Trivia / Sex Education

• Ability over Appearance: Word of God is that Eric was the only character explicitly written to be a certain race (as being Black British forms a significant part of his characterization). Everyone else was cast race-neutral.
• Actor-Shared Background: Ruby has a white father; her mother is finally revealed in Series 4, and she is South Asian. In real life, her actress Mimi Keene also has one white parent and one brown parent.
• Author's Saving Throw: Series 4 has a lot more cross-interactions compared to Series 3, where the various character arcs never intersected. Most notably, Cal gets to exchange dialogue with Otis and Eric.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Aimee-Lou Wood was auditioning for the role of Lily but got cast as Aimee instead.
  • Patricia Allison auditioned for Lily as well, and then Kate before she was cast as Ola.
• The Danza: Aimee-Lou Wood as Aimee Gibbs.
• Darkhorse Casting: Emma Mackey had barely any experience when she was cast as Maeve. In fact, at the time of her audition, she didn't even have headshots.
• Dawson Casting: As to be expected from a TV show about teenagers having sex, the cast of high schoolers are composed of twenty-something actors. By the end, Ncuti Gatwa and Tanya Reynolds were in their 30s.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor:
  • Like his character Isaac, George Robinson also uses a wheelchair.
  • Alexandra James is deaf, like her character Aisha, with her lip reading and hearing aids as part of the show.
• Fake Nationality: The English-Nigerian Eric is portrayed by Scottish-Rwandan actor Ncuti Gatwa.
• Playing Against Type: "Anxious, awkward teen struggling with sex and the inherent comedy of having a sex therapist for a mother" is a far cry from Asa Butterfield's previous filmography. Prior to this, he had been a go-to guy for speculative fiction's waifish, mysterious young boys.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor:
  • Dua Saleh and Robyn Holdaway are openly non-binary like their characters Cal and Layla.
  • Gay character Eric is played by Ncuti Gatwa, who came out as queer in 2023.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Though they have different coloring, Alistair Petrie (Mr. Groff) and Connor Swindells (Adam) have similar enough facial structures to play father and son believably.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Simone Ashley did not return to Series 4 as she was already fully commited with Bridgerton.

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