The Telegraph: Meet Asa Butterfield, TV’s surprising Mr Sex
One thing that helped, he tells me, is the fact that they had on-set intimacy coordinators to work with. Ita O’Brien and David Thackeray have advised on British shows such as Gentleman Jack and Electric Dreams and were available to discuss any worries that the cast might have with the sex scenes they were asked to act out, ranging from the sensuous – Swindells’s detention-time romp with Eric (played by Ncuti Gatwa) – to the horrifying – Wood’s character is traumatised by a stranger who ejaculates on her on a bus.
Butterfield didn’t need the intimacy coordinators himself much, but he was aware that others found their presence hugely helpful. “I didn’t have so many intimate scenes,” he says, “and for a lot of the intimate scenes I did have I was by myself and I felt like I didn’t need a 40-year-old woman to guide me through that.” He laughs. “I thought I could probably manage on my own.
“Quite a few of the other actors, this was their first job, and to have someone who you know you can talk to if you have any concerns was great. And the atmosphere on set was actually really great. The directors and producers were so respectful. We always knew where our boundaries lay, knew that we could say no. No one ever went home feeling that they had done something they didn’t want to do.”