Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - Creating Sex Education with Laurie Nunn (part 1)

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

The fourth and final season of Sex Education is out now, and while we’re already mourning the fact that Otis and Eric won’t be returning to our tv screens (at least not together), the show’s finale gave us all the feels.  In the most recent live recording of the Sex Talks podcast, Emma was joined by Sex Education’s creator, Laurie Nunn, to discuss the making of our fave tv show: how the idea for the Sex Education initially came about; what went down in the writers room from season to season; and why it took them until season four to finally get a finger-up-the-bum-scene into the show. In part 2 of the recording, Emma and Laurie are joined by Emma’s sex therapist, Aleks, to chat through some of the major themes explored in the show, and to do an extra juicy audience q&a. This episode was sponsored by The Knude Society, aka the female-led sexual pleasure company on a mission to help you enjoy your body, in whatever way feels right for you.  The Knude society has designed two vibrators, as well as a water-based lube, that can help you do exactly that.  Get 15% off when you shop with the Knude society using the code SEXTALKS15. 

Hello and welcome to a live recording of the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks is dedicated to engendering more open and honest conversations around typically taboo topics, specifically sex, relationships and the future of intimacy. Today's episode has been recorded at the London Edition Hotel. If you'd like to attend a live event in the future, please do head on over to the Eventbrite link in the show notes, as we have lots of exciting events coming up. Before we get started, I also want to tell you about this week's podcast sponsor, The Nude Society. AKA, the female-led sexual pleasure company, on a mission to help you enjoy your body in whatever way it feels right for you.

Now you know I'm a big advocate for self-pleasure, because I really believe there is nothing more empowering than getting to know your own body. What feels good for you, what you like, and of course what you don't. The New Society is designed two vibrators, as well as a water-based loom that can help you do exactly that. I recently tried their Lenin Vibrator, which bends in half, so it can stimulate you both internally and externally at the same time. Well, you love a bit of multitasking, don't we? Suffice what to say, I really like this vibrator and think you will too. Get 15% off when you shop with the News Society using the code Sex Talks 15. Okay, I hope you enjoy the show.

Thank you all so much for coming, not that anyone needed much persuading to come here and talk about sex education. Congratulations, sorry. I don't know about you, but I laughed, I cried. I tore out my hair, I really felt so moved by the final season, especially the finale. So I really do feel so excited to get to deep dive into the show and also Laurie into your career and kind of how it all came about. So just before we get started, welcome to sex talks. Who has been to sex talks before?

Oh, it's that good. Repeat customers. Who is new here? Oh, that is, you know what? I love a half and half split. that shows that people are coming back because they enjoyed it and they're bringing their friends because they want to bring some some allies along. Excellent. Well, welcome to anyone who hasn't been to sex talks before. My name is Emma Louise Boynton and I am the creator and host of sex talks

and I have to, sorry I'm going to do it, do a quick call out. Sex talks came about because I did sex therapy in the pandemic and I found the whole process transformative. It really changed my relationship to sex to my body to myself and sat here today is my sex therapist Alex at the back and we've never actually met in person give away as I did sex therapy over Zoom in lockdown and I spaced out in Australia so we've met in London for the first time the past few weeks so to have her here and to be a part of this having been such a huge part of this from the start is amazing and Alex is actually going to join Lori and I towards the end of the conversation to give a sex therapist perspective on some of the wonderful themes discussed in

the show. So I'm really looking forward to that. So welcome Alex and thank you. Ah, so cute. Just a little bit of housekeeping before we start. First thing to say is a huge thank you to the London Edition Hotel who make this whole series possible and for whom I'm just so grateful for their constant support. They really have, yeah, they've made sex talks happen. So thank to London edition. And Don Julio, who also supporting the series and providing us with these delicious drinks, which are fabulous and lethal. Come back to you when you've had two or three, and yeah, we'll see how you're talking then. But really a huge thank you to both of those sponsors. I really am so incredibly grateful. And also to G-Spot. So I don't know if anyone's had a G-Spot

drink yet. They're actually the creation of a certain Gene Milvern, I should say, Julian Anderson from sex education, who has become the world's new sex therapist, I think. All thanks to the show, Laurie. The careers you're spawning in beverages. Excellent. So thank you so much to G-Spot for providing us with such delicious drinks. Right, so let's just crack on with talking about the show. First of all, I mean, not that you need an introduction, but I am sitting next to Laurie Nunn,

who is the writer and creator of sex education, which, as we all know, know, sadly, the fourth and final series has just aired. And it's Netflix's most watch series launch of 2023, which is pretty cool. It's been today. Yeah. It was in the news today. Unless my assistant fucked up her research, in which case, well, we'll be chatting later, so that'll be verified before the end of our conversation, Laurie. First of all, how on earth does it feel? I mean, this has been your baby for years. What does it feel like for it to have come to an end? Yeah, I think I'm still kind of processing it a little bit because I started writing the series in 2014. So it's been a long time and a lot has sort of happened in my life

and like changed since then, but sex education has kind of been the constant. So yeah, I'm still kind of like, oh, what is this new life without having to kind of come up with penis strokes every day. Yeah. Maybe quite liberating at times. So before we kind of dig into the latest season of the show, I'd love to get a kind of little bit of background of how it all came about. Can you take us back to 2014 or just before and to the genesis of the show?

