Normal People features 10 artfully-lit, breathily-soundtracked sex scenes over the course of its 12 episodes, but is not about sex. The show, based on Sally Rooney’s best-selling 2018 novel, follows Marianne Sheridan (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal), two students navigating the boundaries of their relationship—evolving from secret lovers to strangers to friends to best friends to a proper couple and back again. Essentially, it’s a show about a years-long DTR, but you know, in a poetic and profound kind of way. As they leave their hometown and begin to formulate their adult selves, get jobs and internships, try on new friendships and new identities, they grow apart and back together. And, when they are back together, one thing they tend to do is have sex—really passionate, steamy, other-worldly sex.

Sex as depicted on Normal People is unlike the sex we normally see on TV. Where often intimate scenes are hurried, frantic shots of flailing limbs and searching mouths, here they are languorous, drenched in soft afternoon light. There is a beginning, middle, and end. There’s consent-affirming dialogue throughout. Sometimes there are hiccups—like a stubborn bra clasp or a wrong word uttered that shatters the whole mood. There’s almost always naked lounging afterwards. Ultimately, these scenes just feel real, which is not something anyone’s ever said about Westworld or Game of Thrones. Part of that is of course owed to Rooney’s writing in the book, but the work of Ita O’Brien, the show’s intimacy coordinator, is what brought those scenes to life. While still a little-known field, the intimacy coordinator is becoming increasingly in-demand on sets (O’Brien’s other credits include Netflix’s Sex Education and HBO’s Watchmen) in recent years. “When Weinstein and the Time’s Up movement happened,” O’Brien says, “the industry started going, ‘Okay we have to do better, we can’t tolerate predatory behavior.’”

Somewhat counterintuitively, to achieve the naturalistic feel of the scenes between Marianne and Connell, O’Brien actually choreographed all their movements, down to every thrust. “The choreography brings a real safety and structure, so that everything is known,” O’Brien says, which then enables the actors to relax and really embody the character, rather than worrying about where arms and legs and other body parts need to go. “That’s where you get scenes like you’ve got in Normal People.”

Below, O’Brien talks in detail about producing the steamy scenes between Marianne and Connell, how consent should always come from a place of care, and the importance of PDA.

GQ: How did you get into this kind of work? How does your background as a ballet dancer translate to choreographing intimate scenes?

Ita O’Brien: Before [Weinstein], people were either embarrassed to talk about the intimate content professionally, so it would just get left, or there wasn’t the sense that—much like a dance or a fight—it’s a skill. You know someone doesn’t know how to do a waltz, they’re going to have to be taught. If you put a sword in someone’s hand, they need a technique to do that safely. To bring two people together to do intimate content, you need a technique. You need to understand there’s a risk when your [actors’] personal and private bodies are at play. Then also, we have two people moving together; it’s a body dance. Just as with a fight, the words get angrier and angrier and then possibly fisticuffs, it’s the same here.

It’s refreshing to see the rhythm of sex depicted so naturally in this show. On TV, we often see kissing, pushed-up-against-wall-kissing, nudity, grinding—all within 45 seconds. Normal People captures the awkwardness, the stops and starts, the conversation before, during and after. How were you guys able to choreograph that and produce those realistic settings?

Being an audience member, before I got into intimacy coordination, when things aren’t anatomically right, you just go out of it. There’s a sex scene where she’s lying on the bed and he’s sort of standing having sex, he picks her up and turns her and then they’re having sex against the wall, and then he just flips her and they continue. And you go, “Hold on a minute!” Unless he’s got an elastic penis, how did that [happen]?! So then I don’t believe it anymore, and that annoys me. I don’t want to name it, because I wasn’t present and I don’t know how it got created.

As an intimacy coordinator, I’m trying to make sure the anatomical details are correct—particularly the moment of penetration is clocked, and withdrawal, and the whole rhythm through to orgasm. From penetration we’ll say okay, forced, slow strokes, and then build “5- 6- 7” through to orgasm.

So Daisy and Paul really have a movement for every count like that, like a dance?

Yes! Once they know the shape of it, they’re empowered, then they can release into the details of every moment, bringing that spontaneity, the giggles about her bra getting stuck. But they’re in character! They’re taken care of as people in their personal bodies, so as professional people they can really serve their characters and bring the beauty, fun, awkwardness, and nuance.

The first time Marianne and Connell have sex, he asks her a lot of questions. “Does that feel good?” “Is this what you want?” At GQ, we’re often preaching about how consent is sexy, and I feel like Connell’s character does a good job of illustrating how to do it right.

The important thing about that scene is that it doesn’t start when they take their clothes off. She’s coming over to his empty house—there is transparency and intention for both of them from the get go. Then, that scene starts with complex dialogue. They’re exposing their vulnerabilities to each other. That’s what’s so beautiful—the intimacy is opened up through that dialogue and that’s taken through the physical. Then I’m just honoring Sally’s words there; she’s the one who wrote that so clearly. I love the moment when they’re first naked with each other. He reaches out to pleasure her, and she reaches out to pleasure him when they’re both standing—the equality of that.

The Internet’s ready to crown Connell their new boyfriend. What about Connell is it that you think everyone’s reacting to?

What is so beautiful about the juxtaposition of Connell’s character, compared to Marianne’s, is the environment of unconditional love in which he’s brought up, and what that gives him. Therefore with his character, he’s constantly behaving in a way that’s anchored in caring, love, and communication. Then there’s the couple of times where he defends Marianne against violence—that scene in the club when the man grabs her breast and later when he goes to rescue her from her brother, he just removes her. He doesn’t turn to anger, he just takes her away from the situation. He culls boundaries.

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Yeah, I think the caring aspect is what struck me most. It’s present in that first sex scene when he’s checking in with her, and it’s present in a lot of their post-coital moments too—he’ll ask her “did you like that?” and it feels like a genuine question, not him fishing for validation.

Yeah, again going back to that scene in episode two, it’s keeping that open dialogue into the intimate content. You’re keeping that flow.

In thinking about Marianne and Connell’s scenes with other people, we were looking at, what is it we’re showing with Marianne and Connell? It’s that connection of mind, body, and spirit. With the other characters, like Helen [Connell’s other semi-serious college girlfriend], it might be mind and body, but it wasn’t that complete, all-encompassing connection. With their other partners, it’s not inherently bad sex, it’s just not vibrantly good sex that’s taking you somewhere other.

When he’s with Helen, he exhibits a lot of PDA—holding her hand, putting his arm around her, kissing her in front of their friends. But at one point Marianne complained to Connell that he wasn’t physically affectionate around her in front of other people. How do you think the absence of PDA impacted his relationship with Marianne?

Not having a person that you have such a close connection with acknowledge [that connection] in the world is an incredibly hurtful thing, especially with these characters. They see each other so completely in their private selves, to then deny each other—for Marianne’s character in particular—you can see how devastating that is for her each time.

The sex scenes here aren’t just pulp—they help indicate the evolution of the non-sexual parts of Marianne and Connell’s relationship too. By the end of the show, what’s changed between them?

The book charts the development of their relationship through the writing of the intimate scenes. So with the show, we’re witnessing two people grow together from their teenage years finishing school through the end of their time at university. [We see] these young people opening up in their love of each other through their break ups and relationships with other people and finally coming back together again. Each time we see them in the intimate content, we see where these two people are as they grow to maturity.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Stephanie Talmadge is GQ's Senior Manager of Newsletter Strategy, and Sex and Relationships editor.XInstagramRelated Stories for GQHuluQ&ASex and RelationshipsTVEntertainment