving your notes on how to do the sex scene and I’m thinking, “Who is this person telling me how to have sex?” [Laughs.] But it was wonderful. She was lovely. It just takes the pressure off. There’s just no discomfort, because you have someone like a referee making sure it’s all above board and everyone is comfortable. She’s also like a choreographer making sure it all translates well on screen like, “Move your neck” or “Arch your back more.”

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Opera Today: Exclusive first look behind the scenes of Katie Mitchell’s thrilling new production of Handel’s Theodora

1/2/2022

Acclaimed director Katie Mitchell’s gripping new production of Handel’s Theodora opens at the Royal Opera House on Monday 31st January 2022.

Not heard in Covent Garden since its 1750 premiere, and sung in the original English libretto by Thomas Morell, Theodora is a tour de force for soloists and chorus alike, with ensembles, duets and arias of profound depth and beauty. This new interpretation, conducted by Baroque specialist Harry Bicket, will re-frame the oratorio’s narrative, and is the first Royal Opera production to benefit from the expertise of an Intimacy Coordinator, Ita O’Brien, who joins the female-led creative team, taking on a vital role in the production process.

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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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Screen Daily: ‘Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power’: Sundance Review

22/1/2022

BY FIONNUALA HALLIGAN
...

Audiences will hopefully never look at perspective, slow-mo, fragmented bodies or female faces presented in 2D in the same way again, thanks to Menkes’ two-decades-plus of research. She certainly proves that shot design is gendered. As her eloquent interviewee Amy Zierling notes: “It’s invisible, and you don’t notice the air.”

Menkes moves beyond the predatory camera and the subject-object set-up, though. With her commentators — who also include Eliza Hittman, Julie Dash, Laura Mulvey, the intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien and Joey Soloway, amongst others, she talks about the implied violence hidden in these tropes. The up-the-bum shot, the slow-pan down the body, the whole idea of a beautiful unconscious woman — taken to an extreme, recalls Rosanna Arquette, when her dead character was embraced by the camera in a sexual manner in Scorsese’s After Hours. Dead women, silent women - as with Cathy Moriarty’s character in Raging Bull, who literally couldn’t be heard - women seen bent over from behind - these turn into women whose consent is immaterial. The ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ trope where Harrison Ford, for example, smacks a resisting Sean Young in Bladerunner and she’s suddenly aroused, as with Jessica Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). It’s disempowerment at its essence and, as Menkes said, it worms its way into the collective consciousness through the global power of Hollywood. (Or, in other words, forms the “bedrock of the language of rape culture”.)

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METRO: The Girl Before star Jessica Plummer praises show’s ‘brilliant’ intimacy coordinator: ‘I felt extremely safe’

19/12/2021

The Girl Before star Jessica Plummer gave insight into how the cast worked closely under the eye of intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien and explained the ’safe’ practices she brought to set.

The BBC drama tells the story of Jane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who becomes the tenant of a super minimalist property, designed by mysterious architect Edward (David Oyelowo).

There’s one catch; she must live by his very specific set of rules and has limits on what and who she can bring into her life, and her new home.

But she soon ends up making some shocking discoveries about the titular ‘girl before’ Emma (Jessica Plummer), who met a grisly end three years previously.

Amid coming to grips with the initial plotline, the series also made for some more difficult scenes for the cast during production, with some very intimate moments to film.

Speaking to press including Metro.co.uk ahead of the show’s release, the former EastEnders actress praised intimacy coach Ita for her work on-set.

‘Ita O’Brien is such a brilliant intimacy coordinator,’ Jessica begun, as she went on to detail the process of the scenes.

‘We met, we did rehearsals, we spoke in advance about things that we were comfortable with and we did warm ups.

‘Every time we gave consent, before we did anything.’

The job of an intimacy coordinator is to guide actors through scenes which involve sex or nudity, to make sure they feel safe, protected and have given proper consent.

Jessica gave further insight into how the cast worked through these sorts of scenes.

‘Our approach was kind of just seeing it as like a dance that we gave it beats.

‘There was there was a structure that was like a routine, So we knew it was just very choreographed,’ she added.

The actress commended Ita for making her feel ‘extremely safe’ throughout the process.

‘Just knowing that before we had filmed it, that was set in place, it made the scene as easy to film as any other,’ she concluded.