How did sex education first come about? Yeah, so it's actually, it's had quite a long history. So the idea for the show was brought to me as a seed pitch. by the production companies they're called 11 film and it was a couple of paragraphs basically like what would happen if we put a teenage sex therapist like onto a school campus and I think like the old version of the idea like his parents were like maybe porn stars or something I can't remember it was like so long ago and yeah I just instantly I think there was two things like I love teen films and like teen TV shows I've always sort of been obsessed with them so that instantly like really

hooked me in and then also I was like oh this is a really clever way to have quite a strong story motor because you can kind of have like a sex problem of the week and then you can structure your episode around that and that's quite a rare thing to sort of come up with I guess so I was like oh I can see this and then yeah it from there it was developed with Channel 4 for a couple of years we went through like what's a different notes and kind of versions and it kind of felt like it was going to go it was going to be greenlit at a certain point and then it all fell through which happens a lot in the TV industry and then it kind of disappeared and then someone sent it to Netflix and then it kind of came back again and then yeah it went on Netflix and the rest of

history and was sex and sex education something you'd always been passionate about something you'd always been interested in I wouldn't say to the point where I am a bit like how has this happens like how am I the person? I think that at every sex talks event I think people think I'm like a wanton sex goddess and I'm actually like I was basically celibate out of involuntarily for like really long time and didn't like sex so they actually upset anyway that's yeah I feel like yeah I relate yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily say that it's something that I've you know like in all my writing it's never been something I've particularly kind of like focused on maybe teenagers I've always had kind of teen characters and things. I've never done anything that's like solely

teenagers, but I don't know. I've just kind of become a bit addicted to writing about it. It's so fun. Like it's great. I don't know whether I will kind of do anything about sex again, but I feel like it's endless. Like it's, you know, in terms of when you're doing the research and when we're in the writer's room, it's just like there are endless possibilities. And not to be pessimistic about it, but at the last sex talks, I had a panel of sex therapists. And as Kate Moyle, one of the sex therapist said, our sex culture is so fundamentally broken from the way we're taught about it or not really taught about it in schools to the public discourse we have around sex, which means that for so many of our sex is a point of anxiety, of shame and of worry.

So I think to your point, there's always more to be discussed around sex and to be discussed in a better, more nuanced, more intelligent way. And I think that's what the show does so brilliantly. And I said to you before we got started, it's a show I wish I'd had growing up because I think it would have really changed my relationship to sex and made me feel a lot less shame and anxiety around my body and my kind of initial relationship to sex. Hell, I'm glad for it now.

I mean, it still definitely breaks down some points of war in my sex life. This brief, I think I'm right in thinking, or this initial idea which you began writing around, couldn't really have come a better time for you personally, I think I'm right in thinking, because you were at the point of feeling kind of quite lost in what you were doing, and you're about to quit screenwriting, is that right? Yeah, so actually after the show was, I had the rejection from Channel 4, that was like a real big blow.

And I think up until that point I was just really struggling. I couldn't really get into any writer's rooms. I'd like, I don't know, I tried to sort of, lots of like shadow schemes and things like that. And I was kind of fighting it hard to do that. And I had like things in development, but it didn't really feel like anything was, you know, going to get greenlit. And I was just past 30, I think. It was like 31. And I just was like, this is starting to get a bit awkward.

Just where people would be like, so, what do you do? I'd be like, I'm a screenwriter. What have I, what would I have seen? Nothing. Little did they know what was coming. Yeah, and I just, you know, I think I just really felt like it wasn't working. And it was just the rejections were hard. So I was thinking of retraining.

And I actually thought about retraining as. a therapist so it's kind of weird like a weird kind of symmetry there but then yeah Netflix had they read the pilot script and then it was all kind of like a whirlwind after that but it sort of I had basically given myself I think it was like I'd said like I'd stay in screenwriting for another year and then I'd kind of reconsider that point how sweet it must be to see any of those people who doubted you then any of the people who turned down show to go back now and be like ha

and was screenwriting always something you'd wanted to do? Because I know you studied screenwriting you're in MA and you'd also studied for your undergraduate degree. Was it in Australia? Was it in... Yeah so I did my undergraduate degree in Australia and that was in it was in film and TV

mostly directing so it was like making short, short films and then after that I tried to get into film school like a master's film school a couple of times more objections and that was when I sort of I started watching a lot of box sets so I got really obsessed with like the sopranos and six feet under that was kind of when I was like oh like maybe writing would be an interesting avenue so I started

