\u201cIt\u2019s been cooked with a lot of love,\u201d says Gatwa, who plays the ebullient Eric Effiong. \u201cI really hope people like it. But also,\u00a0<\/span>I think you have to take the pressure off how other people view you, ultimately, in life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI just finished watching it and I absolutely loved it,\u201d says Aimee Lou Wood, a BAFTA winner for her role as Aimee Gibbs. \u201c<\/span>I finished episode eight and I was just crying, because\u2026 it sounds really cheesy, but I\u2019m so proud of us and I\u2019m so proud of it. <\/span>I have seen my friends deliver these incredible performances, and I\u2019m so proud of them. <\/span>So even though it does feel like a lot of pressure \u2013 especially because it\u2019s delayed coming out \u2013 I\u2019m safe in the knowledge that I think it\u2019s brilliant and everyone is just so special and beautiful and amazing in it.\u201d<\/p> Sex Education charts the exploits of the students, staff and parents of Moordale Secondary School as they contend with personal dilemmas, romantic turmoil and issues relating to sexual intimacy and has earned plaudits for its wit, charm and sensitive approach to what might\u2019ve previously been considered difficult subject matter.<\/p>\n The show began filming its latest batch of episodes in September 2020 under COVID safety protocols and, remarkably, never had to pause production once the shoot was underway. \u201cOut of all the jobs to be doing during a pandemic, acting was not the most difficult or stressful,\u201d says Gatwa. \u201cWe\u2019re very privileged to do what we do and we were very privileged to be able to get back to doing what we do\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut also, it was<\/em> different \u2013 it wasn\u2019t as fun. I\u2019m used to just running up and jumping on Kedar [Williams-Stirling, who plays Moordale\u2019s head boy Jackson Marchetti] and Aimee, and people just coming into each other\u2019s trailers, and popping into each other\u2019s houses\u2026 I don\u2019t even knock to go into Kedar\u2019s house, I just walk in! So it felt very weird to, you know, step off set and suddenly have to put a mask on and social distance and all of that.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere were times when I got quite emotional and sad, because I thought, \u2018F**k me, everyone has a COVID story.\u2019 I was talking to members of the crew and they all had a different story: \u2018I\u2019ve not seen my girlfriend in six months,\u2019 \u2018My kids are having a a really hard time home-schooling\u2026\u2019 And yet everyone was there on set, trying to make it work and dedicated the whole time to making this project happen.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt felt really special to be working again \u2013 it felt like a privilege because there\u2019s many people in our industry, so many actors, who\u2019ve had jobs taken away from them. So many people lost jobs, so many people had to retrain, so to be able to go to a studio, put on a colourful costume and pretend to suck off a banana was lovely!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n For Gatwa, perhaps the most surprising moment of the pandemic came when his character Eric became the face of a meme promoting good hygiene \u2013 with a fan-favourite Eric quote from the second season of Sex Education (\u201cWash your hands, you detty pig!\u201d) ending up plastered on a fake NHS poster.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mum works for the NHS and she sent me that and was like, \u2018I always knew we were gonna work together one day!\u2019 \u2013 thank God we all had to be in our houses\u2026 h<\/span>ad I been allowed to go outside and seen that in bathrooms, it might\u2019ve been too much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The pandemic wasn\u2019t the only obstacle that the cast of Sex Education faced in bringing the third season to our screens, however. As glimpsed in the recent trailer<\/a>, the new episodes see Aimee adopt a \u201ccommitment goat\u201d with boyfriend Steve (Chris Jenks). \u201cThat goat<\/span><\/i>\u2026 so cute, but she absolutely was queen of the set,\u201d says Wood, sending her co-star Gatwa into a fit of laughter. \u201cI mean, she decided how the day was gonna go. When she was on set, it was all about her. We were just waiting for her, constantly. The goat was on a lead, but she was leading me. It was bizarre, actually.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cShe hated me, absolutely hated me at first. She<\/span> loathed<\/span><\/i> me. She would not go near me \u2013 and she loved Lino [Facioli] who plays Dex, loved him, flirting so much\u2026 and just would not go near me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The pair eventually developed a \u201cmutual respect\u201d, according to Wood. \u201cShe\u2019s a natural, that goat, but she is a diva.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Gatwa was also forced to contend with a furry foe this season, in the shape of cast-mate Asa Butterfield\u2019s fake moustache (with the show\u2019s shooting schedule often filming scenes out of order and so precluding the Otis Milburn actor from growing his own facial hair).<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the bane of my life,\u201d deadpans Gatwa. \u201cI mean, all eyes were on the moustache. The moustache, like the goat, it took up the day. It was annoying. <\/em>It wasn\u2019t real, so it would always fall off \u2013 you would always have to do checks, glue Otis\u2019s terrible moustache back onto his face\u2026 like, it took over the day. And I felt like it overshadowed me, and I didn\u2019t like that!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always the thing that\u2019s, like, the flight of fancy,\u201d says Wood. \u201cIt\u2019s that little flourish that in the script will take like a second to write \u2013 they go, \u2018Oh, it\u2019d be funny if Otis had a moustache. Oh, it\u2019ll be really funny if there was a goat there.