SAMI OUTALBALI
Gracing Attitude’s front cover for a second time, French actor and Sex Education heartthrob Sami Outalbali opens up about how schools are failing students, his special je ne sais quoi with co-star Ncuti Gatwa and bringing gay characters to the screen
The French actor opens up about on-screen chemistry — ooh la la! — and why conversations around sex need to evolve
Sami Outalbali is fresh off the Eurostar, after waking to the chirruping sound of birdsong to catch an early train from Paris, where he is based, to London. His journey would have gone just fine, had he not been stopped by an errant guard; “They don’t like my face,” he later says, noting that this is a regular occurrence when he is travelling, whether he is dressed down in a tracksuit or dripping in designer clothes. The final hiccup, he pulls up the other side at King’s Cross and can’t find his pre-booked car.
Yet Sami remains bright and cheery as he steps inside the studio, politely asking if he can quickly nip out for a cigarette before being ushered into styling and grooming. While he puffs away outside, I decide to
‘feng shui’ the spread of snacks, suddenly panicking that he’ll think I only brought croissants (parched, sad-looking ones at that) because he’s French.
This is Sami’s second Attitude cover photo shoot – he first struck a pose for our March issue last year – and he didn’t think twice about appearing again. “That was actually my first cover ever,” he clarifies. “People liked it. My friends loved it. [I received] good comments… I’m really happy to do another one for you guys.”
Given that the actor has modelled in the past and is smoulderingly handsome (facts are facts), it is hard to believe he is anxious about the shoot, especially as I sit opposite him worrying about the bubbling spot that has taken up residence, without permission, between my brows. “I’m quite nervous about shooting because normally when I’m in front of the camera, it’s for playing someone,” he explains. “I’m not sure I am really good at just standing there.”
He adds: “A lot of actors that I know are not really confident… [but] the set is a special place where you can be anyone you want. It’s a therapy for a lot of people. It is for me, too, I guess, the fact that on set I can be everything I’m not in real life.”
Sami has starred in numerous TV shows and films in his homeland, but he reached a whole other level of fame when he nabbed the role of Rahim in the sophomore outing of Netflix’s acclaimed comedy drama Sex Education. Brooding, mysterious, effortlessly cool, oh, and gay, Moordale Secondary School’s newest student (at the time) struck up a sweet, if short-lived romance with Ncuti Gatwa’s Eric Effiong, who ended up breaking things off to get back with his former flame, closeted reformed bully Adam, played by Connor Swindells.
Two words: sacre bleu!
Now, if we were to take a stab in the dark at what Sami’s hidden talent is, we’d guess it was the ability to provide the vaguest of ‘clues’. Because he is giving away nothing, zero, zilch, nada, about what to expect for Rahim and Eric in season three (out 17 September); please do not tread lightly, there are no spoilers here. “It’s going to be interesting, the story goes somewhere you don’t expect it,” he starts, with a cheeky, almost mocking glint in his eye. “There is something, but I’m not going to tell you more than that.”
Thankfully, he is willing to discuss his own personal life. Although Sami has never been locked in a love triangle, his heart has been battered and bruised: “I’ve been dumped by someone. I was about to say, who has never? But I know people who have never and that’s good for them [laughs]. I don’t want to make it too heavy, like, I’m remembering bad memories, but yeah, I have.
“It’s hard to break up with someone, especially when you love that person, and you don’t want to hurt him or her or they. Honesty is the best way. It hurts in the moment, but it is best for everyone. [You could] let it [the relationship] die by itself, but I don’t think that’s a good solution – I don’t know, I’m giving advice I’m not myself following!”
Does Sami subscribe to the belief that the best way to get over somebody is to get under somebody else? “I’m not going to comment on that,” he grins.
We are sat in the cute courtyard of the studio, and as Sami reaches for his packet of cigs, I ask if I can pinch one; he doesn’t cut me with a sharp glare like most smokers I steal from at bars and clubs.
Rattling off alter-ego Rahim’s various qualities – “the confidence that he has walking into the [school] hallway like he did [on his first day], I would never dare do that… that’s a king move I don’t have” – Sami settles on the trait he most admires. “Showing without shame [his] passions,” he states. “Rahim is passionate about poetry and he’s not afraid to show it and say it, and I think it’s beautiful. Too often we are hiding the things we love from people because we’re scared.
“TOO OFTEN WE ARE HIDING THE THINGS WE LOVE FROM PEOPLE BECAUSE SCARED. WE’ RE I USED TO HIDE THAT I WAS ACTING FOR A LONG TIME”
“[I used to hide] the fact that I was acting for a long time because I didn’t know how people were going to react. I also loved fashion, drawing fashion, and I was hiding that, too.”
At 22, the Frenchman’s school days are still in the rear-view mirror, but he baulks at the thought of being a teen again. “It’s a bad age,” he maintains. “It’s behind me and it’s good like that. You don’t get a lot of credit when you’re a teenager. Whatever you say, it’s, like, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I just [remember] that feeling of not being listened to, or that my opinion doesn’t have any value… [That said] there is an awareness now in teenagers’ minds that we didn’t have.”
Proud to be a part of Sex Education, Sami – who is particularly pally with co-star Emma Mackey, aka Maeve Wiley, also from France – stresses how envelope-pushing the series is in addressing a smorgasbord of issues surrounding intimacy and relationships, highlighting just how “terrible” – not to mention fundamentally sexist – his own sex education was. (He didn’t even put a condom on a bloody banana!)
“When we ask ourselves, how was [sex education] in school? All the answers are going to be, it was bad,” he argues. “They just tell you how to make kids and how to avoid making kids, that’s it. You start your sexual life by knowing only that.