sort of writing some spec scripts and then I got onto a master's degree to focus like solely on screenwriting I think the theme of this evening's conversation is going to be persistent because everything you said thus far as failure and then overcoming the failure and winning, winning, winning, which we love. I remember, Laurie, we spoke, I actually interviewed you a few years ago for a podcast I was doing at the time. I remember you saying to me that self-doubt had been something that had really weighed heavy on you for a lot of your adolescents and then into adulthood around your work and around elements of your personal life. And I just wondered now, with the success of the show, with everything, you've accomplished in the kind of I guess in the years until like between us speaking from then

and now but just generally in your career has that self doubt dissipated because of what you've done now um yeah I wish I could say that it had my I'm I've got a dog a little Jack Russell she's called Ruby she's named after Ruby from the show and she's currently being like retrained because she has like really bad behavioral problems she likes to go on my kids and table a lot and it's just yeah she's got problems but the did it in the name the attitude problem was going to be seriously but the dog trainer recently said to me that her personality type is anxious bravado and I was like I feel like that is also my soul and I feel like to be I feel like to like to be a writer of any kind you kind of have to have that it's like you're anxiety filled and like

shame filled and then you write it all down and then you're like I think this is quite good what do you sink and it's just like fluctuated between that for the rest of your life and good luck for anyone who wants to be a screenwriter. I hope you're filled with an adequate amount of anxiety now I restate with that and I've interviewed quite quite a few quite a few and quite a broad variety of authors both non-fiction and fiction and I always find when I interview people have written fiction specifically I'm always really surprised because I assume they're sitting there with the storyboard the post-it notes the like the planning the timeline and so So often I get told, I have no idea where the plot is going to go.

My characters take on a life of their own. The story unfolds in a way I could never imagine. And it really, they are kind of led by their writing. They almost kind of go into and say, is that what happened with you? How clear were you when you first started writing of how the show would evolve and how the storylines would evolve? I think I've definitely written things in that other way.

I think they call it like writing on a white heat or something where it's like you just sort of are inspired and then it just like a vomit draft, it just sort of comes out. But I think with TV, once you're in that schedule, the schedule is so intense and there's just never enough time. You sort of have to be quite like, yeah,

quite specific and structured. But you know, there's still lots of like fluidity within that process and things do change all the time, but usually like we have a writer's room for the show and usually I would go in and I'll have a kind of skeleton of what I want to do where I want to take the characters and often by the time we sort of get to the end of the series like the sort of foundation of that is quite similar

even though like maybe the specificity or the detail has changed or like deepened but yeah but I'm now that I'm not writing sex anymore I'd like to go back to just yeah Not knowing what happens next. And tell us a little bit about the writer's room. I think I've always got quite romantic idea in my head of the writer's room of this kind of group of maybe kind of slightly kooky creators who get together and just, yeah, are putting together

like furnishing this fictional world. But it must be quite a weird experience because you've obviously come up with this idea which I guess a lot of writing is quite kind of solitary process. It's a lot of sitting on your own with the anxiety and kind of processing and writing. So it's so quite solitary. And then suddenly you are in this environment

in which you have lots of creators, lots of writers, and you're all kind of feeding in ideas, I'm sure, have different perspectives on things. What's it like? It's my favourite part of the process. It's quite a mad experience. I don't know. By the end of it, you just sort of feel a bit like you're,

I don't know, like on a really mad, like acid trip or something. I don't know. It's very strange. I think it's just like you're all in this space and you're just coming up with stories sort of from nothing. And so like anything could happen. And writers do tend to spend a lot of time on their own. So then when we're all sort of like in a room together,

we all just slightly lose our minds a little bit. But it's a lot of fun. And there's like, I think everybody goes home at a certain point and sort of has a shame spiral and sort of goes like, oh no, like why did I tell that story about, you know? Like, yeah, like it's, you know, and then you kind of have to shake. it off and come back and I remember one of one of our writers um sophie goodhart she described it as like

the world's longest dinner party and it is kind of like that but like you know the bit of the dinner party where like it's people should go home it's sort of like that but like for weeks and you're full and to what extent i mean are you sitting there being like no otis would have definitely got you know an erection at that point and not at that point and he's been showing that how much is their kind of antagonism between the different writers as to like other specificities of character development and specific scenarios? I have to say

like the space tends to stay relatively like calm and respectful and I think that's because it is made off of like mostly women and queer people. Not to make any generalisations but it just I think there's like

a slightly different there's a different communication level. And yeah, it's like, it's, it tends to stay, like, quite calm. But then, you know, there are, like, moments where people will get quite, you know, heated and, and feel very passionately about an idea. And, you know, often, I don't know, I always like to say to the writers, like, I want you to sort of put forward your worst idea because you just don't know. Like, I don't want them to feel like they can't offer something up even if they think it's, like, silly and often that is the thing where like you're sort of write it on the board and then maybe

