“It seems like a paradox,” Abrahamson said in a telephone interview. But “if you make it harder for an audience to see quite what’s happening in a character’s face, you think your way toward them, and it feels like you really are in the room rather than in some artificial space of perfect access.”

Abrahamson, who set the show’s tone by directing the first six episodes, wanted the book’s nuanced view of sexuality reflected onscreen. He had directed sex scenes before, but never with the nudity required for “Normal People,” and he wanted to get it right — and for his young actors to feel empowered.

“As an established director working with a youngish cast, when it comes to explicit scenes and nudity, part of me worried that they may say, ‘Yes, I do feel comfortable with it,’” he said, “because they don’t want to disappoint me, because we have a good creative relationship and I’ve got a reputation.”

Over the last couple of years, since the #MeToo movement revealed extensive exploitation and abuse in the entertainment industry, there has been new focus on what is demanded of actors and actresses on set, especially when male directors and producers are involved. (Hettie Macdonald directed the latter six episodes.)

So the production turned to a professional increasingly sought after in the entertainment industry: an intimacy coordinator. Ita O’Brien, the “Normal People” coordinator, sees her work as bringing the same professionalism to sex scenes that you have at other stages of a shoot, to keep actors from being coerced or left to work out the choreography themselves. She speaks with the director and actors one-on-one, hearing their concerns and establishing the scene’s shape, so there are no surprises when everyone is on set.

O’Brien’s work may have been especially valuable given Rooney’s approach to writing intimate moments. In the book, she grounds sex in sensation and the context of a character’s emotional life, rather than description. She also co-wrote the first six episodes of the show with Alice Birch, and described the sex scenes as “probably less ‘written’ than other parts of the script.” She wanted to leave room for Abrahamson, Edgar-Jones and Mescal to decide what worked best for them, she said.