Ita is known for her work as an intimacy coordinator and has been involved with some of the biggest shows of the last few years.

Most notably, she assisted the cast of Normal People in the heart-wrenching series based on Sally Rooney’s novel of the same name.

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Palatinate: The revival of intimacy on-screen: the place of intimacy coordinators in film and TV

19/12/2021

Intimacy on screen is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years its place in the film industry has been rediscovered. The emergence of intimacy coordinators can be credited for this revolution, changing approaches to sex scenes both artistically and pragmatically.

Male dominance in the film industry has historically moulded sexual depictions of women in objectified and degrading ways. It has also perpetuated these attitudes on set. Maria Schneider’s experience, in which she was purposely excluded from the decision to substitute butter for lubricant in her scripted rape scene, demonstrated indifference to boundaries in the workplace. In fact, the intention for director Bernardo Bertolucci was to inspire a genuine emotion of humiliation in Schneider, treating her as a prop on set. The negative psychological impact on Schneider demonstrated the need for safeguarding measures protecting women in the film industry.

Following the viral #MeToo movement in 2017, concerns around sexual assault and manipulative behaviour in the industry were pushed to the forefront. The exposure of Harvey Weinstein unmasked a world of abuse behind the glamorised Hollywood name.

In the same year, intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien introduced her ‘Intimacy on Set Guidelines’, inspiring a momentous shift in the treatment towards sex on set. New rules were implemented to ensure actors’ consent and set boundaries for their comfort. This shift also impacted the representation of sex on screen. Rather than constituting an entertaining and commodified addition to film and TV, sex scenes were revolutionised as realistic, vulnerable and emotive portrayals of human experience.

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WhatsonStage: Spring Awakening review – a piercing beam of light at the Almeida

19/12/2021

The weight of the show falls on the shoulders of the three leads: clever Melchior, whose high-minded dreams of a better future are nearly crushed by the consequences of his affair with the naïve but lovely Wendla; and well-meaning Moritz, who is destroyed by the weight of expectations placed upon him. All are utterly superb.

As Melchior, Laurie Kynaston (familiar from The Son and The Ferryman) has a tentative openness, and a firm belief in his own knowledge that make his descent almost unbearable to watch. Amara Okereke as Wendla matches him in tenderness and magnanimous trust; the scene where they make love (staged with the help of intimacy director, Ita O'Brien) has a touching clumsiness that makes it all the more affecting. Her singing is so pure and radiant, it seems to come directly from her heart. The last of the central trio, Stuart Thompson, is simply heart-breaking and there are fine performances too from Nathan Armarkwei-Laryea as one of life's survivors and Carly-Sophia Davies as one of the world's lost souls. It is a triumphant achievement and I wish it a long run and full houses.

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Variety: Leading Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien Discusses Job Challenges, Reveals Assault By a Director

13/12/2021

By K.J. Yossman

Leading intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien, who has worked on projects including “I May Destroy You” and “Normal People,” among others, has revealed she was once assaulted by a director while working on set.

O’Brien, who started her career as a dancer and movement director, was discussing the challenges of her work — including the resistance she sometimes encounters from creatives and crew — during producers’ conference Focus London.

In the beginning of her move into intimacy coordination, which was around 2015, O’Brien said productions invited her in “because they knew they really wanted” her experience and input. However, that was followed by a “middle period,” just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic starting in early 2020, when she was often met with resistance on set.

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Mail Online: 'I'd never done anything like that': Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones details the filming of the shows intimate scenes

23/11/2021

The series hired intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien to carefully construct and choreograph the scenes with realistic portrayal.
On Ita's role, Daisy spoke about the vulnerability that actors face and the importance of having intimacy coordinator's on set.
She said: 'I find it very shocking that [intimacy coordinators are] new. You are simulating something, and you are very vulnerable in that moment.
'So, it was amazing working with Ita [O’Brien, Normal People’s intimacy coordinator], she’s really good at allowing you to have agency in those moments.'

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InsideHook: Obviously “Game of Thrones” Should Have Had an Intimacy Coordinator

3/11/2021

In other words, Momoa never would have been pressured to remove his intimacy pouch had there been an intimacy coordinator on set to help guide the scene. But, sadly, the actors on Game of Thrones weren’t the only ones harmed by its problematic sex scenes. Fans who watched the fantasy series — particularly those who were young, sexually inexperienced and impressionable at the time — may have developed their own incorrect or outdated views on what’s considered normal or acceptable when it comes to sex and consent based on what they saw onscreen.

