"I Got A Lot Of Nice Messages About This" – "Sex Education" Creator Laurie Nunn Reacts To The Show's Biggest Scenes

"People were very, very angry about it!"

Nine years ago, screenwriter and playwright Laurie Nunn was brought a pitch by Eleven Film for a show that would become Sex Education.

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The seed pitch, she remembers, came from a producer who had seen a Channel 4 documentary about teenagers speaking to a sex therapist. "It sort of came out of that", she tells me in a studio in Netflix's London office, "but the specific idea was putting a teenage sex therapist on a school campus. Then I just kind of built the world out from that and came up with all the characters and the madness that is Moordale."

The series first aired back in 2019 and was an immediate hit, with 40 million member households tuning into the series within its first four weeks on Netflix.

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Two years later, season three garnered 66.6M views in its first 91 days of release, and picked up the top prize for Best Comedy Series at the 2022 International Emmy Awards.

Now Sex Education is poised for its final curtain. So, to celebrate, I sat down with Laurie to discuss the upcoming season (dropping this Thursday!), as well as the show's hilarious, tragic, poignant, and often groundbreaking legacy.

Sam Cleal: Hi Laurie! Now before I give you some iconic Sex Education scenes to react to, I'd love to know how you're feeling about the series coming to an end.

Laurie Nunn: Yeah, I think I'm still processing it. I've been writing this show for nine years – I started working on it in 2014. So I'm just getting used to the idea of not writing these characters anymore, really. But I'm looking forward to people seeing what we've come up with for the final series.

SC: Did it ever occur to you to continue the series with a second generation of characters – like Skins did, for instance?

LN: I've always felt like I came up with these characters and I feel quite close to them, so I couldn't really imagine rebooting it in that world. I do think it's quite a rich universe though, and there's potential for it to be developed in some way, but maybe not as a new generation.

Next I gave Laurie a series of iconic Sex Education scenes from over the years and asked her to explain where the idea for them came from, what the writing process for them was like, and whether there were any interesting behind-the-scenes details about them she cared to share.

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Here's what she had to say...

1. When the girls all got on the bus with Amy – season two

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LN: This is probably one of my favourite scenes in all of the series. I think Aimee Lou Wood's performance – that little teary little smile that she does – is just so gorgeous. This storyline was particularly personal to me because it came from a personal experience, so it was very cathartic to write.

Here's the scene:

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LN: I had this image of all of our female characters, who didn't necessarily get along and all came from really different backgrounds – you know, just because you're a woman doesn't mean you need to be best friends – coming together to support Aimee in this moment. What she was going through is more important than their differences. Yeah, this scene is very close to my heart.

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One of Laurie Nunn's Favourite Scenes <3 #buzzfeeduk #buzzfeed #sexeducationseason4 #netflix #laurienunn #mimikeene #aimeelouwood ♬ original sound - BuzzFeed UK

2. When Otis consoled Hope about the trouble she was having conceiving – season three

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LN: This is when Otis gives Hope Haddon therapy at the hospital when he's waiting to see his mum. I think something that's always been important to me is that I don't really like the idea of a pure antagonist. This scene is a moment of understanding and humanising Hope; even though she's done some terrible things, she's also going through her own stuff. I think that's what's at the core of the show – let's try and treat people with respect because everybody's going through something that you might not understand.

Here's the scene:

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SC: How did you feel about Jemima Kirke's performance in the series?

LN: I loved her performance. It was such a coup getting her onto the show, and then she's such a cool person, so her character having all these problematic traits kind of worked really well. Particularly in this scene, I think you really see that she's complicated, and though she's trying to hold it together and retain her power, underneath she's vulnerable just like everyone else.

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SC: It feels like you've kind of made a similar choice to Jemima's casting in bringing on Dan Levy this season. They're both loveable characters from big North American shows. How did that happen?

LN: I mean, that was very surreal for us because we'd heard that he liked the show, so then me and the writers were in the writers room imagining if we could get him in the series somehow. We came up with the character of Thomas Molloy, but we didn't think Dan playing him would ever happen but then it did! He's so great and he has amazing hair.

SC: He really does – hair inspo!

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Sex Education creator Laurie Nunn made sure the last season has a banging new edition. Who else is excited to see Dan Levy in Moordale? #sexeducationedits #netflix #sexeducation #buzzfeeduk

♬ original sound - BuzzFeed UK

3. When Eric chastised a student for not washing his hands – season two

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LN: Ahhh, when the boy comes out of the bathroom and says that 'he didn't do a poo' and Eric calls him a dirty pig. This was an amazing bit of improvisation from Ncuti; it wasn't scripted at all. I think what I love about this is we had written it and filmed it pre-pandemic, and then the series came out and literally a month or so later we all went into lockdown. That's when this scene became a bit of a meme and I was like, 'wow, how did this happen?'

Here's the scene:

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LN: Also, all of the students were running around wearing like face masks in that series as well because of the whole chlamydia storyline. So yeah, we kind of predicted the pandemic, I guess!

4. When Otis kissed Maeve while they were abandoned during a school trip – season three

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LN: This was moment that people – I think they call them MOTIS shippers – were all waiting for. It'd obviously been building up for a long time and yeah, I was really happy with it. The director for series three, Ben Taylor, completely designed that petrol station and I think it has this really iconic sort of teen film vibe to it. The way it's lit and everything – it could be on a poster! The music he chose is so beautiful, too.

