Spoilers for Season 4 of Sex Education ahead.
Season 4 of Sex Education introduces a slew of new characters, but one of them was supposed to be completely different…
Enter Thaddea Graham’s Sarah ‘O’ Owen. The student, known simply as O, runs a sex therapy clinic at Cavendish College and has amassed quite a clientele.
It doesn’t take long for her to become competitors with Moordale’s resident sexpert, Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield).
O gives guidance to her classmates, assisting them in managing their sex lives and navigating relationships while holding her own feelings close to her chest.
After a few episodes, viewers (and Cavendish students) discover that O is truly asexual when she comes out to her classmates, despite her earlier fear that no one would want to seek sex advice from someone who doesn’t have sex.
When I spoke with Yasmin Benoit, an asexual activist who served as a scriptwriter and consultant on Sex Education’s last season, she said that O’s character wasn’t designed this way from the beginning.
What is asexuality?
Someone who is asexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction. Some asexual people experience romantic attraction, while others do not. Asexual people who experience romantic attraction might also use terms such as gay, bisexual, lesbian, straight, and queer in conjunction with asexual to describe the direction of their romantic attraction.
‘In the beginning, before we cast the actor, the original idea for O was that she was supposed to be almost mythical, which doesn’t even sound like it fits in the show!’, Yasmin began.
‘O was originally meant to stand for the Oracle, it was supposed to represent an other-worldly knowledge that she had.
‘But when we cast an Asian actress, we had to drop the mythical thing, it was going in a weird direction.’
Yasmin added: ‘Also, you couldn’t be asexual and knowledgeable about it coming from some other-worldly source. It’s not that far-fetched that asexual people just know about stuff.
‘I wanted to ground it more and make her smart. She’s educated herself, she studies, and she’s just delivering education, it’s not some higher being that’s bestowed this strange wisdom upon her. She knows stuff the same way Otis does.
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‘I don’t want the answer for why she knows about sex when she’s asexual to be that she’s mythical.’
Yasmin was also concerned that O’s character broke notions of asexual persons being uncomfortable and clueless to sex.
‘I hope people take from it that you don’t have to be a stereotype,’ she said proudly. ‘You don’t have to be shy, you don’t have to have no social skills or be squeamish about sex – that’s not what asexuality means.
‘You can be interested in sex and sexuality, and know about it, and be in a position to help other people understand their sexuality while being asexual.
‘I wanted a character that had more oomph to them. The meek asexual, doesn’t know about sex, is super quiet and introverted, I’m over that. It’s a stereotype. I wanted her to be a force.
‘Given her role in the series, I think we nailed getting that across.’
Yasmin was also concerned that O’s character broke notions of asexual persons being uncomfortable and clueless to sex.
‘She thought that it was a really great story,’ Yasmin said, having remained in contact with the cast while they filmed in Wales, with tweaks still being made to the script at that point.
‘She understood the significance of there not being a lot of characters like that and getting to represent it.
‘I told her it was going to be iconic by default because the other storyline in season 2 was four minutes long and people still talk about that to this day. It was more of a moment, so the fact that this is a fully-fledged character is a big deal.’
O’s antics may be seen in the final eight episodes of the successful show, which also features original characters Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey), Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa), Aimee Gibbs (Aimee Lou Wood), Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson), and others.
Season 4 of Sex Education is nearing to a finish, but there’s still plenty of drama for the students to deal with.
A new college means new people and new obstacles, not to mention Jean’s pregnancy, Maeve studying across the sea, broken friendships, volatile relationships, and, of course, bedroom accidents.
Season 4 of Sex Education is now streaming on Netflix.
