YouSaid · the spoken record

Ita O'Brien

lines on the record: 40
first: 2026-07-20
most recent: 2026-07-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Olivia, amazing. It's been gorgeous to prepare this conversation with you. Thank you so much for your insights and for your interest.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Freely given consent is what they're looking for, and anything other than that is not about love or sexualness or consent. It's about power and what you're taking from somebody and helping all our young boys and girls to love and respect themselves, listen to the impulses, and then take that into their sexual awakening, and also to help them to know that it's okay not to know.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Secondary schools in positive sex education along with teaching our kids like two of the plates that I love is things that you don't see in mainstream porn and things that you wished you were taught in sex education drawn by the amazing Hazel Mead. So what I'm a real call to arms for our sex education to lift the lid and shift it to positive sex education so our young people can have positive sexual awakening and being taught all of this so that understanding of respect for themselves or young boys and young girls are really wonderful language for consent. I'm understanding consent comes from what people say, how they say it, what languages that they're saying it, but also what's happening in the body language and helping all of our young people to understand”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Women. And I really believe that all of this should be taught in our schools. We should be teaching about menstruation as a normal and natural thing, something that's not a curse or something that's disgusting. But again, it's a natural part of half the population. So understanding the cyclical nature of that, and I talk about the red school, which is really fabulous in educating people about the gift of our cyclical nature as menstruating women, you know, the anatomy of our arousal, the anatomy of our dysfunction, again, so up to 40% of people will experience some form of dysfunction. And again, there's such shame about it. But let's lift the lid and let it be something that can be spoken about and therefore people can get help that's needed. The anatomy or what happens to us in our menopause, again, is so important and how the body shifts and changes rather than it being the secrecy thing. And again, it should be taught enough.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's happening internally as a woman's getting aroused, and what happened with the womb. So the womb is actually lying flat over the bladder. It is also getting engorged, as is the clitoris, which again is this beautiful Y-shaped organ that's mostly inside around our labia. All of that is getting engorged. There's as much, if not more, engorging tissue in the woman's clitoris and vagina and womb as the penis. So to know that. But actually there's a different cycle and time. So a woman takes about 20 minutes to get fully aroused. But knowing that, and as you become a roused, the womb lifts. So it's almost vertical. And as it's doing that, it's opening out of the vagina. So I'm waiting to that point of really being ready to invite someone into you is a wonderful thing to know both for men.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That has loosened up now, but it's still understanding that dance is beautiful. And then to finish up, what you're saying, what was so lovely that you mentioned the sections about the anatomy of arousal. So that's the other aspect in that whole section. I really truly believe that really good education about our bodies and our arousal helps us to understand, again, who we are more and then have more successful encounters. And to understand that someone with the penis, their journey to arousal is more linear. It has an arousal phase that actually has a plateau phase, then arousal again to orgasm, and then resolution with a female cyclic cyclical. So you can perhaps you can start a sexy encounter, not feeling particularly sexy, and then you'll get aroused and then you're journeying on that cycle through. And I loved, I didn't know this as a mid-50s woman understanding about...”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then another one that is a fundamental sequence that I've learnt back in 1995, I think, is the Eight Silken movements that are a very ancient sequence of movements. And they're so simple, but they're so profound. And I again offer those. But then, as you were saying, just also that understanding that just dance. Just put a piece of music on and just move to it. It's such a gorgeous thing reminding you of that joy, that impulse in the body. My partner and I, you know, one of the best places is dancing in the kitchen, you know, any time of day, whatever, or night, just to have that connection. As I say, throughout the ages, people connected through dance. And there's fact before the 1960s, it was the main way that people could come to touch with each other.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's a fundamental. Like I say, walking barefoot, massaging the feet is an absolutely wonderful one in order to really help you to be present. Again, the feet actually reflect the whole of the body. And this is just an overall general massage and they're going to talk you through it. But a really great tool, again, just to connect you, to remind you of that. your physical connection with your own body and or you can do that foot massage to a partner which is a lovely beautiful sensual thing. We also have things like just a body scan again is such a beautiful on just sitting and go how am I right now? I'm feeling really stressed just sitting back body scan down the body where am I tense and following the impulses of how do I want to move me doing those stretches and then coming back to just going ah okay great now I'm refreshed now I'm really present with myself”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the first one that I start the book with is the first thing you can do before you take any step on any journey is to start from where you are now, right now. And a really wonderful tool is 20 connected breaths. is such an