a week later you'll be like oh like that wasn't right for this storyline but it really helps us in this like other part of the storytelling but yeah things got a little bit heated actually in in the last room so for series four we had a moment at the end where we were discussing I don't know if anyone seen series four but there's Eric's got a I think we've got to assume that you have you done your prep before the events like there's spoilers throughout Eric has a story line that's to do with his faith and like the church and religion and I think that was probably like the most probably tense like that the room has ever gotten because I think there was a bit of a divide in terms of I think religion and faith just brings up like very strong feelings in people

and particularly people from the LGBTQ community and like people were very passionate and I think it was an amazing conversation but it was like oh I think we all need to just go home and like have asleep now. Also, I mean, just even as a viewer, so many of the storylines in the show are so deeply personal and they are so, they hit you really hard because they often, you know,

touch on an issue or something that you've gone through personally, but in a beautiful way, but in a way that can feel quite confronting. So I can only imagine being in a writer's room when people are really drawing on their own experiences, how passionate but also intense that must invariably get. I mean, the show has done a fantastic job

at cover. so many issues around sex, sexuality, gender. I think specifically in the new season we've seen, I mean, Cal's storyline as they grapple with gender dysphoria, as they kind of have some mental health issues around that, is so beautifully and importantly done. As you just say, we see Eric grappling with his faith and his queer identity, whilst all the while he'll finding this joy in his new group of friends

who really see him and understand him. Is there any specific character or storyline that you feel particularly proud of? it's quite hard for me because I feel like very connected to all of them in a way that's probably a little bit unhealthy but I'm I'm pretty proud of Amy's storyline that came from something that was very personal for me so the whole storyline with her being sexually assaulted on the bus was based on something that had to happen to me in my own life and I don't know I think I've really gotten something personally as a writer from being able to tell that story and then see it through over, you know, multiple series. And I think often when something like sexual assault is dealt with on screen, it's often sort of used as a plot point and then kind of forgotten about. And that was something that I really didn't want to do. I wanted to show that these things really stay with people and it just doesn't disappear.

You just sort of have to learn to like live with it and it changes who you are fundamentally as a person. Yeah, I found writing that, like, yeah, very cathartic for myself personally. And I also got some, you know, really lovely messages from people that felt like they had resonated with that storyline as well. And that catharsis, I can imagine, because I guess you're getting to play out the ending that maybe you wish could have happened for you personally. With Amy, there's such a kind of beauty to it.

First of all, her friends come and really back her up. And they all, I'm sure remember the scene, all the girls getting on the bus with her. and you're just so touched with that female solidarity. It's so beautiful and so beautifully depicted. And then we see now in season four, she's still grappling it alone, and she needs to kind of conquer her demons by herself,

and she has this beautiful moment where she kind of utilizes her art, her photography. And it's just literally sets these genes on fire, and it's just this quite, it's like a bonfire of the trauma. And I can imagine watching that, especially when that's come from your own person experience, such a catharsis and such a kind of galvanising thing

to be able to watch also as a viewer you feel sort of vindicated for anything you've gone through personally is it hard nonetheless to draw on your own personal experiences in that way sometimes I find it difficult to separate things out

I guess so like even the characters where it's not entirely my lived experience like I think like a little bit of me goes into it because I'm writing it. So I don't know. In a way, I wouldn't really know

how to not make things personal. But yeah, I mean, sometimes there might be like my boyfriend, he always gets really paranoid that I've put something in there that's about him. And often he's like, he's like, I said that. And I'm like, no, you didn't. Like, you definitely didn't say that. But it's like, you know, those sort of things.

If you are drawing from life, you also have to be, I think, careful of the people. that you care about I imagine friends are leaving like I definitely said that you're like no no but I said this it's more that what happens

is people often are like they think that they're someone but actually they're someone else and you're like that happens quite a lot time for a quick ad break to remind you of this week's podcast sponsor the New Society

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the Needs Society using the code Sex Talks 15. I've included a link in the show notes for your ease. Okay, back to the show. For me, one of the most arresting storylines in the later season was regarding Jean Milburn and her struggle with postpartum depression. I think the way the show covers it, it explores the stark reality of motherhood for many in a way that I just don't think we often see on screen and that I don't think is talked about enough. The kind of, you know, obviously the joy, quite literally, baby joy,

but alongside the loneliness and she feels this immense pressure to go back to work immediately she's trying to juggle the baby and start a whole new arc of her career as a radio presenter what compelled you to write that particular storyline

so when we left Jean at the end of series three she had just had the baby so we knew going into series four that we were going to be exploring like those you know the early stages of motherhood and in the writers room there were a couple of writers who had children or babies and they felt you know quite strongly and passionately that we needed to make sure that we

showed you know the difficulties of that as well as the joy of it and then it was quite strange and this has happened quite a lot in the series in terms of like when I've been writing it is that I then got pregnant and had a baby and ended up going back to write sex education when he was only like two weeks old. So there was a very weird kind of, yeah, like mirroring that happened. And some of those genes seems like they're like a little close to the bone for me like when I watch them. But it wasn't done by design.

