‘SEX IS ENDLESSLY INTRIGUING’

Red speaks to Laurie Nunn, the woman behind the hit Netflix series Sex Education

Emotional intelligence meets explicit humour: that’s how you could describe Sex Education, the teen comedy series that became Netflix’s surprise hit of 2019. As it returns for round two,

Arielle Tchiprout sits down with the creative force behind it, Laurie Nunn

Four years ago, screenwriter Laurie Nunn was close to giving up on her lifelong dream of making TV shows. ‘There had been a lot of rejection. I was interested in becoming a therapist,’ she reflects, before quickly assuring me that she’d ‘be a terrible therapist!’ Thankfully, Nunn didn’t need to try. Having spent several years working on projects that never quite took off, the series she had started developing about a teen sex therapist was commissioned by Netflix, and within four weeks of it landing, it had been watched by more than 40 million members.

‘That’s what I’ve heard,’ she smiles, when I confront her with Sex Education’s figures. She appears slightly embarrassed, as if she can’t quite believe it’s true. But I can, easily. I re-watched the first series ahead of our meeting and fell in love with it all over again. The show follows highschool student Otis (Asa Butterfield), the son of a sex therapist (Gillian Anderson) who, despite being afraid to masturbate, has unwittingly absorbed a deep understanding of sex. Alongside bad girl Maeve (Emma Mackey), he starts running an underground sex clinic at his school, Moordale, to help his classmates – including best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) – navigate a variety of sexual woes.

It’s a show about teen sex, except it’s so much more than that. It’s about our universal desire for intimacy; how we all want to be seen and understood. It’s about vulnerability, friendship, identity and family. It’s about what makes us different, and what makes us more similar than we previously thought. And all this is translated through a witty and whip-smart script, complete with interlocking love stories and a generous serving of full-frontal nudity.

Today, we’re at a location house in north London, not far from Nunn’s home. It’s one of her first ever photo shoots, yet she takes it all in her stride, excitably exploring the house and sifting through the delicate knits and whimsical dresses that have been picked out for her. She’s fresh-faced, English-rose beautiful, and, despite being 33, could easily pass as a student at Moordale.

As we sip mugs of tea and I finish gushing about how much I love her show, I ask whether she’s grown accustomed to hearing such praise. ‘It’s still very surreal,’ she says. ‘I was completely convinced the show was going to be a big flop.

In the lead up to its release, I had this feeling that it wasn’t going to go down well. The hook of it is so unusual – the idea of this kid giving out sex advice in a toilet cubicle – so I didn’t know if people would take the leap of faith that it needed. But it was nicer, in a way, to be surprised.’

The premise was born six years ago, when production company Eleven sent out a ‘seed pitch’ (the basic idea for a potential show) to freelance screenwriters, including Nunn, to see what they’d come up with. The pitch: what if we put a teen sex therapist on a school campus? Nunn was instantly drawn to the idea.

‘I’ve never gone for a job so hard in my life,’ she recalls. ‘I just thought, “I have to write this show.” I sent photographs of myself as a teenager to the producers, which is so weird,’ she laughs. ‘At that point, I’d been working on various writing projects, but I hadn’t had anything made for the screen before, so I knew they’d have to take a risk on me.’

Clearly, Nunn’s ideas were worth the risk. She was asked to develop her story further, writing a pilot episode and a ‘bible’ with her plans for the series – but almost three years passed, and it still hadn’t made it on to the screen. ‘I wonder whether, a few years ago, it wasn’t really the right moment,’ she reflects.

Naturally, her attention turned to other projects, but then, in 2017 – the year of #Metoo and the heralding of an era that demanded more honest and balanced depictions of sex – the series was green-lit for production by none other than Netflix. The hype around it quickly built, not least because Gillian Anderson, who Nunn describes as ‘fantastic and so funny’, was cast as Otis’s nosey sex-therapist mother. Seeing her characters finally come to life felt ‘a bit like a miracle’, says Nunn.

The show received widespread critical acclaim for its sex positivity and pitch-perfect handling of sensitive issues, from revenge porn to sexual dysfunction, so I’m surprised when Nunn admits that writing about sex didn’t come naturally to her. ‘It was the hook of the show, so I had to throw myself in and not be squeamish,’ she recalls. There’s certainly no place for squeamishness in the series; the first episode opens with a sex scene, where ditzy teen Aimee notices that her boyfriend, Adam, has faked an orgasm. She holds up the condom and asks accusingly, ‘Where’s the spunk, Adam?’