easy tool and you can do it throughout the day when you want to finish one thing and resettle and set your mind before the next thing just literally sitting and connecting 20 breaths just gives you time to drop in to release and 20 connected breaths is enough to just change your fundamental nervous system and settle it and allow it to be calmer yeah and just that that quiet time to connect with the breath just gives you a release a connection a letting go and then like coming back to nothingness as it were and then you can go and now what or a lovely place to start okay to start questioning yourself and listening to yourself”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who you are as a human being and what that human connection is even more. And again, Kay, if you want to have a play with it, it's a toy. It's a tool. And if you're keeping that awareness that it's a tool, but my concern is that this confusion of someone loving something that actually isn't loving Beck or an interchange with something that is just an inanimate object is concerning because I think people are just falling into it without really realizing what they're losing in these kind of relationships.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. And then developing a relationship with something like that, so long as you keep that overview great. But it's so easy. And in my research, people have got sucked in so completely to then just believe that this is utterly real. And then that confusion in our emotional psyche. And then, as you say, with the cyber ruffles and, you know, and then taking that a step further and wanting that physical release and then going to places that again aren't asking you to interface with another human being, not asking you to, in a way, having that complicatedness of another human being, either that they're there as a professional to be off service. If there's someone from the adult industry, giving a service of sex and sexuality, which is absolutely fine if there's two consenting adults. But that choice should then go to a robot instead. Again, it's you're removing your...”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The sense, and it's serving a very needed function, but it's not a true lived person. You're not being engaged with actually the reality of the jeopardy in a way, the uncertainty of how do I negotiate what I want, how do I negotiate what they want, what am I learning from this person? What are they learning from me? How am I loving this person? How are they loving me? And that is the aspect, isn't it, with an AI? They're not loving you.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then, what are your desires, and how do you take that into your relationships? The thing is, we're living in our skins and we're now becoming so much more disembodied with we're in our heads and we're playing games or we're connecting people on a game on the computer. So all always happening is our hands are twitching and everything. And now we've got our Google homes that we're talking to going, hey, Google, do this. So as then we're living at home and then these AIs are coming into our home and we're able to talk to them and interface with them. And that sense of the desire for human connection is so fundamental that then we're bringing that desire and that connection to this disembodied robot that is in our homes. And then we're developing relationships with them.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's not vilifying our screens, but it's just a reminder to go just take a step away. Just drop into the body, listen to the body. And in order to really engage with your desires, your sensuousness, your juiciness, you need to be in the body to listen to that. So doing things that allow you to connect with the body. So, you know, for me, one of the things I offer is just walking barefoot in the grass every morning if you can, massaging your feet, going for a walk in nature, just connects you up. It's so important.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's such a concerning development, isn't it, in how we relate to the tools that are out there for us to use, isn't it? So here we are. I'm sat in Kent, you're sat in London, and we're able to communicate on this incredible technology. And that's fabulous. And our phones and our computers and everything, all of it is there to serve us. What I'm writing about in the book is just bringing awareness about who we are as human beings. And for me, part of the, you know, work that I love is just reminding people, part of the really crucial work is coming back to the essence of who you are as a human being and how we operate on this earth. And so what I'm really offering through the book is a reminder to be in the body, to live a life in the body.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About anchoring and body parts, you know, sort of connected that are good. So, like, you know, and the same as a good fight. If you're throwing a punch and the camera's on one side, you'll see that never the fist and the face meet. But when you have it in the right camera angle, then it looks like there's a really good punch. And of course, it's all sold by the person that's receiving the punch. Or the same with the intimate content, you know, we're making sure there's good physicality, good physical connection. And then it's selling the physical story on where the camera is. But if you brought the camera on the other side, it wouldn't work.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Allowing that this is it sort of again with a stunt coordinator, they're there to support everybody and create a really brilliant stunt or fight. They're not, you wouldn't say they're there to keep people safe as in that's their main focus. No, their main focus is they're there, you know, to create a brilliant piece of art that elevates this production and inherent in the process is safety. But it's the same with us, a really well-trained intimacy coordinator who is an embodied physical artist who has all of those skills in their tool bag will come to set to again be exactly the same. And we bring technique. So some of the techniques that we might bring is like making sure that if they're simulated sexual content, you don't want pubic bone to pubic bone. So we bring in genitalia cushions that are sort of akin to the stunt coordinator's crash mats. We're bringing in techniques of understanding.