It's not like I was like, oh, I really want to write this stuff about her being overwhelmed and feeling like she's having to kind of choose between career and motherhood. But it was just sort of like there in my life. And I think for a lot of women, it's a struggle. it also just felt so much like that I've been it really confronting because it's that like stark reality of this is what it looks like for a woman to have it all

and I think we've been sold this idea as women that like now are the generation that you can have it all you can have the children and the career and the house and their money and the partner and the side hustles and the hobbies and the exercise and then you're like and in one's respect that is wonderful and I'm so excited and happy that we get that

but on the flip side of that it's fucking hard and I think that's the kind of side of the narrative that perhaps is less explored and that's why I think with Gina was really, I found it like confronting and slightly worrying and I imagine going through that quite literally. I mean, you know, as someone from the outside who objectively does have it all, you've written a hit TV show, you've got a partner, your child, can women have it all? What does it feel like? No.

No, they can't. What does it feel like? It feels I'm very sleep deprived. But honestly, I don't know how people do it with more than one baby. I think that's the big thing that I'm sort of, like, I just see women in the park now with like, sometimes like they're running

and they've got those prams that have like the two prams with the two kids and I'm like, and they're running and they're doing a phone call at the same time and I'm just like, wow, that's like amazing. Maybe they have like three nannies at home. Yeah, yeah. Is that like one out of the day? That's what I couldn't only imagine.

I mean, I've got friends who had twins. and I'm like, how? How? But I think it's that, do you feel in any way that there is, what sacrifice does it take for you personally to be able to juggle those things? I think with Sex Education Series 4, I was already so far into the kind of writing process of it

when I had my baby, that to me it just sort of, there wasn't really an option. I was just like, I have to see it through, They're my storylines, they're my characters. Like, I have to sort of, you know, see this to the end. So I haven't actually quite worked out, like, what the next phase is going to be in terms of kind of juggling, being a mum, and then also writing. Because I think I was a little bit in survival mode, so I don't really know.

Like, honestly, sometimes, like, I don't even really remember, like, what got written. How? I was that sleep deprived. Do you watch the show sometimes? I'm like, wow. Yeah. God, incredible scene. I don't remember that. Yeah, completely.

But yeah, so it's going to be interesting kind of like, you know, moving forward. And I think already I'm starting to realize that I just won't have that luxury of, you know, endless time or, you know, endless time to procrastinate. I think it's really going to be like, okay, I've got this five hours. It doesn't matter where I write, as long as I can write, I just need to kind of get it done. And I'm actually quite looking forward to that in a way. I think it will hopefully all make me like, yeah, a bit more focused, a bit less on YouTube.

For me, it would be less scrolling on Instagram. Just keep me close. And Cal's story, I mentioned it a little bit before, but I think Cal's story is a particularly poignant one in this last scene. I mean, I love Cal's character throughout, but they're obviously going through a tremendous mental health battle

as they navigate their gender dysphoria. And it's really kind of the linchpin of how the show, deals with, but explores transgender rights and the issues that transgender people generally are being confronted with in such a real way, particularly now. Only today we've just seen the news that transgender women, it's been reviewed anyway for transgender women no longer to be allowed to use single-sex units in hospitals. We've seen earlier this year the government is doing another review of sex education and campaigners are worried that we're going to see a rollback on LGBTIQA plus

rights, kind of inclusive sex education in that sense. So we're really like kind of living through a period in which that story and done the way it was done feels so important to be seen on TV and explored in the way that it was. How did you and the writer's room go about crafting that narrative and approaching it with, I think, the delicacy that you did? So it was quite a process when we went into the writer's room. one of the storylines where we weren't 100% sure where it was headed. We had an amazing writer on series four called Krishna Issa who's and you know there's a lot of conversations around

the importance of depicting trans joy as well as you know pain and so that was something that I think was weighing quite heavily on me and just in terms of how do we talk about the issues that trans youth are facing without it feeling, I don't know, like, you know, a bit trauma, porn. So we sort of went, we knew that Cal was going to be starting their transition, that they would already be taking testosterone. They, like, actually in the backstory, they were already taking it in series three. Just that, you know, that was something that they were sort of privately doing. But we didn't exactly know, like, where the story was going to go.

