Welcome to campus! Mindy Kaling has a slew of TV hits under her belt, and she aims to add another with The Sex Lives of College Girls.
The HBO Max comedy — cocreated by the Emmy nominee and Justin Noble — premiered with its first two episodes on Thursday, November 18. Season 1 consists of 10 episodes: Three new installments will drop on November 25 and December 2, and two more will be released on December 9.
The series follows four college roommates — played by Pauline Chalamet (Kimberly), Amrit Kaur (Bela), Reneé Rapp (Leighton) and Alyah Chanelle Scott (Whitney) — as they arrive at New England’s prestigious Essex College. “A bundle of contradictions and hormones, these girls are equal parts lovable and infuriating as they live out their new, free lives on campus,” according to the synopsis.
Ahead of its release, Kaling detailed her inspiration for the show and whether her experience as a student at Dartmouth College was similar to that of the fictional characters.
“In terms of the sexual parts of the show, virtually nothing [is the same],” she confessed to The Hollywood Reporter in October. “That’s all my imagination or the experiences of my more romantically advanced writing staff. All the fear about grades and not fitting in, that I pulled from my own experience. That’s the reason I wanted to do the show. It’s called The Sex Lives of College Girls, but we wanted to tell a story of four passionate, bright girls in college. The romantic stuff just felt like a good hook.”
Kaling also teased her distinct vision for the core four earlier this month. “I wanted to show young women who come in with a really strong point of view,” she told Parade. “Kimberly wants to be a Supreme Court justice. Leighton will be in [Phi Beta] Kappa. Whitney wants to go pro [soccer]. None of them are demure, standing in the shadows. They come in with real purpose, and one is to have a lot of sex.”
As for the cast, they connected instantaneously despite the COVID-19 protocols in place. “The first time the four of us saw each other, we sat outside basically on the freeway, a balcony that overlooked on the freeway, and we wore masks and were six feet apart,” Chalamet recalled to E! News earlier this month. “Alyah had these card games and we would play cards.”
Scott chimed in: “You know the questions, ‘We are not really strangers,’ those card questions? I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m so anxious, I don’t know how to meet people. Also, I’ve been inside for, like, months, I don’t know how socializing works. Do you want to play a card game?’ We just started talking about our moms and crying and it was nice.”
Scroll through the gallery below to meet the cast of The Sex Lives of College Girls.
The actress attended the School of American Ballet from 2001 to 2010 and graduated from Bard College in 2014 after majoring in theater and political studies. She then moved to Paris to pursue an acting apprenticeship, and she still lives in the City of Light. After writing, directing and starring in short films, she made her feature film debut in 2020’s The King of Staten Island. Chalamet has an A-list family connection too — she is the older sister of Timothée Chalamet. Courtesy of HBO Max
Kaur graduated from York University with a BFA in acting. She previously appeared on American Gothic, The Bold Type, Kim’s Convenience, Anarkali, Little Italy, The D Cut and Star Trek: Short Treks. Courtesy of HBO Max
Rapp is best known for playing Regina George in the Broadway musical adaptation of Mean Girls. She is an actress and singer who grew up in North Carolina and beat out 40 competitors to win the 2018 Jimmy Award — which recognizes high school students in musical theatre — for Best Performance by an Actress. Courtesy of HBO Max
Scott is a relative newcomer with a background in theater. She has a BFA in musical theatre from The University of Michigan and has appeared in productions of The Book of Mormon, Pippin and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Courtesy of HBO Max
The actress is best known for starring in the short-lived Netflix holiday series Dash & Lily in 2020, which earned her a Daytime Emmy Award nomination. She has also appeared in Good Boys, Ocean’s Eight, The Birch and Afterlife of the Party. She received a BFA in acting from Rutgers University in 2014. Tony DiMaio/MEGA
Leatherwood rose to fame while starring as bad boy warlock Nicholas Scratch on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina from 2018 to 2020. He also appeared in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Skin” music video and released his debut single, “Just for Tonight,” in February. Rob Latour/Shutterstock
The actor got his start on General Hospital before landing roles on The Fosters, iZombie, Wayward Pines, NCIS: New Orleans, The Affair, Mad About You and Tell Me a Story. Rob Latour/Shutterstock
Paulino obtained her MFA from Yale University in 2020. She made her feature film debut in Queenpins, which premiered in September. Tony DiMaio/MEGA
Spencer is an actress, model, YouTuber, disability advocate and the founder of Sitting Pretty Productions. She was diagnosed with ALS at age 14 and began using a wheelchair at 19. The influencer previously starred in the 2019 film Give Me Liberty. Courtesy of HBO Max
Williams graduated from Wright State University in Ohio with a BFA in acting and has a background in theater. She appeared on Modern Love in August. The Sex Lives of College Girls is now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes drop every Thursday. Tony DiMaio/MEGA
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