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fellow actor to behave respectfully. But if you were doing a fight, would you say, I don't need a fight director because my fellow actor isn't an angry person? It's like, well, great, that's a lovely given for how we work respectfully on set, but actually that doesn't mean that suddenly you don't need all of those skills that the stunt coordinator is going to bring. You know, understanding what the techniques are that are wanted, teaching those techniques to the actor so that they're within their nervous system and really well known and then choreographing so that the beats of the scene are really serving the character and the director's vision. And so everything's choreographed so that the dance set runs well. Again, it's lifting the lid and helping people to understand that's what we can do or that's what we do is we really make sure the choreography and the physicality is exactly serving character and serving.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because all the work should have been known. So those kind of misconceptions about actually what good practice is and how the role can support the actor, not get in the way, can support the director and honour the director's vision and help elevate it, not get in the way. And somebody else mentioned or said something about I don't need an intimacy coordinator because my co-star isn't a Pervy person. Okay. And while that sentiment is absolutely good, of course, you want your.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I'm not feeling exposed about who you are in your personal lives and how you express yourself with your most precious, loving relationship. So it is really important that that's kept sacred. And again, through this process, your clear choreography, considering character, then choreographing. And everything's known before the d on set. Then again, what we want is to give the actor freedom. And as an actor said to me, oh, it's just like any other scene. And it is just like any other scene, but includes touch and possibly nakedness and simulated sexual content. But that's known and choreographed, which is why that's so important and the process and the preparation is so important so that the de on set they can be free. So for example, there's somebody who said, oh, stand back on set and give me space. Well, the thing is, she's absolutely right. You should, the intimacy coordinator should be giving the actors space on set.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is to act about these characters. And then that goes back to answering your question, and it's so wonderful, Olivia, that you have these conversations with other actors, because it is exactly that. And my heart goes out to you. Anybody that's just said, just make out. And as you're saying, invariably each actor is trying to take care of each other. They're trying to do their best. But if they haven't had time to artistically and creatively with their director talk about, well, why is that scene there? How does it push the storytelling forward? What does it tell us about each of these characters? And then that's where the aspect of supporting the actor to really be in this embodied character that's not them. And again, that's what keeps the actor safe. You're making sure that the physicality they're stepping into their physicality of the character and then going, and what are the rhythms of this character? And that's exactly also how they protect themselves.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Journey. That journey to really understand how you are present on set, how you serve the producers first as their ally, how you put in place best practice across the whole of a production that as you use were aware of, you know, that's not just about the caste, it's about all the crew. It's about a whole production day of work. And when someone isn't supported under mentorship to gradually develop a really robust professional practice, then that's where bad practices happen. And then also it's that thing of really understanding that you are absolutely serving the actor director's process. You're not trying to interrupt it or get in the way. You're basically offering that as the intimacy coordinator, you're facilitating the open communication so that everything can be understood and known before the day on set so that actually the actor is back to being free and just do what they do best and what they're employed.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where your understanding about bodies, choreography, relationship, listening into the body, and then sharing that, it takes time to integrate that in-body practice and to become competent enough so that then you're ready to be fully accredited. And what happened was that so many trainings got set up when we were in COVID, because it was particularly those productions that came out during lockdown, which was a sex education season too. Normal people, I may destroy you. It's a sin that suddenly the audience and the industry could really see the benefit and the impact of really beautiful and artistically considered intimate content and then the impact that they had, both on elevating the quality of the production and on an audience, really feeling that the characters' truth of the”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that's right. It's incredible. When I was first speaking about the work in 2017, I was saying my hope is that in five years that this might become established and oh my goodness, what a shift there has been. So it's both incredibly positive. But as you said, sort of the lack of understanding, there are so many good trainings out there. I train people my training is that you learn the techniques for six to nine months, but then your under mentorship and for work on TV and film, my practitioners have to do a minimum of 50 days of work over a minimum of five productions with a maximum of 25 days only one production. And that's the amount because that's the amount that gives time to embody this practice. Just like any good skill that is an embodied practice.