Michaela Coel Dedicates BAFTA TV Award to Intimacy Coordinator

I May destroy you creator and actress Michaela Coel won the BAFTA Television award for Best Mini-Series, as well as landing Best Leading Actress for the show.

She dedicated her awards to Intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien;

“Thank you for your existence in our industry, for making the space safe for creating physical, emotional, and professional boundaries so that we can make work about exploitation, loss of respect, about abuse of power, without being exploited or abused in the process.”

“I know what it’s like to shoot without an intimacy director — the messy, embarrassing feeling for the crew, the internal devastation for the actor,” continued Coel. “Your direction was essential to my show, and I believe essential for every production company that wants to make work exploring themes of consent.”

“I’ve shot without intimacy directors and I’ve shot with Ita — and team members that Ita has trained — and the confidence that it gives you to be able to really tell a story that looks harrowing, that looks inappropriate, whilst being totally appropriate, whilst being protected, means that you’re able to properly tell that story,”

“I also think it’s a very vulnerable place for not just actors, for the crew as well, because the crew might have had experiences and it triggers things for them. So, to have her there protects everybody,” said Coel. “And if you don’t have people like Ita on set when you’re shooting things like that, I think it’s quite thoughtless, and I think it’s really inconsiderate and it shows a lack of mindfulness.”

Sad that the show won’t have another season. The truth is scary isn’t it. 

What i’ll say about the show is that,: it’s weird but there is a lot of truth in it.