![]() Has there been any change in approach when shooting scenes of sexual assault in comparison to consensual sex scenes? Critically acclaimed for her work on Normal People, Sex Education, and many other shows, O’Brien speaks to about the process behind approaching and choreographing intimate scenes that vary along the spectrum of consent. To help the show creator safely bring that experience to the screen, O’Brien “supported really clearly with the intimate content, helping her to be clear and clean, for her to step back into the role of being the actor to serve character.”īy bringing these nuanced, and perhaps unfamiliar, depictions of consent and trauma to the screen in a realistic yet respectful way, O’Brien's work helps educate viewers and allows for the wider public debate on intimacy and physical boundaries to progress in new ways. Such support and guidance is vital for a show like I May Destroy You, which was inspired by Coel’s own experience of sexual assault. The infamous sex scene in Blue Is the Warmest Colour is a prominent example where actors found a sequence distressing to perform leads Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux described the 10 grueling days of filming as “horrible” and “really suffering.” After Hollywood's awakening, O’Brien pioneered the role of intimacy coordinator and developed the Intimacy on Set guidelines to ensure that scenes of nudity, intimacy, and simulated sex are performed safely without compromising the actors’ personal boundaries. This integrated approach of therapeutic support feels quite revolutionary, as Platt mentioned on Twitter and unfortunately is a practice that, until the Me Too movement, wasn’t always followed. As the architect of safe spaces on set, O’Brien worked closely with the artist well-being practitioner, Louise Platt, a qualified psychotherapist, who was on call to provide emotional and psychological support for the actors while they performed sensitive content. ![]() To ensure this realism is enacted safely, each beat is composed down to the placement of hands or a certain number of thrusts in order to protect the actors’ emotional and physical boundaries. That’s why Ita O’Brien, a U.K.-based intimacy coordinator, was vital to the construction of these intimate moments, choreographing each move, or “beat” as O’Brien calls it, to create a seamless structure of intimacy and realism between the actors. ![]() For Kwame, the ramifications of assault aren’t confined to the isolated incident his trauma is later triggered by the physical acts of intimacy.Īs trauma reverberates through these characters’ lives, it’s important that the actors portraying them are psychologically safe and supported. The police officer who dismisses him when he reports the crime reflects how not all sexual assaults are taken seriously. Experiences like his are often used to victim-blame survivors, as if their initial consent counts as permission for blurring all sexual boundaries. On a Grindr date, Kwame, a queer Black man, has a disturbing encounter in which sex begins consensually but undeniably ends in assault. During a trip to Italy, Terry, a struggling actress, is manipulated by two men into having a threesome. But as the show progresses, we learn that her two best friends, Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), have also experienced varying degrees of exploitation. I May Destroy You predominantly follows Arabella (Michaela Coel) through her journey to uncover the perpetrator who drugged and sexually assaulted her on a night out. ![]() By treating these moments with sensitivity and nuance, the revolutionary show has changed the way we view sex on-screen. Often jarringly authentic, intimate scenes in the HBO series range from consensual period sex, to assault between gay men, to date rape, to nonconsensual “stealthing,” whereby a man removes or damages his condom during intercourse without his partner’s knowledge. But I May Destroy You dives right into the gray area where varying depictions of intimacy and consent are overlooked or considered taboo. Sexual consent is far too often oversimplified to a clear choice of either yes or no.
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