Should you be choreographing your sex life? How intimacy coordinators can help us off-screen, too

Think about the most memorable sex scenes from the last few years, and the chances are it involved Ita O'Brien. Connell and Marianne having sex for the first time in Normal People? Yep. Aimee teaching herself how to masturbate in Sex Education? Uh huh. The v raunchy It's A Sin montage? Arabella's blood clot interruption in I May Destroy You? The sex scene in We Live in Time that was so steamy, it ended with the cameraman facing the wall? Yes, yes, yes.
O'Brien is the intimacy coordinator whose Intimacy On Set guidelines — groundbreaking guidance for filming intimate content (from kissing to sex to masturbation and beyond) — has transformed the film and TV industries. Since launching her manual in 2017, and her work then debuting in 2019's Sex Education, intimacy coordinators have become regular fixtures on set, choreographing intimate scenes (which, unbelievably, were just freestyled by actors before this), acting as a liaison between actors, directors, and the wider crew, and, in turn, helping craft more authentic, emotive, and, yes, actually arousing sex scenes. By 2020, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and more had all started employing intimacy coordinators, while 23 shows that utilised the role were nominated for Emmys that year.
Although O'Brien started developing her guidelines in 2014, demand for them grew after Harvey Weinstein's decades of abuse were exposed in 2017 and the resulting MeToo movement saw actors share their own experience of sexual coercion, harassment, and assault on set. Today, eight years on, intimacy coordinators are now practically an industry standard, with countless actors expressing their gratitude for the role's existence (Michaela Coel even dedicated her 2021 BAFTA, for I May Destroy You, to O'Brien).
'There was absolutely a void of a practitioner to support intimate content,' O'Brien tells me when we speak to mark the release of her new book, Intimacy, which takes readers behind the scenes of her work. 'Without a professional process, [intimate content] wasn't engaged with openly or creatively, let alone putting in place agreement [between actors] and consent. It was just this unspoken thing in the script that everyone knew was looming.' This reluctance to plan or even talk about intimate scenes led to, as O'Brien puts it, 'a sense of awkwardness' that could result in people 'feeling harassed or even downright abused'.
This isn't, obviously, unique to film sets — and so, you may not be surprised to hear that intimacy coordinators can be helpful off set, too. That's not to say you have to hire your own private intimacy coordinator every time you're getting laid, but, as O'Brien explores in her book, the techniques she uses on set — connecting with your body, setting boundaries, and, 'taking charge of the choreography of your intimate life' — can also have a monumental effect on your real romantic and intimate relationships, too.
'The fundamental tenets of the intimacy guidelines are open communication and transparency, agreement and consent, clear choreography, and really good closure,' explains O'Brien. And these tenets, she adds, can help make your own 'intimate life something that's important to you and something that you can explore and consider'.
'It all starts from being present in yourself,' she continues. 'We're getting so much more disembodied and living our lives on screens, so the first step is reminding ourselves to have a connection with our bodies and feel our own sensuality and sexuality.'
This might just be asking yourself, 'What do I want?', which is, depressingly, something many people — and especially women — tend to forgo in their sexual lives. And, although it sounds strange, it may then be using choreography, of sorts, to figure out, experiment with, and then build on your desires — whether that's tapping into the Kama Sutra, adapting to changes to your body and libido (say, after childbirth or while taking particular medications), or scheduling time to be intimate. 'Just remember that open dialogue keeps the connection,' says O'Brien.
And yet, maintaining communication — and therefore curiosity — about sex, including our own desire and sexual lives, can be difficult when it's been discouraged our whole lives. After all, a reluctance to talk about the still-taboo topic of sex is partly what led to film and TV's flippant approach to intimate content in the first place, as, according to O'Brien, there was a general view that 'everybody has sex, so we don't need a practitioner to teach skills'.
The irony, of course, is that it's a lack of education about sex that tends to lead to awkwardness, misconceptions, and, in some cases, even assault — both on set and off. This isn't lost on O'Brien — in fact, she dedicates a whole chapter in her book to the importance of sex education. And not just for young people, but throughout our lives, too. 'If your sexual life is important to you, then make it part of your life to consider, nurture, and research it,' she says. 'Our sexuality, sensuality, and pleasure in our bodies is a thing of beauty — we should talk about it and engage with it as something that's not shameful and shouldn't be hidden.
'Open education around intimacy doesn't ruin children's innocence, it helps them preserve it,' she continues. 'We should be teaching our young people that sexual connection is human connection, which is about communication, and that intimacy is about consent — and anything that's out of consent is about power. It starts with helping everyone to respect themselves, listen to themselves, and honour their impulses — which really starts with giving people a language to [learn about, and be curious about] what they need from human connection.'
Because what we see in film and TV can have a profound effect on our own sex lives (often for the worse), this language should exist on screen, as well as in schools and beyond — which is exactly what O'Brien is trying to do. It's about more than just showing sex; it's about showing sex that's authentic, clumsy, funny, physiologically accurate, and, importantly, centres consent. This, in turn, can give people an accessible language to talk about sex in its totality.
One notable chapter in Intimacy, for example, explores the myth and reality of sexual arousal, and discusses how what we see on screen paints a false picture of how arousal — particularly women's — really works. 'Too many sex scenes subtly [create] the misleading impression that spontaneous and instant penetration is possible for men — and pleasing for most women,' O'Brien writes. 'This is simply not true. The anatomy of arousal for men and for women is utterly different.' Rarely do we see sex on screen that shows what most women need for sex: foreplay, clitoral stimulation, even lube.
Talking and negotiation also tend to be noticeably absent, as do the messy realities of sex, diverse bodies, non-traditional relationship styles, and, although it's improving, portrayals of queer sex. As O'Brien writes: 'People are often turned off by the sex they see on screen, not because it is explicit but because it isn't real.' And yet, she adds: 'It is the default glass through which we see the world.'
Transforming sex on screen, then, is just the beginning of a long journey to reshape sex more broadly — to normalise and eradicate shame around all kinds of sex, to encourage open communication (with ourselves and others), and to ultimately help *everyone* have better, more fulfilling sex lives.
'The shift in the industry is absolutely incredible,' says O'Brien, 'and it's happening in our drama and film schools, too, where there's now a flip to consent-based training. I hope my work and the book will encourage a ripple effect that can help people [learn and] connect [in their own intimate lives].'
Intimacy by Ita O'Brien is out now via Ebury

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