CRYPTIC CROSSWORD
FOR your chance to win, solve the crossword to reveal the word reading down the shaded boxes. HOW TO ENTER: Call 0901 293 6233 and leave today’s answer and your details, or TEXT 65700 with the word CRYPTIC, your answer and your name. Texts and calls cost £1 plus standard network charges. Or enter by post by sending completed crossword to Daily Mail Prize Crossword 16,525, PO Box 28, Colchester, Essex CO2 8GF. Please include your name and address. One weekly winner chosen from all correct daily entries received between 00.01 Monday and 23.59 Friday. Postal entries must be datestamped no later than the following day to qualify. Calls/texts must be received by 23.59; answers change at 00.01. UK residents aged 18+, exc NI. Terms apply, see Page 68.
ACROSS
1 Powerful beam, thin, protecting eastern vault (11) 9 Potential killer races drunk around part of UK (7) 10 Polish colonial workers are increasing (7) 11 That woman there is out of bounds (3) 12 Bank of river in Cork, where ships shelter (3,4) 13 Bury writer’s temporary (7) 14 Like owning small equine (3) 15 Set back volunteers once in Crimean port (5) 17 Overhaul damaged frigate Georgia abandoned (5) 18 Commanding officer nurses dog (5) 20 Great, if difficult, actress and activist (5) 22 Drink seen regularly in the Raj (3) 24 One serving society left to perish among comrades (7) 25 Enthusiast hit engine part (3,4) 26 Not well? Take some pills (3) 27 Psychology term gets misused by an officer (7) 28 Understanding popular view (7) 29 It records eg mishaps or shakes (11)
DOWN
1 Terribly nasty mess lasts over a year for IT staff (7,8) 2 Some welcome night in Paris as regular payment (7) 3 Hide constant pain (5) 4 Posh bishop cuts article designed to make things run smoothly (9) 5 Receptionist who weeps in Edinburgh? (7) 6 Tug-of-war specialist upon whom one can rely? (5,2,8) 7 Had trouble independently heading up plant (6) 8 Absolved old politician in Egypt (6) 16 Odd girl at home endlessly calculating quantity? (9) 18 Condescend to accept special pattern (6) 19 Paper folding in old Baltic city? Writer’s upset (7) 21 Condition in which a name’s confused, I assumed? (7) 23 Smart uniform in scruffy state (6) 25 Cast’s bit of fun (5)
his hands there?” so it’s not you having to say it, which can be awkward.’ However, with many production companies still without intimacy coordinators, Vanessa says there’s still a way to go. ‘I was speaking with a director recently about a kissing scene,’ she says.
‘They hadn’t realised that one of the actors was using their tongue, which is a definite no-no — unless it’s somehow relevant and would then have to be agreed — until they mentioned it a few days later. That’s the sort of conversation I would have with the actors, rather than just assuming they know.
‘There was the buttoned-up director who referred to a “need to see the ladies’ parts” and I was like, “Which ladies’ parts — full breasts, nipples, something else?” We need to all be comfortable with this language and content.’
Ita O’Brien, 56, intimacy coordinator on Gentleman Jack, Sex Education, It’s A Sin and Normal People agrees. Ita established Intimacy
on Set in 2018. Four practitioners who trained with her are fully accredited and 30 are under mentorship globally. She says: ‘There are three tenets of intimacy coordination — open communication and transparency; agreements of consent in relation to touch, sexual content and nudity; and choreography, recognising that this is a body dance that requires clear direction and instruction.’
Ita, who worked as an actor and movement director before her current role, adds: ‘In how many jobs are people expected to strip off and perform sex scenes in front of a whole load of other people? It would make most of us feel vulnerable.’
Like Billie Piper, Suranne Jones is an ‘experienced and empowered’ actor with a clear idea of her boundaries, so it was her co-stars in BBC drama Gentleman Jack who required greater support from Ita. ‘The first thing to remember is that these scenes are pretend. We have lots of modesty garments. The minimum they would wear are genitalia pouches — a hibue for him, a shibue for her — so even though an actor may look naked, in a simulated sex scene they never actually are.’
ONE actress Ita worked with was happy to be nude, but did not want her thighs to be visible, so she supplied fleshcoloured shorts. ‘I also have my ‘cunnilingus cushion’, which creates the right barrier, but if you have someone’s head down below another actor’s thighs with the correct camera angle it reads right,’ says Ita.
Both in her work as an intimacy coordinator and while training others, Ita feels a responsibility to help counter some of the unsettling pornography with its unrealistic couplings that so many young people are exposed to these days.
‘I’ve had secondary schools contact me to say they’re going to use the scene from the top of episode two of Normal People to help show their young people a positive depiction of sexual awakening,’ she says proudly.
And it’s not just the actors that need protecting on set. ‘It works both ways,’ says Ita. ‘I’ve had situations where it’s a really hot set and an actor says they’re too hot to wear a towelling dressing gown and instead wants to wander around naked between shots. I’ll tell them: “It’s not suitable for the crew to be confronted with your nakedness in their workplace”.’
Elle McAlpine, one of Ita’s former students, has worked as an intimacy coordinator on It’s A Sin, The Great starring Elle Fanning and Hugh Laurie’s MP drama Roadkill. As an actor, Elle, 31, knows how tricky sex scenes can be, having been traumatised in her own career. ‘I remember filming a sex scene when I was 21 which wasn’t choreographed and all the crew were male, so I had to drag a make-up artist on set for moral support,’ she says.
‘The crew were equally embarrassed and trying not to look, and that made me feel even more shame. If I could go back in time, I would have asked for some time to go through what was expected — what would be on show, what areas of my body could be touched and also asked for female support.
‘The director-actor relationship is a unique one and so often actors just want to please.
‘Now, if they don’t feel comfortable going to their director and saying “I don’t want to do this,” they can speak to the intimacy coordinator who will open up the dialogue with the director.
‘Often when the director explains why something forms part of a scene, why that is part of the character, the actors will be totally fine with it or they might say: “I don’t want to perform that kind of sex. Please can we change it?” That’s a slightly more complicated conversation, but we do get there. Overcoming obstacles in this way often creates better sex scenes.’
WITH It’s A Sin, Elle worked alongside intimacy coordinator David Zachary to draw the shapes they were looking to recreate in the ‘sex montage’ — 11 separate scenes at the start of the drama.
‘Those boys were all really comfortable together and so embodied in their characters they were a dream to work with,’ she says. ‘Russell T. Davies is very detailed, and he writes so beautifully, but, with other productions, it might just say: “They have sex” and we can help them work through it in a very choreographed way.
‘What is difficult is when an actor, who knows they’re meant to be doing these sex scenes, doesn’t want to do them. This happened on one set where Ita and I were brought in late in the day and the content of the sex scenes was a bit of a work in process.
‘The actors were quite young, in their early 20s, and had a lot of gumption insisting: “I’m not doing that” and we had to communicate that to the director. It worked well in the end, but I think it’s important to have sex scenes written out at the start, so they know what they’re signing up to.’
As the public appetite for these graphic, sensual depictions is — given the viewing figures — clearly there, and while the industry has decided time is up for anyone wanting to prey on its members, intimacy coordinators really do have their work cut out for them.