The third season “The Sex Lives of College Girls”, which is currently streaming on Showmax, returns to Essex College for sophomore year.
It sees Bela (Amrit Kaur), Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), Leighton (Reneé Rapp) and Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) facing major changes in their lives after the turbulent season finale.
Rapp is focussing on her music career, so viewers will be seeing less of her character this season but the rest of the group are all back.
Created by six-time Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling (“Never Have I Ever” and “The Office”) and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” writer Justin Noble, the series, which is rated 18SNL, has been nominated for two GLAAD Media Awards, a Casting Society of America award and the MTV TV Awards’ “Here for the Hookup” prize.
As “Collider” says: “While ‘sex lives’ may be in the title of the show, everyone knows the real magic lies in the ‘college girls’ part and their messy but endlessly supportive relationships with one another.
“This is one friend group you’ll want to follow into sophomore year and long after graduation day.”
Showmax caught up with writer Noble to find out more about the show, which he co-created with Kaling.
How did you react when you found out that season 3 was happening?
I was thrilled. This show taps into something that people love. I think that there hasn't been a show like this before that focuses on four funny young girls of this age group.
I love doing that. I grew up as this gay writer who was surrounded by funny female friends and aspired to write for funny females I saw on TV.
So this is literally living the dream.
It's like I alternate between doing what I always wanted to do and then, at the same time, feeling like I'm at the brunch table with my insane group of friends who are coming up with horrible ideas.
And I have to be like: “You don't want to do that, Marla. You don't want to go to the Olympic village to try to hook up with an Olympian.”
That's too much, don't do that but Bela, Bela should do that.
Tell us about that season 2 finale?
At the end of the season, we obviously chose a little bit of chaos between Whitney and Kimberly.
Our show doesn't have a big taste for female-on-female warfare but we are trying to tell a realistic version of four girls who are living together and stuff like this happens.
But, of course, there's not a taste for a prolonged feud between friends. That's not what this show is. This show is happy, horny and fun.
Leighton’s exit was really powerful and emotional. This is something a lot of people can relate to in terms of a friend leaving during college. Can you elaborate more on why you wrote it this way?
Yes, in my first year, one of my best friends left and I remember being like: “What do you mean you're not coming back? What does my social life look like now?”
That’s kind of what college is like. There are people who are here for a minute, and you have to deal with that. It's an important life lesson to learn about relationships and where they fit in your life, and yet you're not defined by them.
The ending is a fitting write-off for Leighton's character. The only way that Leighton Murray would ever leave Essex is with a win. And, of course, she's going to win. That's all she knows how to do.
The characters go through a lot of growth this season. Was that intentional?
For sure. It was so fun to start season one with these undercooked 18-year-olds who are just all of a sudden on campus and have no idea what they're supposed to do next.
When you now start season 3, they're sophomores, so they have this air of like: “Oh, I got this all figured out. I know exactly what I'm doing.” They don't. They're going to make a million mistakes, of course and that's going to be good for comedy.
But they are slowly but surely figuring out who they are as people and who they want to be.
We certainly love seeing them make mistakes because it is funny and fun, but we like seeing that, eventually, they're finding it out and that they know who they're going to be.
And I think by the end of the season, they have some real growth.
People love how inclusive the show is. Why was that important for you to represent?
As a queer writer who grew up in a slightly less open time, it's just important to me to put stories out there. And I'm not a million years old; I just turned 40.
I get so many DMs on Instagram like: “I've never seen myself on TV before and this character did it for me.”
That gets me every time because it's also unfair that they had that experience.
We’re not creating new types of people every three minutes; they have existed in their forms for so many generations … We should have more inclusive stories all the time.
I'm happy to write about them because they're also more fun. When you have different perspectives in a writers’ room and different perspectives in a cast, it makes for better content.