Here's some pics from the shoot:

Instagram: @sexeducation

And here's the clip:

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LN: Obviously, we'll have to wait and see what happens in season four as whether this continues.

5. Otis's disastrous first day speakers corner presentation

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LN: So this is from the new series, which is set in Cavendish college. Otis is sort of trying to sell himself as the new sex therapist and getting everyone to come and see him. I don't know how many spoilers I'm allowed to give here! Well, something goes very wrong and some images are shown.

SC: Where did that idea come from? Cos it's a brilliant scene.

LN: I think it's just a little comment on the world of phones and technology. Things can go wrong very quickly and you have to be very careful about what's on your phone and who you're sending it to. We'd heard plenty stories about stuff like this happening in the writers room, and that's really the moral of this scene.

6. When Otis has a wank in his mum's car – season two

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LN: Yeah, this is another of my favourite scenes and it came from a story that I heard...

SC: Pun intended.

LN: Yes, exactly, pun intended! There was this story I heard about someone who will remain nameless, and this happened to them when they were a teenager. They were at the point of no return and their mum did witness them. I just thought it was the funniest, most horrendous, nightmarish thing I've ever heard and it had to go in the show.

Here's the scene:

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LN: I think Asa and Gillian are just so funny in the scene, and it's probably my favourite cold open we've ever done. The commitment Asa gave to it is marvellous.

SC: And the song choice is great too.

LN: Yeah, absolutely!

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Laurie Nunn took this from a true story! #netflix #sexeducation #iconicmoments #netflixseries

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7. When Isaac deleted Otis's voicemail to Maeve – season two

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LN: This was a very controversial scene and I was not expecting it to cause as much chaos as it did. People were very, very angry about it! I don't really have much to say about it other than I stand by the choice. Isaac was trying to protect Maeve and yes he did the wrong thing, but who hasn't made a mistake like that at 17?

Here's the clip:

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LN: I think it created a good tension for series three, and honestly, the will-they-won't-they dynamic often falls apart one characters get together. Like, they can't actually get together otherwise you don't have a show, right? How did you feel about it?

SC: It's obvious very a controversial scene, as you say, but my core memory from this scene is actually the song that's playing. I'm a huge, huge, huge Regina Spektor fan, and there's a cover of "On the Radio" by Chip Taylor in this scene, and I remember watching it in floods of tears cos that's my girl!

LN: Awww, I love that. Yeah, I know people literally just thought he was evil, but everyone makes mistakes.

8. When Maeve decided to get an abortion – season one

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LN: One of our writers, Sophie Goodhart, wrote this episode, but it was something that was always in the script. There's the bit where Maeve has befriended this woman and another young woman, and they hold hands and do a Mexican wave; it's a sort of strange and beautiful detail. There was a time when we had the pages done, but one of our producers was telling us, 'this scene isn't driving the story forward in any way, so let's lose it.' But I really fought for it.

Here's the scene:

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LN: I felt like there was something so touching about three women that don't know each other sort of having this moment of levity in a situation that's otherwise really difficult and complicated for them. This episode in general, to me, was when the show really came into its own. We realised from there that the show could be crude and outrageous, but also have these grounding dramatic moments too.

9. The school play – season two

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LN: This was so much fun to write and to shoot! Really getting into Lily's brain, which is so wild and inappropriate and a little bit genius, was brilliant. Sam Harley did all of the costumes and production design, which looked incredible.

Here are some clips:

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SC: So many people cite that as one of their parts of the show, how does that feel? And where did the idea for the play come from?

LN: In Sex Education, we like to incorporate tropes and things we've seen in other teen shows. I think school production is such a thing that happens in high school, but we wanted to definitely put a Sex Education spin on it! I think having Lily direct it with Mr Hendricks, and leaning into those wildly inappropriate things was so much fun! But I mean, if this actually did happen at a school, I'm pretty sure the school would probably be shut down.

10. When Jean suggested to Florence that she might be asexual – season two

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LN: This felt like a really important moment to put in the show. I think asexual representation is pretty limited across film and TV. We wanted to make sure that we had a character who was asexual and then really give them a moment. I think there's a lovely connection between Jean and Florence here, and we really see, like, how good Jean is at what she does. I mean, who wouldn't want her as a therapist in this moment? But yeah, I got a lot of nice messages about this. I think it meant quite a lot to people, which was really lovely.

Here's the scene:

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SC: So many scenes in Sex Education are so groundbreaking in a way that they've never been done before, at least not positively. How do you feel about people really resonating with the scenes you've written? In some cases, you might have even saved lives.

LN: Wow, I mean, it's always so lovely to hear when something has connected in that way with the show. We had that storyline in series one with Lily and her vaginismus, and that's probably the storyline which I got the most messages about! People were saying things like, 'I've realised what's wrong with me' and going to the doctor. That's really profound because that's actually made a change in some small way to someone's life.

At the same time, I think we try not to take things too seriously because the show is there to entertain people and make people laugh, but hopefully we do a bit of both.

SC: You definitely do, and thank you for bringing this series to everyone. Honestly, it's such a fantastic show.

LN: Thank you.

Sex Education season four is available to stream on Netflix worldwide from Thursday 21st September. Let us know your thoughts about the series ending, and shout out any scenes we might've missed in the comments!