21 September 2023 , 07:00
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Sex Education is back with its fourth series, much to the delight of fans and so are some juicy filming secrets.
The Netflix series has made its return and promises to be the best one yet as lead characters Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey) and Eric Effiong ( Doctor Who's Ncuti Gatwa ) all make a comeback for the final instalment of the award-winning comedy-drama. Also appearing alongside series regulars like Gillian Anderson, Aimee-Lou Wood, and Connor Swindells is Emmy award-winning actor and Schitt’s Creek star Dan Levy, a new character for the show's final outing.
As the fourth and final instalment hits the streaming site, The Mirror has been granted access to behind-the-scenes secrets from the series. From the challenge of bringing Maeve's American university experience to their filming location of South Wales and how long it takes to get each actor ready for the set, there are a lot of sneaky tricks to make it all work.
Bringing America to the UK
Maeve heads off to America on her scholarship in season four (Thomas Wood/Netflix)Season four sees Maeve take up her scholarship in the US, however, directors decided to bring America to their filming location in South Wales instead of jetting out Stateside for the scenes. It proved to be quite the challenge as Moordale was already heavily influenced by American culture. The team had a job to try to distinguish Maeve's real American collage to sets we had already seen before. Art Director Christina Tom said: "We had to learn to bring America to Britain basically for real this time. That was actually a challenge to do because Moordale is quite American as it is. So we had some really big amazing cars, American old cars and brought in obviously the usual Americana. That was quite a challenge actually."
How long it takes to get ready
Mimi Keene, who plays Ruby, takes the longest to get ready on set. Makeup and hair designer Emily Bilverstone shared: "Her natural hair texture is very curly, and she has a lot of it, so it would take Laura (my supervisor) roughly 1 hour 30 to blow dry it all super straight and finish with the beautiful curl on the ends."
Emma Mackey confirms she will not return to Sex Education after series four
While the easiest character to get ready for filming is Otis. Emily said: "Asa’s hair and make-up is pretty straightforward." While the makeup and hair designer confessed Eric is the most fun to work with. "Ncuti makes everything I do look amazing, his face is such a pleasure to paint," she shared. "Eric is also one of my favourite characters, his essence, the energy he brings to the show, his wardrobe, he just brings so much joy, and it’s really fun for me to help bring that out."
Most dramatic makeover
The new character Abbi, played by Anthony Lexa, has the most dramatic makeover this season. Emily said: "She is naturally is a brunette, but was happy to take her natural colour to Abbi’s tutti fruitti corally pink for the character. We saw Brooke Pascerelli who is a great colourist with a background working at Bleach London in Fashion for Abbis colour and she did a great job and maintained Ant's colour for us throughout the shoot."
Most demanding scene
Mimi Keene takes the longest to get ready, having an hour and a half blow-dry to get into character Ruby (Samuel Taylor/Netflix)The most demanding scene of the whole season for the makeup and hair department was for episode three when The Coven take Eric to the Queer club. The queer club scene was one of the highlights of my career I would say," Emily said. "It was the most creative and fun day I have had at work. At the club, we see Eric, The Coven, Cal and PK, along with a large number of SAs who all had big looks. We didn’t have a crowd Supervisor on Sex Education, nor did we have the time to pre-fit any of our SAs, which logistically made the process quite challenging. But it was so much fun to create. We pre-made lots of hair pieces, I found some incredible foam wigs and handmade masks on Etsy. We went to town with arts and crafts using balloons, tights and metallic card and glitter."
Maeve's transformation
Emma Mackey's Maeve has had quite the transformation over the seasons from bleach blonde hair to dark locks. Emily gave her verdict on the dramatic makeover, saying: "Pam Smyth designed the second series which is where we see Maeve with her natural hair colour for the first time. I can’t speak for Pam’s decision to do that but I expect the huge toll bleaching has on the hair had something to do with it. We film for 6 months at a time, that’s a long time to commit to such a big change.
"It didn’t make sense for Maeve to bleach her hair again story wise for season three but I did want to give her a harder exterior which is why we gave her the micro fringe. And for season four, she has grown and matured even more as a character, so that’s why we kept the hair colour the same again and went with a softer, grown out fringe to suggest she is starting to let down some of her armour from in season one." She still has her eye liner and nose ring, but adopts a softer approach. Maeve's fringe has grown out and has even adopted a preppy style of her new American university. Emily shared: "Emma and I both thought Maeve might adapt a little to her new surroundings."
Popular girls
Season four sees Ruby's reign as the most popular girl in school get a knock as the Moordale students move to new school Cavendish College. Abbi is the popular girl at the new school but, as Emily said, "she has status but she hasn’t got there by being mean". "She isn’t the traditional popular girl from the movies in the 90s. To visually represent her differences to Ruby, I decided to give Abbi a naturally curly hair do, inspired by early Sex in the City Carrie. I also wanted her to have fun, brightly coloured hair, without it looking like she cared too much about it, so we kept her roots, so it looked like she could have coloured her hair at home."
Emily added: "I wanted a nice contrast with Ruby's hair being super sleek and polished, and Abbi’s being free and fun. Same for Abbi’s make up, I wanted Abbi to have fun with her make up, leaning more into graphic liner, using lots of different colours, whereas Ruby's make up, for the most part stays the same, she wears make up in a more glamourous way, her eye liner always on point in a natural dark brown, whereas Abbi experiments with lots of colour which is more in keeping with how lots of teenagers wear their eye liner today."