Ita O'Brien: Intimacy

From the initial spark of attraction when your eyes first meet, to spontaneously dancing together in the kitchen and falling asleep side by side, how do we portray these intimate moments of connection?

How we see sex and intimacy portrayed on screen has profound effects on how we learn to love each other. After decades of working in the arts and seeing first-hand how damaging stereotypes can impact real relationships, she decided to change how we portray intimacy for good, and has set the gold standard with her on-set intimacy guidelines.

As intimacy coordinator on productions including Normal People, Sex Education and I May Destroy You, O’Brien has transformed the way we see and talk about sex in pop culture.

In Intimacy, she guides us through how she helps actors create authentic sex scenes, and how we can use those techniques to rebuild a deeper and healthier connection with our bodies, create a safe space for exploration, and rethink how we navigate sex and intimacy in our own lives – at home, in our closest relationships – and in society as a whole.

Full of behind-the-scenes stories from her work on set, it’s a call for us to rethink how we navigate ourselves and each other, not just through our words, but through our bodies and actions, too.

O’Brien is one of the world’s leading intimacy coordinators for film, TV and theatre, and the creator of the Intimacy On Set guidelines, which are now used around the world, and have gained adoption in leading production houses including HBO, Netflix and the BBC.

Pandora Sykes is a journalist and broadcaster. A former columnist and editor at The Sunday Times Style magazine, she has published two books, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right and What Writers Read: 35 Writers on Their Favourite Book. She now runs a popular weekly Substack, Books+Bits. She is the creator of numerous number one podcasts, including The High Low, and is the host of The Missing, an ethical true crime series about missing people.