As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fair’s HWD team is once again diving deep into some of the shows that struck us most, and asking actors and creators how the season’s greatest scenes and characters came together. You can read more of these close looks here.
OTIS MILBURN, SEX EDUCATION
“Cool” is not a word that would be used to describe Otis Milburn, Asa Butterfield’s gangly high school student turned unlikely sex guru in Netflix’s Sex Education. The teenager is so uncomfortable in his own skin—easily startled, eyes naturally shifting downward—that, in the pilot, after a classmate meets Otis’s single mom, Jean (Gillian Anderson’s übercool sex therapist), and shares a joint with her, he asks Otis, “Are you adopted?” Wearing a dweeby sweatshirt and haircut, Otis can only sputter in response.
Butterfield told Vanity Fair that he was drawn to Otis’s “perfect blend of honest, reactive humor, and awkwardness of teenage angst. Whilst also having this incredibly wise-beyond-their-years feeling about him, which struck me as being quite unique. For a 16-year-old boy, especially, it was just an exciting prospect to explore.”
Butterfield (Hugo, Ender’s Game, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) had spent much of his 15-year acting career in drama, sci-fi, and fantasy, and was looking to experiment with comedy when he came across the Laurie Nunn–created series. In Otis, he saw a gold mine of potential—given how the prudish and neurotic character stumbles into his own business at high school, helping peers problem-solve their own dysfunctional sex lives.
“My first conversation I had with [director Ben Taylor]…I remember one of his descriptions of Otis being someone who, when there’s an awkward silence, he’s the sort of boy who won’t stay silent but will blurt out something then that makes it even more awkward. Mistakenly get themselves into these situations and not really knowing how to get himself out of them. That was something which stuck with me a bit, I guess.”
HOW HE CAME TO LIFE
“I actually brought a lot of myself into Otis,” said Butterfield, who found himself channeling his own uncomfortable moments in school “and making them bigger, making them funnier, and a bit more awkward and a bit more explosive.”
It wasn’t so hard for Butterfield to summon his school-age self, considering that Sex Education films inside a former school in Wales. “It still looks like a school. It totally reminds you of your time in [school]. All of those memories come flooding back and you suddenly feel a bit awkward. Everyone’s looking at you and you’re trying to essentially act a bit cooler than you really are. Those are all very familiar feelings.… I really enjoy awkward characters.”
“I’m instinctively awkward—I don’t know if that’s a positive thing or not,” laughed the actor. “I just bring that out of me.” Early in the series, Butterfield said he improvised a reaction to someone surprising Otis—a kind of strangled, high-pitched yelp. The “awkward, still non-broken voice became a part of Otis’s character.”
The second season of Sex Education saw marked changes for Otis, as he became more self-assured and embraced his own sexuality—masturbating, plotting the loss of his virginity, and tackling other adolescent milestones along the way. Even though Otis was fairly repressed about his sexuality in season one, Butterfield knew—given the show’s title and subject matter—that it was only a matter of time before Otis joined in on the experimentation.
“It’s a part of life. Everyone’s been there. It’s the reason we’re here all here in the first place. The show is all about removing that stigma and taboo around sex,” said Butterfield, revealing that he was ready for his sex scenes. “I was up for the challenge of just diving into that and exploring that side to it.”