Sex Education season 3 finale spoilers follow.
Sex Education's Emma Mackey has spoken about the prospect of moving on from her character Maeve Wiley.
The Netflix high-school comedy is currently in the midst of filming season four, with Mackey taking more of a backseat this time around as Moordale's finest (including Asa Butterfield's Otis, Ncuti Gatwa's Eric and Aimee Lou Wood's Aimee) settle into their new surroundings following the funding cut twist of season 3.
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Chatting to Total Film about the career-changing role, Mackey explained the pitfalls of playing a teenager on screen as many of the main cast enter their late twenties and early thirties.
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"It's just always tricky, it's different when you're playing a character that is sort of stuck in time. You know, we're playing 17-year-olds, and we're all almost 30, it is a bit weird," the Emily star explained.
"It's a blessing because it is a launchpad and it is something that has given us opportunities in different ways but it's something that I want to gracefully exit from, and be happy that it exists and protect it and enjoy it in the time that it has existed in, but yeah, it needs to be left alone now I think.
"We can all move on and take what we learned from Sex Ed as well because it has been a school, quite literally, for all of us.
"It's just wonderful to have had that education and to have that baptism of fire and to have just been flung into that whole world. I think it's made us stronger."
Related: Sex Education's Emma Mackey teases reduced role in season 4
Mackey, who'll join her Sex Education co-stars Gatwa and Connor Swindells in this summer's Barbie movie, said the cast has "really grown together and have evolved together and learned from each other in ways that are really quite singular that most people don't really get to experience in their life".
She added: "It's just so contained and so condensed and intense when you're shooting those kinds of things. We well up just thinking about how far we've come from when we were 21 and had our first auditions to where we are now."
Sex Education seasons 1-3 are streaming on Netflix. Season 4 is in production.
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Dan is a freelance entertainment journalist. Beginning his writing career in 2014, Dan's work first graced the pages of cult publications Starburst magazine and Little White Lies before moving onto Total Film, Digital Spy, NME and Yahoo Entertainment.
In the film and TV universe, he kneels at the altar of Jim Carrey, Daniel Plainview, Mike Ehrmantraut and Paulie Walnuts.
