Before she was a reality TV star, writer and now documentary maker, Yewande Biala was a biotechnologist, studying and working with, she says, orgasms. “Not orgasms! Oh my god,” she says. “Organisms. When I started this documentary, instead of ‘orgasms’, I would say ‘organisms’ – and now I’m doing it backwards.”
Initially Biala, 28, didn’t want to make the Channel 4 film Secrets of the Female Orgasm. She had become a fan favourite of the 2019 series of the ITV reality show Love Island, and was on a podcast a few years ago when the subject of sex came up; Biala revealed she’d never had an orgasm. A TV production company asked if she’d be interested in making a film about female pleasure. It took some convincing, but she did it to change attitudes. “I hope other women who have never experienced orgasm will understand that there is no shame in it. I hope if anyone [in education] watches, they will understand that maybe we need to improve the curriculum about sex.”