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at all other times you're covered. So, again, it's not suitable for anybody in their workplace to just be encountering someone's nakedness. So again, before those clear protocols, actually that nudity is only for the camera, for the storytelling. And of course you should be covered up. You shouldn't be just want running around naked because that's incredibly confronting to anybody. If it wouldn't happen in an office, it shouldn't happen on set.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I've spoken to cinematographers who've told me stories, there are some they were, you know, the director was so nervous about it that they just had the two actors in a room. They said, oh, they're going to get on with it. And the DOP is just thrown into the room and said, they're going to get on with it. You just filmed it. And he said, and the directors shut the door on them. And said these two people are just making out, doing the best that they can while the cinematographer is trying to capture the best that he can, but he doesn't know what they're going to do. So he said he felt so awful and like a fly on the wall. And then, you know, sound, you know, practitioner who's holding there with a boom again when there wasn't a really good understanding of a good close set. And again, everybody's confronted with something that they don't know what's going to happen. The aspect of an actor being supported that nudity is from action to cut.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is as much something to be mitigated as a physical injury and the subsequent possibility of, in the acknowledgement of how much it can break someone and how much of an injury it is that then it's an offense that you can take someone to court around.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got a practitioner, or they didn't have a practitioner who was a physical artist who understood about rhythm, physical choreography, and then the anatomy of arousal in order to bring detail to it. And so they were left also without that support that they would do in any other part of the physical storytelling. And then the aspect that, yes, the injury that comes from it from being asked to, oh, just take your clothes off, just go into that room and just make out that injury can be physical, but actually it's fundamentally emotional and psychological. So that was also just the awareness of the mitigating that injury was, well, it was gradually being spoken about, it was truly understood once the aspect of the Weinstein allegations and the understanding that that emotional and psychological injury.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely fabulous in preparing all the modesty garments, but invariably when there wasn't that conversation, the actor invariably on the day on set would be in the costume department going, what's happening today? What have you got for me? And in that place of personal trepidation because I don't know what's going to be asked of them. It's just the sex scenes there. And, you know, and again, the director so many times, as I've said before, the directors are equally going, well, they haven't got someone artistic or they haven't.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is it, and it's so sad, but it's also so joyous that it shifted, and it really is that, you know, whenever I do a workshop, I always start with, whenever you engage with intimacy when it's been done well, when it's not being done well, and what do you want to get out of this workshop? And I promise you, pre-Weinstein, everybody has a story. You know, when someone says, oh, the intimate scenes are awkward to feeling harassed, to feeling abused. That language, all of that is actually something not right is happening, something outside someone's boundaries has been asked of them. And before there was a professional process, there was just the expectation, as I said, around sex and intimacy, this sense of not talking about it openly. So it became the elephant in the room. It was, well, you've read the script, as in you know what's coming up. So you should be ready for it, you know. And, you know, the costume department invariably had been.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we share that back with the director, with the cinematographer, with the costume department, so that all those departments can get ready, prepare the modesty garments, prepare the shoplist, understand how we're going to tell this beautiful story, and then we'll rehearse it the same as a stunt or a dance before the dance set. So again, in front of the camera, the actors know what they're going to do. read and consented where they're going to be touched they know what what their degree of nudity is that they've agreed to and it means again everybody can create the best intimate scene and um yeah and everybody can have a can be joyous and be the best of themselves and at the end of that scene can honour themselves for having done a really good day of work”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The creative vision is, then I make sure the directors speak to the actors so that they know what is, then I'll speak to the actors. And then the idea of agreement and consent. So we're bringing in, tell us know what your requirements are. So yes, we want this lovely, sexy scene in a shower, but the actress might say, I've just had a baby, so I'm happy for the influence of my character to seem to be naked, but I want to be wearing a halter neck swimming costume. I'm happy for my back to the small of my back to be seen if I have my hair down the halter neck can't be seen and it can jump to the top of my thighs, you know, and so it has the inference of complete nakedness, but I feel completely listened to and heard, feel completely personally comfortable. So artistically I can give the best of myself. So that's now what we bring in, that bit of agreement and consent.