Sex Education: Emma Mackey wants to “gracefully exit” Netflix show

Emma Mackey is hoping for a “graceful exit” from Sex Education, with the Netflix series set to return for Season 4 later this year.

Mackey plays Maeve in Sex Education, one half of the show’s will-they-won’t-they couple alongside Asa Butterfield’s Otis.

The Netflix series has proven to be quite the launchpad for its cast’s careers, with Ncuti Gatwa starring as the next Doctor and Aimee Lou Wood nominated for this year’s EE BAFTA Rising Star award.

Mackey will also star in Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s all-star, singing-and-dancing toy blockbuster. Whenever it comes, she wants to “gracefully exit” the show that started it all for her.

Emma Mackey wants “graceful exit” from Sex Education

In an interview with GamesRadar ahead of the BAFTAs, for which she’s also been nominated in the Rising Star category following her performance in Emily, Mackey spoke about her time on Sex Education drawing to a close.

“We’ve 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, because it’s just so contained and so condensed and intense when you’re shooting those kinds of things,” she said.

“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. It’s really emotional because we’ve all done it together.”

For Mackey, continuing to play a teenager when she’s 27 has proven “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.”

“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,” she continued.

“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.”

Sex Education Season 4 is due for release later in 2023. In the meantime, check out our other TV hubs below:

1883 Season 2 | Severance Season 2 | The Last of Us HBO | The Boys Season 4 | Stranger Things Season 5 | Succession Season 4 | Ted Lasso Season 3 | You Season 4 | The Witcher Season 3 | Rick and Morty Season 7