“Teaching young boys how to put condoms on and teaching young girls a lot more about pregnancy and the period and everything, it’s like you’re putting more pressure on the girls’ shoulders than the boys’. You are telling the boys, you’re going to have to put on protection and that’s it, the rest of your life, sexually speaking, is going to be fun; [but] you girls, you’re going to have to do this, this, this, this.
“I think that’s the mirror of a society that has been ruled by old guys who didn’t really care about anything but themselves. It’s changing… but it was literally: girls, you’re going to have a lot of things to learn, and boys, it’s going to be fine, just put the little bit of plastic on your penis and go have fun!”
The show, Sami continues, has filled chasms in our knowledge and understanding of our bodies and how they should be treated.
“In season one, with Aimee and female masturbation, it is something we just didn’t talk about, except in movies or shows where they are making – not fun of it, but like American Pie. [In Sex Education], there is a real discussion, a talk about that, about the fact it’s OK,” he asserts. “[Then there’s] the pressure you shouldn’t put on yourself when you’re a boy, of
“YOU DON’T GET A LOT OF CREDIT WHEN YOU’RE A TEENAGER. I REMEMBER THAT FEELING DOESN'T HAVE ANY VALUE… THERE IS AN AWARENESS NOW IN TEENAGERS’ MINDS THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE”
being hard all the time, or cumming, or having an orgasm, stuff like that.
He goes on: “Something as evident as consent [as well]. We don’t learn that in school. We don’t learn that for a boy, it is more than OK to ask before kissing a girl.
“The power of the show is it’s talking about a subject we all have lived, but we didn’t have any answers [to our questions] at the time. We felt alone and now we don’t.”
Although Sami is still to shoot a bell-andwhistles sex scene as Rahim – our main criticism, tbh – he has no qualms about doing so, having seen the safe space created on set. “I’m comfortable doing intimate scenes when it’s justified and serves the subject; it’s not a problem for me,” he shrugs. “It’s like everything; when you learn it properly, the things to avoid, the dangers of it, then you can have fun… but you need to learn that when you have an intimate scene, you can’t just come to your partner and touch her or him or them wherever you want just because it is written in the script. No, you have to – it’s consent. It’s all about consent, always and will forever be.”
Conversation turns to his on-screen (ex) partner, Ncuti. Revisiting his audition, Sami proclaims that they had that special je ne sais quoi from the get-go. “It was a tape [audition] at the beginning. I worked an hour and a half with a friend on it, and we were trying to take good shots, beautiful points of view, a bit of directing. We showed my international agent and after three seconds she’s, like, ‘No, do it again… they don’t need you to do close-ups, they want to see how you act!” he exclaims.
“The production asked me to come to London to do an audition with Ncuti. The directors were there, the writers, the producers, and yeah, it was a strange day. I had the feeling of being in space, floating in the air, not really realising what I was doing, just knowing that I had to be my best right now.
“Before the audition, we [Ncuti and I] talked a bit in front of the building. It was natural immediately, and then we were playing together and the chemistry with him was just a beautiful exchange. It’s really important when you act – it’s not a selfish job, it is an exchange with your partner, and when it’s smooth and the person in front of you is pushing you, you’re trying to repay him the same thing. It was a pleasure, that’s what it was.”
Ncuti’s ears must have been burning, as Sami’s phone shakes into life. “It’s Ncuti,” he says, sharing that they’re hopefully meeting that evening: “If he has time for me – he’s a busy man!”
Portraying an LGBTQ+ character is not a novelty for Sami – he previously popped up in Philippe Faucon’s Fiertés (2018), a mini-series about three generations of a French family and the rise of the gay rights movement in France – and by no means does he see it as a stretch for his acting abilities.
“It was not a challenge for me,” he insists. “But I think it’s always funny to see how people, how certain people [in particular] present themselves as open-minded, trying to act ‘cool’, but can’t help but say and push on the fact that you kissed a boy. And you are, like, you’re not that open-minded.
“I’m just kissing someone. It could be a boy. It could be a girl… If I play a gay character, [even] calling a character gay is – for me – already a mistake. I’m just trying to portray a human being, a love story with feelings, and it happens that his love goes for boys.”
Reflecting on the response he’s had from LGBTQ+ viewers, Sami believes many of them feel seen by Rahim: “[They tell] me that they recognise themselves in Rahim. Boys, girls and non-binary people are, like, it’s good to see a character like that, with such confidence, who is able to be proud of himself in front of everyone.”
However, it took a while to win over Sami’s biggest cheerleader: his mum.
“When I got the show, I called my mum, ‘I have Sex Education!’ ‘Sex what?’ I explained to her what it was. Then the show came out; my grandparents watched, but my mum didn’t,” he recalls. “I was at a dinner and my grandparents were talking about the show, and I was a bit embarrassed; I don’t have any intimate scenes, so I was OK, but the show has some. I said, ‘Did you like it?’ They replied, ‘We watch it for you, but yeah.’ My mum was, like, ‘I didn’t watch it, I don’t know, Sex Education, that name and stuff.’ I was not mad, of course, but I was, like, ‘Mum, why not?’”
Is she a bona fide fangirl now? “Mum watched it and liked it!”
Grabbing his smokes, Sami heads inside to say his goodbyes, before jumping into a car which, fortunately, is there waiting for him. I just hope he has a smoother journey home, as I stuff the leftover croissants in my bag. Maybe I should have offered him one for the road…
“I’M JUST KISSING SOMEONE. IT COULD BE BOY. IT COULD BE A GIRL. I'M TRYING TO PORTRAY A HUMAN BEING. A LOVE STORY WITH FEELINGS, AND IT HAPPENS THAT HIS LOVE GOES FOR BOYS”