A model and activist who helped write a character on the new season of Sex Education has criticised the show after tuning in.
The fourth and final season of the drama series hit screens this week, with a raft of new characters being introduced.
One included Sarah ‘O’ Owen, played by Thaddea Graham.
Known simply as O, the student runs a sex therapy clinic at Cavendish College and has built up a loyal client list, until Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) emerges as a rival.
Ahead of the new episodes being released, Yasmin Benoit, an asexual activist who worked as a scriptwriter and consultant spoke about how she wanted O to help ‘defy stereotypes’.
However, she’s now slammed the show after seeing how the character was actually portrayed.
Posting on social media after watching the eight episodes, Yasmin said she ‘wanted to share something important regarding O’s character’ as someone who was ‘closely involved in creating her and the story’.
‘I’ve finally had time to watch the season and was disappointed to see that some important moments were cut out or changed,’ she posted on X, formerly Twitter.
She went on to reference a scene between O and Otis that takes part in a lift, sharing that viewers ‘didn’t get to see the impact of race, privilege and acephobia as much as intended’.
‘It’s just mentioned in passing.’
Yasmin also said there was meant to be a scene where O was bullied because of her asexuality, but instead the lines were ‘removed’ and ‘made it seem like O humiliated Ruby (Mimi Keene) unprompted’.
‘Whereas scenes that made Otis look bad in his desperation to bring O down were removed.’
She went on to claim that ‘maybe someone decided that Otis wasn’t coming across well enough, so they made O look worse’.
‘Maybe they just didn’t have enough time to resorted to exposition, not realising that scenes portraying an asexual character as inherently “cold” was dangerous.’
Explaining how O was ‘not meant to be a villain’, Yasmin said she was instead a woman of colour ‘being pushed out of a space she had found success in by a white guy who thought he deserved to be there more than her’.
‘She was meant to be the target of a petty smear campaign that led to her being outed.
‘That doesn’t come across as much as it did in the script, but I’m grateful to have been able to work on the character and storyline, and I’m glad that people have enjoyed her anyway.’
She added: ‘I think that those who didn’t would have done if more of O’s moments were included.’
She went on to explain that quotes she had given ahead of the series airing had taken place before watching, and when she ‘thought it was depicted the way it was in the script’.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Netflix for comment.
Sex Education is streaming on Netflix.
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