Aimee Lou Wood, who plays Aimee Gibbs on Sex Education, recalls her initial audition process for the role of Lily. The popular Netflix series centered on high school students Otis (Asa Butterfield) and Maeve (Emma Mackey) running an informal sex therapy clinic for fellow students debuted in 2019 to critical acclaim. A third season of Sex Education, the true indicator of Netflix success, releases on September 17.
As the popular friend of the unpopular Maeve, Wood has been a standout on the series since it premiered in early 2019. Her character is spacey and genuinely sweet, making her easily lovable and resulting in her getting to deliver some of the show's funniest lines. That lovability can also be put to more serious use, however, and an Aimee side-plot was used to explore the psychological impact of sexual harassment in public places, with the storyline's resolution being among Sex Education's most memorable moments.
It is difficult to imagine anyone else in the role of Aimee, and even stranger to consider that, according to Wood's interview with Collider, she was originally going out for Lily. Wood remembers how she only received Lily's lines during the audition process, but her roommate, who read the full scripts through her job, told her she should try out for Aimee instead. As it turns out, the Sex Education team thought the same thing:
From my agent, I got through this audition that was for Lily. All I saw were Lily’s sides, so I didn’t see the rest of the script. I only saw Lily’s stuff and I thought she was hilarious and the show seemed amazing. And then my friend, because of her job at the time, she read the scripts and she said to me, ‘Why aren’t you going in for Aimee? I feel like there’s a character in it called Aimee and she is your part,’ and I was like, ‘Well, I’ve got an audition for Lily.’ It was after the third audition that they were like, ‘We’re sorry, it’s not gonna go your way with Lily.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, it’s fine. That’s really sad because I really loved the show and it was kind of the first thing for so long that I’ve been dead excited about,’ and then they said, ‘But, can you come in tomorrow with this new character, Aimee?’ And I remembered my friend saying it and then I got the sides through and I was just laughing so much because some of the things on that script were verbatim things that I have said in my life and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is it.’
Elsewhere in the interview, she says that when the Sex Education cast met for their first full readthrough, she thought everyone was a perfect fit for their characters. Wood even remembers crossing paths with Tanya Reynolds, who ended up getting the part of Lily, during that initial audition process and feeling certain she was going to lose out. "But," she says "it was absolutely kind of meant to be."
After leaving such an impression as Aimee, of all the Sex Education roles to imagine Wood taking instead, Lily must be the most jarring. Reynolds plays the sex-obsessed, alien erotica-writing Lily to strange perfection, and Wood has a down-to-earth quality that would have been ill-suited to that part. Luckily for viewers, things worked out the way they did, and Wood even earned a BAFTA for Best Female Comedy Performance this year for her troubles.
Source: Collider
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