\u2019 And then those are the things that become the <\/span>mai<\/span><\/i>n<\/span><\/em> event<\/em>, always.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s part of the brilliance of Sex Education that it can veer from broad humour with a pet goat to powerful depictions of anxiety, depression, sexual assault and other tough topics without suffering from tonal whiplash. Running the emotional gamut does take its toll on the cast, though \u2013 in the upcoming season, Eric experiences happiness with boyfriend Adam (Connor Swindells) but also goes on a personal voyage to get in touch with his roots, while Aimee attends therapy with Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson) after being assaulted on a bus last season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not normal, to experience that range of emotion and in such a small amount of time,\u201d says Wood. \u201cIt\u2019s not. It\u2019s actually quite strange. Sex Education very much operates in this space of emotional honesty \u2013 all these characters, even if it takes them a while, will eventually be honest about how they\u2019re feeling.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think people who do that have that much honesty around their emotions in real life, so just being in a space where people talk about how they feel a lot\u2026 a<\/em><\/span>\u00a0l<\/em>ot<\/span><\/i>\u2026 it\u2019s kind of a model of what it could be like if everyone didn\u2019t sweep things under the carpet, but at the same time it can get to the point where afterwards you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, I have purged a lot of emotion here and now I want to go back to being kind of repressed\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI need to take a break,\u201d Gatwa says of his post-filming rituals. \u201cLiterally, you need to, like, kill the character. I do. I need to, like, not talk to anyone, think about anyone, not look at anything, regarding Eric or Sex Education\u2026 until it comes back out again and I\u2019m talking to people like yourself. I need to, like, completely shut it off.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBecause otherwise\u2026 we revisit these characters, and in every character that you play as an actor, you put a bit of yourself in them, and so when you\u2019re revisiting a part of yourself constantly, it can then start to bleed into how you look at yourself and all of that. So you need to literally just kill that character and be like, \u2018No, you\u2019re dead now in order for me to live my life. I need to live my life as Ncuti \u2013 Eric Effiong, you\u2019re dead!\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hopes are high though that both Eric and Aimee will live again in a fourth season of Sex Education \u2013 if that happens, both Gatwa and Wood have the same request: shared screen-time for their characters. \u201cWe\u2019ve been asking since season one,\u201d Gatwa says. \u201cThey always say, \u2018Oh, definitely, next season!\u2019 \u2013 lies, lies, lies that they tell us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Having worked extensively with Gillian Anderson on the third season, Wood now has ideas of how Jean, Aimee and Eric (\u201cthe dream trio\u201d) might share a scene or two. \u201cI\u2019ve already thought of ways that it could happen. And I\u2019m ready to suggest them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s have a little meeting after this, Aimee, and get our notes together,\u201d says Gatwa. \u201cWe\u2019ll get Google Docs set up. And we\u2019ll send it to the writing team\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sex Education returns to Netflix on Friday 17th November \u2013 read our guides to the best series on Netflix<\/a> and the best movies on Netflix<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Visit our Drama<\/a> hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with our TV Guide<\/a>. Read more of our Big RT Interviews<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n The breakout stars of the returning Netflix series reflect on filming new episodes in a pandemic and reveal their biggest wish for next season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":4533,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/sex-educations-ncuti-gatwa-and-aimee-lou-wood-on-goats-fake-moustaches-and-killing-their-characters.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/sex-educations-ncuti-gatwa-and-aimee-lou-wood-on-goats-fake-moustaches-and-killing-their-characters-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/sex-educations-ncuti-gatwa-and-aimee-lou-wood-on-goats-fake-moustaches-and-killing-their-characters-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/sex-educations-ncuti-gatwa-and-aimee-lou-wood-on-goats-fake-moustaches-and-killing-their-characters.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/sex-educations-ncuti-gatwa-and-aimee-lou-wood-on-goats-fake-moustaches-and-killing-their-characters.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/sex-educations-ncuti-gatwa-and-aimee-lou-wood-on-goats-fake-moustaches-and-killing-their-characters.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2021\/09\/sex-educations-ncuti-gatwa-and-aimee-lou-wood-on-goats-fake-moustaches-and-killing-their-characters.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The breakout stars of the returning Netflix series reflect on filming new episodes in a pandemic and reveal their biggest wish for next season.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/4532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""Eric\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2021\/09\/sex-education-eric-season-3-f95ed93.jpeg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"sex-education-eric-season-3\"\\"")
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