“Very often, how someone learns about intimacy is through what they see,” intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien told InsideHook. “That is the medium through which we’re entertaining ourselves, but also reflecting our humanity back to itself. That’s what people feel that they need to aspire to. When it’s so unrealistic, it forms a real schism in how people think they should be and what they think is normal.”

We obviously can’t go back in time and undo the damage wrought by Game of Thrones‘s lack of an intimacy coordinator, but moving forward, we can work towards making the role an industry standard to ensure that actors like Whelan are never made to feel as though their personal boundaries regarding sex and nudity have been violated at work.

Ten years after the premiere of Thrones, HBO is now using intimacy coordinators on all its productions that have intimate scenes (the move was announced in 2018 after Thrones had finished filming its final season); here’s hoping that in another decade, it’ll be an absolute requirement on all film sets.

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Decider: ‘Foundation’ Star Leah Harvey on Gender-Flips, Action Scenes, and Shipping Salvor and Phara

16/10/2021

Salvor does have a romance. I’m really struck by how in the show, sexuality and intimacy is just romantic. In other shows, it’s for shock value or it’s racy. Every single moment of intimacy felt earned, it felt dreamy and passionate. And in this case, it’s your character’s relationship with Hugo (Daniel McPhearson). Can you talk to me about how Salvor sees that relationship, and how you saw and approached those kissing scenes and more intimate moments with the other actors?

We had an amazing intimacy coach, Ita O’Brien, and some of the people that worked with her worked with us, and she made those scenes very, very easy and comfortable, and I think that we ended up with the best result. But yeah, I think that they are beautiful, and I think that it shows what Salvor’s fighting for, actually. When you get to see the connection she has with Hugo and her parents and just anyone, because, you know, a hug is intimate. A kiss on the cheek is intimate. It shows what we’re all fighting for, and that’s why I think it’s so earned and it’s so beautifully put in the show. It’s humanity, and it’s wonderful to be able to do that, to show that.

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The Times: BBC makes sex scene co-ordinators mandatory

15/10/2021

Ita O’Brien worked as an intimacy coach on Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You

The BBC has made intimacy co-ordinators mandatory for all its television programmes after actors including Michaela Coel said they were essential to filming sex scenes safely.

Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s director of television, has told external production companies that co-ordinators “must be engaged” when filming scenes of an intimate nature.

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Stylist: Jodie Comer exclusive: “The Last Duel holds a mirror up to society”

15/10/2021

The rape scene is particularly traumatic. How did you approach filming that?

We had an amazing intimacy coordinator called Ita O’Brien and she’s worked on Sex Education, I May Destroy You and I Hate Suzie; so many incredible things that have tackled really difficult subjects. We were so lucky to have her on board, and so it was having conversations with her about what I was comfortable with, what I wasn’t. The night before shooting those scenes, Adam and I went to set with Ridley and blocked out the physicality of it. Then the next day me and Adam had a conversation and said: if there’s anything that either of us aren’t comfortable with, we’ll let each other know. But we had a respect for each other and trust in one another and we both felt very safe.

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Grazia: Interview with Jodie Comer on The Last Duel

14/10/2021

HotPress: Interview: Sex Education stars on the return of the acclaimed Netflix series

6/10/2021

As you’ll gather from the wildly explicit opening scenes of every season so far, little is left to the imagination on Sex Education. The cast have been guided throughout by intimacy coordinators like Ita O’Brien, who also worked on Normal People.

According to Ncuti Gatwa, who plays fan-favourite character Eric, filming any intimate scenes during the pandemic was “tricky”.

“Everyone’s got their masks on, and from a distance, you can’t hear what anyone’s saying,” he laughs. “It just made everything take longer. But at the same time, we carried on with the same process that we had since Season 1. The intimacy directors were very much involved in every intimate scene.”

“Working with the intimacy coordinator was great – it felt like a dance routine,” adds Chinenye Ezeudu, who plays the ambitious, newly appointed Head Girl Viv. “We all knew the steps we were going to do – whether we were going to touch people’s hands, and kiss them. It was very safe. We had conversations beforehand. Some people, when they’re doing sex scenes, they have an animal in mind. Some people have sloths, or slugs. We did a whole workshop with Ita.”