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always use Baslerman's Moulin Rouge just because I love it so much. But what a fantastic moment it is in Moulin Rouge. It tells us so much about these characters. And again, this elevated moment of expression that's physical expression. So Bas Lohman would have spoken to his choreographer, Shia, rehearsed with her dances, she'd have rehearsed with Joan McGregor and the other main cast. They know what they were doing and then you put it up in front of the camera and all that emotion explodes, doesn't it, in the hugeness of what that tango is offering. But in the past, with intimate content, there was no person or no professional structure or no practitioner to support exactly the same way the physical journey through to creating a really good scene. And that's what we bring as intimacy coordinators. We're exactly the same as the stunt coordinator. We'll speak to the director, listen to their vision. And then once we understand what the...”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, the dancers are getting closer than it is a physical expression. And so we need to support our actors in order to be able to create that physical choreography. And in the past, if there was a fight, then you had a fight director or a stunt coordinator, so a fight director for theatre and stunt coordinator for TV and film. And again, they're somebody who's going to listen to the director's vision, put in place really good rehearsal process so that someone can learn to throw a punch safely or learn to do a tumble safely. And then that stunt coordinator or choreograph serving the director's vision, teaching the really good choreography that's telling us what is happening in these beats of this scene with these characters who are angry with each other and fighting with each other in some way. And then once that's rehearsed, you put it up in front of the camera, you create a brilliant fight.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who's our partner through our lives if we're lucky enough to have somebody in a long-term relationship? How we love, how we express that loving to each other, how we can keep nurturing that loving throughout our lives. And that's such a fundamental part of who we are as human beings. And I truly believe that our art should reflect humanity back to itself. And so therefore, you know, that depiction of our loving should be a really important part of the storytelling. But the madness was before now is that, you know, obviously with two people in a loving storytelling, you might have the first moment that they lay eyes on each other. And then that free song of that dance of fancying, getting closer, and then you come to the first touch, and then through to a culmination of intimacy, sexual content. So it is a physical expression. You know, it has to, once you go from gays, conversation.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first of all, people have said to me, do we still need intimate scenes, sexual scenes on screen? And my response is, it's a fundamental of who we are as human beings, our fundamental, our can I survive and can I procreate? And in that place of procreation, then it's not just, it is a beautiful physical act. And if you choose to just have a hookup that's purely physical, great with two consenting adults. But actually it's also the core of who we love.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That question of how isn't really opened out and thought about. And so that's where everybody sort of does it sort of in the background, in the shadows, whereas actually if we open out that communication, open out, what do I want? What's right for me? What do I desire? How does that work for me? What's working for me still? What's perhaps not perhaps not working for me anymore? And having those conversations and bringing that into our intimate expression, then we can really start being exciting and really having wonderful intimate times with each other, not just when we first get together, but right the way through our lives.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I'm able to share through this book. But also in the sharing of the intimacy guidelines on set, that realization that the fundamental tenets, open communication, transparency, agreement and consent, clear choreography and closure actually are wonderful is a wonderful structure for us to bring into our everyday lived lives and just that very first one, open communication around our intimate content is just, it flips the coin completely and opens out how we consider our intimate lives as something that's an open and important and considered part of our lives. And that's such a shift where so many of us come from either religions or cultures or just an upbringing where their secrecy and shame and that sort of aspect of expectation that you should know how to do it and you know that”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lovely. So, first of all, Olivia, I want to say it's an absolute pleasure to be here, and it's a delight to be invited by intelligence squared to talk with you and to share both the intimacy coordination work and the inspiration behind the book Intimacy. So yes, I was offered to write this book. And what I loved was the penguin sort of, what they asked of me was to share what was behind the intimacy guidelines and fundamentally my movement practice. And I was absolutely delighted to open this out and bring this to the world because that's what I do in the work. You know, I come from being a dancer, an actor, movement teacher, movement director, and actually what underpins all of the development and the creation of a really good intimate scene is supporting an actor to be in their body, to be articulate, to be listening to their body, to have tools to be able to transform, and then to bring that interrelationship.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where Great Minds Meet. I'm Senior Producer Mia Sorenti. How was the way we depict sex on screen changed the way we think about intimacy off it? And in an age of AI companions, increasingly digital relationships, what does genuine human connection look like? On today's episode, Eater O'Brien, the UK's leading intimacy coordinator, joins Olivia Petter, journalist, author and broadcaster, to discuss O'Brien's new book, Intimacy, and how her work has transformed the portrayal of sex on screen while opening up wider conversations about consent, trust and physical connection. Let's join our host, Olivia Petter, now with more.”
2026-07-20 · Intelligence Squared · How Sex Scenes in Film Can Reshape Real Intimacy, With Intimacy Coordinator Ita O’Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT