Since the moment the BBC Three adaption of Sally Rooney’s bestseller Normal People crashed into our lives, we’ve been living our best sex lives vicariously through Marianne and Connell.
The series, which has been downloaded over 23 million times, has been praised for perfectly depicting the awkward, raw intimacy of those early sexual experiences as it tells the story of the young lovers played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal.
In fact, the drama broke a new record for the BBC with a total of 41 minutes of (mostly fully nude) sex scenes, knocking Wanderlust and Versailles off the top spot.
Producers credit the success of these scenes with two things: having intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien on board and the actors respecting one important boundary during filming.
All of the steamy scenes were perfectly choreographed and rehearsed with O’Brien, who disclosed the important risk assessments that have to be made prior to filming and the ‘fundamental rule’ those involved need to abide by when filming full-frontal nudity: ‘Never ever should their genitalia touch.’
‘You’ll have the actress wearing a modesty patch and the gentleman wearing a modesty pouch,’ O’Brien explained on RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor Show.
Admitting that in the past, ‘actors were left to their own devices,’ when shooting intimate scenes, and the degree of nudity or sexual contact that happened would be left up to what the director wanted from the content.
‘There was no agreement or consent in place,’ she revealed. ‘There wasn’t the sense that actually we need to bring a skill and choreography’ to filming.
These days, thankfully, there are measures in place to empower the actors on set, allocating safe words that give them ‘the autonomy to halt the action,’ if they feel uncomfortable at any time during a scene.
This isn’t the first time O’Brien has coached young actors through these explicit types of scenes, she also worked on Netflix’s Sex Education – another show praised for its realistic portrayal of sex.
Theatrically trained actress O’Brien, whose previously credentials include working on the set of Gentleman Jack and Electric Dreams, says the purpose of her role is to ‘invite open conversations and transparency’ at the start of a project.
‘Everyone needs to understand what’s different about this scene, and it’s a long time before we hit the set,’ she explains. Describing how they first discuss the vision of the scene with the director, before discussing it with the actors; monitoring how vulnerable they are, in regards to the content of the scene and what worries them.
She maintains that this helps everyone involved in the production to ‘really work together to maintain a really safe and respectful atmosphere on the set.’