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The Jakarta Post: Ita O'Brien: in-demand on-screen intimacy coordinator

31/7/2021

By Charlotte Durand

Britain's Ita O'Brien is one of cinema's unsung stars, ensuring actors are comfortable filming their most sensitive scenes in a job she has made her own.

The 56-year-old intimacy coordinator has been a key figure behind the sex scenes in acclaimed series such as "I May Destroy You", "Sex Education" and "Normal People".

Preserving the intimacy of an artist filming a rape depiction, setting up a sex scene with a virgin actor and identifying the limits each actor is comfortable with are all issues that O'Brien is regularly confronted with.

A typical conversation she regularly has with stars, she told AFP, goes along the lines: "He is going put his hand here, you put yours there and then you start the fellatio."

She sees her role as one of ensuring "open communication" between the director and the actors on all intimate scenes that may include kissing, nudity or sex.

"This is a process by which we bring our professional structure to intimacy" allowing the on-screen stars to "bring all of the skills of the actor to this moment," she added.

"We agree on a consent of touch and then a clear process by which we choreograph the intimate contact clearly. So it's just like dance."

Each scene will be discussed then rehearsed beforehand, away from the glare of the dozens of people usually present on a set.

"When the camera rolls or they're up on stage, they know that they can perform that intimate contact, knowing where they're going to be touched," she said.

At the heart of her philosophy is consent, in an industry which has been rocked in recent years by sexual assault claims.

Her motto, which she says she often repeats to actors, is "your 'no' is a gift. Tell us your 'no', so that we can trust your 'yes'".

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Collider: Emily Mortimer on Directing 'The Pursuit of Love's Sex Scenes and Assembling a "Super Band" For the Show With a Bad Seed's Help

30/7/2021

By Liz Shannon Miller

That's wonderful. To wrap up, as an actor, you've had plenty of experience with nudity and sex scenes — what was it like directing sequences like that?

MORTIMER: It was really interesting. I mean, I was very set in that I wanted something like that, because the story was sort of Linda's journey, through her romantic life, was about coming to a place where she was sort of sexually liberated and felt quite awakened sexually. And that it was something that she could embrace without feeling ashamed of it. So I wanted that sex scene between her and Fabrice [Assaad Bouab] to be really sexy, but yet feel... I mean, I find sex scenes often very embarrassing to watch, and I wanted it to be sexy without being cringe-y and also to feel like it was kind of from a woman's point of view somehow.

And so, they have these things now called intimacy coordinators. And we had this incredible woman who did the love scenes from Normal People, Ita O'Brien, who's a real artist. It's almost like choreographing a dance, and we spoke at length with her, and I thought of great moments in sex scenes that I've loved in movies, and I used that a bit and we kind of put them all together in this kind of strange... Really, the most electric moment in falling in love with someone or getting into a sexual relationship with someone is that first touch, when they first touch you, or you first touch them, and you know that you're both thinking about the thing. And I wanted to kind of riff on that moment. And so, then I developed this whole kind of flash-forward thing.

Lily was just incredible and so open and up for it. And I was very careful to make Lily and Emily [Beecham] feel that in any moments where there was nudity that they could watch it with me and come back into the monitor. And we watched it together and worked out what looked good and what didn't. It was a collaboration really. I guess that's what it was. It was all of us talking and all of us working it out and being very open about it.

I've done a lot of those kinds of scenes in my life. And it often can feel like somebody just died or something. It's very funereal and there's this sort of hush sort of church-like sort of atmosphere on a set when people have to take their clothes off, which makes it much more embarrassing. And nobody's talking, and nobody's looking you in the eye. It's something that we really feel so sort of, I don't know, awkward and self-conscious, and I just wanted it to not be like that. I wanted it to be like, we're all chatting and we're here.

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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 Telegraph: Intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien was the real star of the Baftas – and could save the TV industry

7/6/2021

The standout winner at the 2021 TV Baftas was Ita O'Brien, and she wasn't even nominated for an award. O'Brien was the intimacy coordinator on Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You, which won best mini-series and Leading Actress for Coel. But O'Brien also worked on Normal People (with Leading Actor winner Paul Mescal) and Sex Education (for which Aimee Lou Wood won Best Female Performance in a Comedy Programme) as well as The Third Day, Gangs of London and I Hate Suzie, all of which were nominated.

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