‘I WAS CONVINCED THE SHOW WAS GOING TO BE A FLOP’

When Nunn was writing the scene, she remembers struggling to find the right words. ‘Then I thought, “Say it how it is. Just be frank. You don’t need to make it seem pretty. It is what it is. They’re having sex,”’ she says. ‘That really unlocked something for me. I decided not to shy away from it. It’s going to be funny and awkward and human. We’re not going to glamorise it.’

Soon enough, sex – in all its weird and wonderful glory – became her forte. ‘I now feel I could write about sex for ever! It’s endlessly intriguing,’ she says. ‘It’s still such a sensitive, difficult subject, but it’s so essential to how we move through the world and how we feel about ourselves.’

The second series, Nunn tells me, will delve further into difficult topics surrounding sexuality. Otis begins to overcome his sexual ‘block’, while a chlamydia outbreak highlights the need for better sex education in school, and new kids arrive in town who will challenge the status quo.

In many ways, creating the series, with the help of a professional sex educator, has been an education for Nunn, too. ‘I’ve gone on a massive journey myself,’ she explains. ‘I realised how ill-equipped I was as a teenager and in my 20s. I don’t think I had the right language.’

Born in London, Nunn grew up in the UK until, aged 14, she moved with her mum and three of her siblings to Australia. A lot of her teenage self, she confesses, is reflected in the character of Otis. ‘I was an awkward teenager and a late bloomer,’ she says with a slight Australian twang. ‘When I think back on my teenage years, I cringe. It’s just awkward,’ she winces. ‘I have a recurring nightmare that I have to repeat my final year at school.’

But it was also during this time that she discovered her passion for filmmaking and scriptwriting. Nunn’s mum always encouraged her to follow a creative path, buying Nunn her first video camera, and she credits Six Feet Under as the show that made her want to write. She studied for a film degree in Melbourne before returning to London to complete a screenwriting MA at the National Film & Television School. ‘I graduated, got an agent and felt really hopeful, but I realised pretty quickly how difficult it is to get something off the ground,’ she admits. ‘It’s hard to keep up that self-belief. You have to keep remembering why you’re doing it – I always go back to wanting to tell stories.’

When Sex Education began to take off, you would have thought that her self-belief would have also soared. Yet with success comes great responsibility. Suddenly, Nunn found herself thrust into leading a team of writers for the show. She’d never even been in a writers’ room before, let alone led one, and imposter syndrome began to creep in. ‘I was very anxious during that time,’ she recalls. ‘I wasn’t sleeping well. There were definitely moments when I thought, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”’

Thankfully, the writers were mainly women of a similar age, ‘so it felt a slightly safer space to fail in,’ she says. And with time has come a certain confidence. ‘I’ve learned that there’s real power in saying, “I don’t know the answer to that,”’ she says. ‘I had to figure out my own way of doing things. I had to trust myself.’

It seems that a lot has fallen into place for Nunn over the past couple of years. ‘I feel like I’m able to say I’m a writer,’ she says. ‘It feels like a more solid, secure, real thing. Like a real job. I feel really happy that I stuck it out.’

Right now, there isn’t much time for other writing projects, as she’s still consumed by Sex Education, which hardly comes as a surprise.

‘I am very much living in Otis’s brain – it’s unhealthy!’ she laughs.

She’s open about the fact that she’s currently single, and I get the distinct sense that her life is full enough without a romantic relationship: she enthuses about having great friends (including a best friend in Australia who inspired Maeve’s ‘survivor’s spirit’) and wonderful career mentors.

What with Phoebe Waller-bridge’s stratospheric success with Fleabag, and Netflix’s female-led hit Unbelievable (both of which Nunn loved), I wonder whether it feels like a good time to be a woman in the industry. ‘I think it is, but it’s also important that people don’t rest on their laurels,’ she says, pointing out that female writers in

TV are still underrepresented. ‘There’s more opportunity for different types of storytelling and more diversity. I think audiences crave that.’ I suspect there are a lot more exciting, perhaps even trailblazing, things to come from Nunn.

As chat turns to our shared perfectionist tendencies and anxious thoughts, I have no doubt, despite her initial objections, that Nunn would make an excellent therapist. She’s thoughtful, intelligent and compassionate. Yet these are the same qualities that make her the writer we all need, able to sprinkle Sex Education with a gentleness that feels quite unexpected – and necessary – for a show that is fundamentally about getting laid. It really is an education for us all.

The second series of Sex Education launches on Netflix on 17th January

‘WHEN I THINK BACK ON MY TEEN YEARS, I CRINGE’