and then we work with a lot of consultants on the show, like lots of different consultants across all the storylines. There's so many people work on the show just to try and get the storylines as, you know, right as possible. But we were working with this amazing trans consultant called Shea Patton Walker, and very sadly they took their own life and they were, you know,

waiting for gender-affirming care. And I think at that point, it just, for me, it just suddenly became like this is the story that we have to tell and even though it's uncomfortable for some people and like difficult it just felt very urgent and I think yeah I think to be honest I think like where we're at in the UK at the moment in terms of the conversations around trans rights it's quite frightening and I think that what's happening in America is very frightening and I don't think we're that far away from that so I just to me I just felt like the show's called

sex education it's about you know sex relationships people's identity if we don't tell this story then what are we doing you know um and i think that what what i particularly loved is the way that you you told those stories and as you say you showed i mean such beautiful they say trans joy in abbey and roman's relationship which is just so fun and funny and wonderful that's such an example of trans joan's joy the sex scene at the end is just so hot and fabulous and they're both just like i love fucking here and i'm like yes it's just so wonderful and then alongside as you say that really important particularly now that timely piece of the difficulty and the struggle that trans people are facing in today's climate more than ever but i think what i really liked about the show is

that you didn't reduce anyone to their intersectionality at no point did i feel like anyone character was there in a kind of tokenistic way which I think can tend to happen when you are exploring issues like as you say, you know, which are very complex and are nuanced and I think you did a very good job but kind of pulling away from that and

ensuring that every character was still very well developed and multi-layered whilst also to... And that's a hard thing to juggle I imagine and to get right. Was that also something kind of when you're in the writer's room and you were all saying was that something you were in continuing

to contend with how you ensured that you kind of kept the characters in kind of lots of other dynamic plots and stuff so they were never reduced to to that struggle yeah it's definitely like juggle and I think that as the show has sort of developed since series one it's become something that I've I've become a lot more passionate about I guess in terms of how I approach the writing we had a wonderful writer called Rosie Jones she's a comedian as well and she was in our series two writers room and we were doing a lot of work

around the character of Isaac who is a wheelchair user and I just remember Rosie saying yeah like this is great but the answer is like you just need more than one person in the show who has a disability because otherwise that person has to just shoulder

like the whole experience. And so that's something that was really eye-opening for me and something that I've really thought about. But also I think on the flip side of that, then the show just continues to kind of like get bigger and bigger and we add more and more characters and some people get very pissed off about that. But for me, I'm sort of like that's,

that representation really is sort of at the core of the show and like what we're trying to do. And when we spoke the day, you did mention that you didn't quite understand that, that, I mean, there has been some kind of criticism of the show that it has been too woke, that it's been, I was like, kind of too,

I don't say too inclusive, but it has kind of been too woke. What is your reaction to that particular comment? I mean, I kind of hate, the word woke is just, oh, like it's just, it's a horrible word, isn't it? I mean, it's a great word, but it's also like,

I don't feel comfortable using it. myself to describe the show but I think yeah it's been it's been really interesting I think particularly for for this series we've we've seen quite a lot of comments of just people saying like that you know oh it's all just what is it like alphabet society now is this show is now run by the alphabet society and I don't know oh they will I read another one where someone was like this show has turned into gay propaganda and I was like it always was Damn straight. I mean like yeah

I mean literally at one point I had a storyline where I was like maybe like Otis suddenly like he wakes up and he's like I'm actually gay and I'm in love with Eric and I was like this would be incredible like what a way to end it like yeah

I mean Eric who's not in love with Eric so yeah I sort of feel like the you know the heart of the show's always been the same and it's definitely disappointing to kind of see that kind of language being used so freely but I also do think we're currently historically there's a backlash happening you know in terms of there's been I think post me too there's been a lot of progression and what always happens with progression is then there's fear and we'll kind of take a few steps back and then

hopefully we'll we'll move forward again totally and I think you can see that and I'm just thinking like throughout history I haven't really had we maybe we have and I just haven't seen those reviews, people being like, God, it's just way too heteronormative, even though so much of TV and film has been so heteronormative, so it's like a balancing at the scales. Laurie, I remember, so back

to when we were recording the podcast, I mentioned a little bit earlier, a few years ago, I remember you telling me that one of your greatest lessons in love was that love shouldn't be a battle, that it shouldn't be something that is hard fought four and one in this kind of

love being on a battle, field that I think often is depicted as in a lot of popular culture, a lot of the rom-coms we see, it's this thing that people struggle for and there's strife and there's sadness, there's anxiety and it's up and it's down. And remember you telling me that actually you discovered how

peaceful and kind of quite simple love can be and it felt so diametrically opposed to what you thought it must be. And I was remember that, I was struck by that when I watched this latest series with Viv's storyline. And

and particularly with the scene with Amy. Did how kind of conscious, what did you want to explore with Viv and her new kind of partner for bits of the show? I think the main thing I wanted to put into the show was really, I guess, for the younger audience to show like what the red flags are for like emotional abuse or like coercive control.

