These days, the role of an intimacy coordinator – the person who ensures the safety of actors on set while filming intimate scenes – has entered common parlance. So much so that it makes headlines when a movie doesn’t have one on set (Anora, we’re looking at you).

But it wasn’t always that way. Before 2017, the role of the intimacy coordinator was pretty much unheard of. “When #MeToo happened, the industry was turned on a dime,” says Ita O’Brien, one of the first in the industry to take on the role. Suddenly, the idea of making actors safe on sets during intimate scenes became paramount, and O’Brien – a dancer and playwright who had used choreography extensively in intimate scenes during the creation of her own work – was primed for the role. “Everyone knew that you needed a choreographer for a dance scene and you needed a stunt coordinator for a brilliant fight scene,” she says. “But there wasn’t a professional frame within which to really engage openly and creatively in intimate scenes, as you could do with any other physical storytelling.”

She has plenty of horror stories about what happened before the advent of intimacy coordinators – more on that below. But, thankfully for industry professionals and viewers alike, she’s worked her delicate, highly sensitive magic on some of the best productions of recent years. These include Normal People, Sex Education and I May Destroy You (for the latter, Michaela Coel dedicated the Bafta she won for the series to O’Brien), and films including the recent bittersweet romantic drama We Live In Time, starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.

But what does her work really entail, and what do the public (as well as actors, directors and producers) get wrong about intimacy coordinators? To delve deeper, we spoke to O’Brien about everything from genitalia barriers and time-outs to why kissing can sometimes make for the most intimate scenes of all.

“I helped to pioneer the role of Hollywood’s intimacy coordinators. Here’s what people get wrong about my job”