How can intimate scenes be brought to the screen in ways that respect the emotional well-being and privacy of the artists themselves? How do we make sure that we can create a story about abuse without anyone being abused in the process?

Ita O’Brien is the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, founder of Intimacy on Set (and author of the Intimacy On Set Guidelines). Her company, set up in 2018 provides services to TV, film, and theatre when dealing with intimacy, and is a SAG-Aftra accredited training provider of Intimacy Practitioners. Intimacy on Set has supported numerous high-profile film and TV productions including Normal People & Conversations With Friends (BBC3/Hulu), Sex Education 1&2 (Netflix), I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), It’s A Sin (Channel 4), (Neal Street Prods / Searchlight Pictures).

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Tell us about your journey to becoming an intimacy coordinator. Because when you started that role didn't even exist.

ITA O'BRIEN

It's been a very organic journey and one that still surprises me and I feel I'm so grateful for the journey that life has taken me on and subsequently the creation of this work. I was a dancer, and then a musical theatre performer, professionally trained as an actor, and then did the MA in Movement Studies at Central, and worked as a movement teacher and a movement director. During that time I was exploring my own theatre work, and put on my own play called April's Fool, and then was looking at taking that work further and exploring the dynamic of the perpetrator and the victim.

So early 2017, I took the work to (British trade union) Equity. And then, in October 2017, the Weinstein allegations happened, and the industry said we have to do better in the creation of the codes of conduct in that environment. The industry was ready just to listen. And I was there saying within your intention to work with best practice, this is how we work with intimate content. By then, I'd written it into the structure of the Intimacy on Set Guidelines. Then, in 2018, Gentlemen Jack, Sex Education, and Watchmen were the first three productions that I worked on as an intimacy practitioner.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You've compared it to being a stunt coordinator. But for performers of emotional and intimate content, the injury that can happen can be emotional and psychological.

O'BRIEN

The awareness in the industry, with acknowledging the injury from all those who came forward around the Weinstein allegations is the injury of when someone's coerced into doing something or that their career being threatened is emotional, psychological injury. It's really clear if you've got a stunt and someone's going to be jumping from roof to roof, they might fall down the cracks and break an ankle. Of course, the producers need to mitigate that risk and put in place everything so that the risk that you can perceive might happen is mitigated.

For years, people spoke about how awkward or embarrassing it was to perform the intimate content. And what they're speaking about is feeling horrible. If something's awkward, that squirm, that ring in the body, it feels embarrassing. That's actually an emotion that is not professional. That is not allowing the actor to stay feeling listened to, heard, empowered, autonomous. And so that they can just get on without any of those concerns and do their job to their best ability. And that's the awareness that we brought. So, we're saying, it is not suitable in our workplace for anybody to feel harassed or abused.

On the Making of Sex Education

I felt so grateful to be working on content that had the question of consent and open conversation at its core, particularly on the show Sex Education, from my very first conversation with Ben Taylor and Jon Jennings. It's a young cast exploring in-depth, intimate content, and they're saying, we know that we need to be able to really support our young cast. They came to me, and then I shared how we could journey through that. So there was a real awareness of intention to take care, understanding of the challenges of working with such exposing intimate scenes.

Love, Privacy & Intimate Storytelling

My realization is that in our existence as human beings, who we love and how we love them is a pinnacle, isn't it? Who we love. We're all seeking that and finding a partner, and then our expression with that loved one is, is the most beautiful part of who we are as human beings. That is a private act, and it should be private and stay private.

Chronicling the HIV/AIDS Crisis Through It's a Sin

That production was really close to my heart because I was a musical theater dancer in the eighties and so that whole storytelling was something that I personally had lived through and really understood. You know, I was that kid at the Pineapple Dance Studios. And gradually, as friends around me sort of began to become unwell, and actually, one of the first people that I knew who died from HIV was my singing teacher at the time, a guy called Chris Edwards. He was the first person that contracted HIV that I knew, and he died within 18 months. So Russell T. Davies. Peter Hoar, the amazing director, and myself were of the generation who had lived through this, but for the young cast it was something that was about history, so that work of really exploring it was important. And also then, there was a cast member for whom the experience of HIV was a lived experience. I worked with two fantastic intimacy practitioners who were both under mentorship at that point in time, Elle McAlpine and David Thackeray.

Working with Michaela Coel on I May Destroy You

That was such a privilege and a joy to work with Michaela Coel, just to be witness and to support her amazing creative process as a writer, as it being part of her life story, as executive producer, as co director, and then finally as actor. Those kinds of storytellings are really important in that they're told with full-on emotional content that has been intended. We don't want to have to pull back from really showing the ugly side of our humanity if there are really challenging, intimate scenes. How do we make sure, as Michaela said, that we can create a story about abuse without anybody being abused in the process?

Navigating Intimate Storytelling through All Life’s Stages

Menopause. How do we deal with that? Of course, while menopause might seem that it only affects the person who's going through it, it affects everybody in a family. It affects your partner. It affects your children. They need to know what's going on in the body. If you haven't had conversations about the menopause, it's full on. And then intimacy and into our older years, it is right and proper that we stay intimate and loving, and then the question of how we possibly might grow into our older years in our sexuality, I would want to lift the lid off all of that for us to create that content out in the world.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you think about the future, the importance of the arts, education, and how we cultivate our emotional intelligence, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?

O’BRIEN

For our art, for our storytelling, what the actor brings to it should be really respected. And the skill and the art of our artists, of our actors, directors, writers – what each individual brings to each part of the creative process. As human beings, that's what we need to stay honoring and respecting and knowing that there can be a place for AI, but we should never take out the human being from the whole process.

Brian Bates, who has explored how actors are the modern-day shamans, writes, "The way of the actor is not an esoteric discipline divorced from everyday life. It is everyday life heightened and lived to the full with an awareness of powers beyond understanding." That's what an actor should be mining into when they explore a character and bringing an awareness of ourselves as humanity.