Because I think, again, like it comes back to, having better sex education at schools but I do think that's something that's not spoken about but it's completely connected and I definitely had some relationships like in my late teens and early 20s that I look back on now and I'm like oh like the power dynamic there was like really not a healthy one and I wish that I'd just been better informed and to be honest I think like a lot of film and TV probably hasn't been that helpful in that way because I think there's quite a lot of, we can kind of romanticise, you know, romance that's like very intense and like dysfunctional. And it's difficult because I still, you know, there's films and TV shows

with that kind of dynamic that I love and I still really get something from it because I think it's like sexy and fun and it kind of draws you in. But I just felt in the show that it was important that we kind of address yeah what what really to look for what those red flags are and we felt like viv was a interesting character to do that with because she is actually so she's probably the most confident character in the show she's she's so sure of herself and so we wanted to sort of show that even someone like that can have someone really fuck with her head and it was interesting i think watching that as a viewer i felt i like felt like i went along the kind of emotional like turbulence with her because at first, so the person,

if anyone who has a thing with at school, essentially begins to love bomb her, but you feel this kind of as well, I'm like, ooh, yeah, he loves her. And it's quite intense early on, and then it just gets more and more intense, and then quite controlling and jealous. And you really feel yourself kind of riding that way,

but feeling that initial excitement as though you're kind of in that relationship with her. So you really feel that kind of connection, that empathy, and suddenly you remember all the times that you've done the same thing. and gone along for that ride only to be so kind of hurt by that. So I felt it was a really important storyline to get in. I did have your lesson on love resonating around my mind as I thought it. I feel like we'd be remiss not to talk about Otis and Eric's relationship.

I love to know that there was a chance that maybe one day Otis was going to wake up and realise that he was in love with Eric. I actually am surprised that he didn't and wasn't. But I think their relationship was such a beautiful exploration of male vulnerability and it's just such a wonderful friendship that experiences its turbulence, especially in this series, but their capacity to be so open with one another, to cry to one another, to continue to kind of do the work to show up for one another, was something that I kind of, I felt like I hadn't seen that much of it on TV before.

What was it like writing that particular storyline and exploring male friendship in that way? Yeah, it's probably my favourite thing to write. Like I love writing just their scenes together. They're just always a joy to write. And also particularly like having, sort of having Acer and Shuti in my head when I'm writing and kind of knowing

how they'll, you know, add to it and just, you know, make it feel so buoyant. But yeah, I just, you know, I just really felt like, you know, I think sometimes when I, I was sort of developing TV ideas before sex education, I would often get told that I should focus more on, like, female characters. And it was, you know, around the time I think, like, girls had come out. And I absolutely love girls.

I think it's, like, an amazing TV show. But there was a real feeling of, like, we're looking for the next, you know, sort of female experience, like, on screen. And I always found that, like, I found that a bit difficult because I think it's really important that women are also able to write from an observable. point of view and also like write about men as well and that's something that I often come back to in my work and yeah I just really wanted to sort of show a friendship where two young men could be there for each other and that they didn't always have to be in that state of like banter which I think

can sometimes be defensive but obviously like you know because they're teenagers they don't always get it right and Otis is not always like the best friend to Eric and I think that was something that we you know always wanted to kind of explore in that dynamic but at the end of the day like they're always going to be there for each other and come back together and and hopefully like I don't know be in the old people's home together when they're old but the Otis's his self-awareness and their relationship always really strikes me like in that kind of one of the culminating scenes where he just says, you know, I felt like I couldn't always be there for you because I didn't always understand what you were going through, but I really want to

try. And he just thought, that's all we're going to ever hope for for our friends. It really, really touched my heart. I know you didn't actually set out as you've begun writing before season of the show for it to be the last season. I think I'm writing thinking. What then made you feel like this was a kind of good point in which to wrap things up? It just, it really did just happen like quite organ. as I said before, like even though certain things in the writing are quite set in stone and like structured, there is a certain amount of kind of fluidity that happens with the writing process and we're sort of, we are changing things and reworking things all the time. And yeah, just as I kind of got towards those final couple of episodes, it just started to become really clear that I think particularly Otis and Maeve had really come full circle. And, also when I made the realization about Eric wanting to be a pastor that just felt like I don't know I could just see his future I could kind of see what was going to happen for him and then I just thought this is the right time like I can feel all of these characters have some kind of hope and they yeah have a future in front of them where they you know hopefully will thrive and that made me feel happy even though it was sad to say goodbye and I just thought this is a good time to

bow out. I think it's always good not to overstay your welcome. Were the rest of the writer's room in agreement with it being a good time to come to an end or was there with a broken heart? They actually, to be honest, like they didn't know. So, yeah, I mean obviously they did eventually but it was a decision that I made whilst we were like shooting and yeah and then also I think we started to realize that episode eight was going to be a much longer episode and it felt there was something about it. It just felt like it had this kind of feature film element to it

and I just thought I think the, I don't know, the work is telling me like it's time to stop for a while. Go out with a bang, a serious bang. A French, I've spoken to one of the day who mentioned to me that a French family planning

agency has launched a campaign encouraging young people to talk about sex inspired by the show. So your work, Laurie. is having a ripple effect in sex education internationally. There are now posters around France advertising la hotline sex education, which highlights five example questions inspired by the series, including is foreplay sex?

How do I know if I like boys or girls? Is contraception only for girls? Its tagline says, it's the final season, but sex education continues, which I think is a really sweet. I wish we had that here. I don't know. Maybe I'll start that up actually as part of sex talks.

