Following the news that Ncuti Gatwa may be saying goodbye to Sex Education, his co-star Emma Mackey is the latest to admit that time may be up on both her time within the show, and the show itself, as she hinted at saying farewell to the immensely popular Netflix comedy-drama. Her character, Maeve, has already been confirmed as having a reduced role in the upcoming fourth season, but has opened up on how valuable the show has been in her career as well as her pride in how far she and her co-stars have come since the show’s debut back in 2019.

Speaking to Total Film, Mackey told of her emotional ties to the show and her everlasting bonds with the people with whom she shared this journey:

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. 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.

One of the most challenging facets of filming a successful high school project is always the matter of its stars aging out of the roles, an additional challenge that Mackey admits is key to her considering time is up on the show.

“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,” said Mackey. “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.”

Sex Education‘s fourth season is set to stream on Netflix later this year.

via Collider