Ncuti Gatwa is opening up to bring authentic culture to ‘Sex Education’.
The actor, who plays Eric in the Netflix series, said British Vogue that during the first season of the critically acclaimed show, the producers tried to stop advertising her in-character as it could potentially isolate white viewers.
“There were producers coming up to me saying, ‘This off-the-cuff, I don’t think white people are going to understand that,'” Gatwa said. “And I was like, ‘It’s not for white people to understand. There are a lot of white people on this show that white people need to understand, but I want this other group of people to understand Eric. And that’s what you want too.’”
Gatwa added, “And they understood that. We were all constantly learning about that job.
The ‘Barbie’ actor went on to play the Nigerian-Ghanaian gay teenager, ‘When the show first came out, I was living in Tottenham, and the amount of kids from the neighborhood who would come up to me and say, ‘Oi , I love Eric you know!’ I was like, ‘Wow.’ I used to train at this gym with a lot of ex-cons and bodybuilders, and these guys would come up to me like, ‘Eric is my favorite character’ or ‘You’re my girlfriend’s favorite character’ and I was like, ‘Don’t lie!’ It was amazing because I got to see the show open people’s minds.
The upcoming fourth and final season of “Sex Education” gives Eric “the ending I wanted for him,” Gatwa said. “Things get complicated. And there was one scene that I particularly fought for, and I managed to get it in, which was great,” he said.
“Aimee (Lee Wood) and I wrote it, and we were rewriting it until 3am the day before. I’d never written for Eric before, so it felt great, and it was a scene that meant a lot to me in terms of Eric’s travel and relationships. It seemed to me very necessary.
Gatwa reflected on Eric’s entire character arc, saying, “The jester is always the most powerful person. And with Eric, he’s been bullied and he’s kind of at the bottom of the pile, so there’s just this joy that lives inside him because he has nothing to lose. He can only be himself, and he’s so much fun to play. He’s at the intersection of all these intersections – being gay, West African, religious, all these things that aren’t the norm in his school, that have given him so many different perspectives and insights into the world – and that’s the power of him. Queer people are outsiders, and that’s why they’re omnipotent.”
Gatwa is about to make history as the first Black Doctor in BBC’s ‘Doctor Who’. Co-star Neil Patrick Harris has announced that Gatwa will also play a gay doctor.