We'll have a little strand of like sex education continues. What do you kind of hope the legacy of the show is? I mean, it's already having this sort of ripple effect. And I think getting people having these sorts of conversations, you know, we will talk about finger up the butt shortly. when Alex comes on stage to join us. But stuff like that, it's really refreshing to see on screen. But yeah, what do you hope

the overall, long-lasting legacy of the show is? I find, I don't know. I think I spend so much time just kind of locked away in a weird little bubble in my pajamas, like writing on a laptop, like a kind of hobbit person. And then I sort of emerge and then realize people are watching the show and enjoying it. So I find it really difficult to think about it

in the kind of like wider context. But, yeah, I mean, I guess it's in the title. It's called Sex Education, and I hope that it started some interesting conversations. I sort of, you know, I don't know. I really genuinely, I'm like, in 10 years' time, I don't know how it's going to stand up. I think in 10 years' time, people might look back and be like, ooh, that was, it kind of will be a bit like friends. You know how people look back in friends? And they're just like, oh, there was some spicy stuff there.

But, you know, I hope that it is somewhere in that conversation about kind of, yeah, just having, healthier conversations about you know relationships you said at the beginning of our conversation I think you alluded to it and I've heard you say in other interviews that your own sexication was like I'd imagine most people's hair is pretty crap

pretty lacking have you learned a lot of sex education in the process of making the show have you learned things that you weren't that familiar with before yeah I've learned so much weird stuff I feel like yeah there's like many, many things that I have learnt.

Some of them I wish I hadn't learned. What do you wish you haven't learned, Laurie? I'm going to keep, some things I'm going to keep. There are things that, like, get spoken about in the writers' room that we sometimes write on a board and we're like, never, we must never repeat this, like, ever again. To be a fly on the wall, the sex education, writers' room would be. But, yeah, I think I've definitely gone on a journey myself.

And I think there's been almost a bit of a kind of, like a grieving process for my younger self, I think particularly around the stuff to do with consent and like kind of understanding power dynamics in relationships and just I think, you know, as I think a lot of people did after the Me Too movement happened, just having to reframe relationships or experiences that happened and suddenly going, oh, like, actually I think that was a little bit traumatic. So I think kind of having to work on the show and be talking about that kind of subject matter all the time was quite eye-opening for me

in terms of thinking about my own any with sex education or the lack of a journey with sex education at school. Do you think the fact that you, the show kind of coincided with the Me Too movement and that's kind of the backdrop at a certain point. Do you think that impacted on how it was received or how we perceived it at certain points?

I sometimes wonder if, I don't think that the show maybe would have been able to go to as many, like, darker places as it did if it wasn't for Me Too. We had our first writer's room for Series 1 about six weeks before Me Too happened. And I remember at that point there were definitely some conversations around episode 3 of Series 1, which is when Maeve goes to get an abortion. And that had always been in her, like, story, in her, in her backstory and the kind of Bible of the show. But in terms of that episode and the way that we really did just focus in on the drama of her experience and we didn't try to sort of make light of it and we really kind of lent into the truth of it and the vulnerability of it, sometimes I wonder whether if Me Too hadn't happened,

whether we might have been encouraged to tell that story in a slightly different way. But I think it just cracked people's brains over. open to be like, oh, you know, I think it's really important to, you know, tell stories, particularly female stories that we haven't actually, like, looked at before or given time and space for. I completely agree. And I think I so viscery remember that period. And it felt like, I think, as you just said, suddenly being handed this new language with

which to understand your own personal experiences, I'd have sit around and somebody like have conversations with friends. and we would kind of for the first time be like, yeah, this thing happened to me and I don't actually and you for the first time began to it's kind of like putting the pieces together and

almost being given permission to make sense of things that had happened to you and I think it's really important then seeing that reflected in popular culture on TV is really helpful and really necessary to I think continue to legitimise

women and you know, everyone's experiences with kind of sexual harassment, sexual assault, in light of this new language, in light of this kind of, I think, freedom to vocalise and explore these issues more publicly. I think it's a really kind of important part of of the show and one that I think I certainly felt very appreciative of more broadly.

I want us to, Alex, I'm going to call on you to join us on stage momentarily, but I just want to ask one final question, Laurie. What, given all that you have learned, creating the show all the bits of sex ed that you have learned some that you didn't want to learn some that maybe you're quite glad to have learned what is one piece of sex advice or sex knowledge that you know now that you wish younger lorry could have my brain just went to lube I was like just lube basically it's just great

Just in all, yeah, lube. In all places and all spaces and all contacts and all time. You're not the first person to say lube on the sex talk stage. I have to say, I think lube, lube, lube always improves sexual experiences. I love that. Laurie, thank you for creating the show. Thank you for, I think, helping so many of us to broaden our understanding of our relationship to sex, feel less shame, feel less embarrassment,

feel less anxiety. It has impacted me hugely, and I know it has other people too. So thank you so much. Huge round of applause for Laurie.