Welcome to Screen Sisters, a collection of conversations about what it means to be a woman working in television both in front of and behind the camera.
As well as recognising their contribution to the industry, the series will also examine the highs and lows of working in media, how far television has progressed, and how much further it still has to go.
Next up, we're speaking to Sex Education and I Hate You star, Tanya Reynolds.
Tanya Reynolds is one of the UK’s biggest rising stars, after breaking through with her star-turn as the alien-loving, sexually curious teen Lily in Sex Education. Since then, she’s starred alongside Anya Taylor-Joy in Jane Austen adaptation Emma, joined an all-star British cast for the Oliver Twist adaptation Dodger, and appeared in comedy-thriller The Baby on Sky.
But after announcing she will not be returning for Sex Education for season four in August 2022, Tanya is now looking ahead, embracing turning 30 and leading a new cast in Channel 4 sitcom I Hate You.
The series, created by Friday Night Dinner’s Robert Popper, sees two best mates crash their way through their 20s in their attempts to grow up… something that hits a little close to home for the star as she figures out her career plans.
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, Tanya breaks down why I Hate You marks a changing point in her life and career, and what lies ahead with life beyond Sex Education.
As you've just hit 30, and you've now gone through the 'mid-20s coming-of-age' phase, how do you feel about looking back on it in a comedy show?
There's something quite cathartic about having done this show. Just as I was leaving, I had my 30th birthday on the show, and there's something quite cathartic about it because I'm really glad to have left my 20s behind. They were great, I'm very grateful for the lessons, but they were a mess!
They were a hot mess, really, in terms of me just being a dithering idiot of a human being. I was really excited about turning 30. A lot of people get quite nervous about it, and you know, it's existential but I was really ready for it. I felt like I'd sort of been 30 for a long time.
My 20s were lovely, but I just was so unsure of myself and just kind of a bit of a high-functioning mess. So yeah, there's been something quite cathartic about playing the extremity of that in the show, playing someone who is just a high-functioning mess.
She's just so lost and her life is ridiculous, and yet she's just sort of having fun with her mate and there's something quite gorgeously childish about the two of them. It was just really nice to be a 30-year-old grown up playing this playing this 20-something chaotic idiot. But I'm glad that I'm personally out of that phase of my life.
Obviously the series relies a lot on your chemistry with Melissa Saint, who plays Becca. Do you remember how you first met and what you did at the audition?
We had a chemistry read, they had cast me in like winter 2020, and I think Melissa was cast in like March 2021. So there were a couple of months where I did quite a lot of chemistry reads with other actresses and because it was like high-COVID restrictions still, we had to do the chemistry reads behind this plastic wall.
So it was really weird, and Melissa was in the last batch of actors that I read with. She came in and I was behind this plastic wall like a weird plastic COVID prison and we couldn't touch, we just had to act through this thing, and we just kind of hit it off immediately. We just clicked immediately and had immediate chemistry.
We've tried to intellectualise and understand why we have just got on so well so quickly. But we just have. We are incredibly close. I'm closer to her now than I am to some people I've known my whole life, we just clicked and have inexplicable chemistry, which is such a joy.
Working on the show just felt like going to hang out with my mate and be silly and then 'Oh, there's a camera pointing in my face while I'm doing it'.
God It would be awful if we didn't get on, it would be terrible! But thankfully we absolutely adore each other. So I'm hoping it comes across.
Do you hope that fans from Sex Education will take on I Hate You? And how do you think how would you compare Charlie to Lily?
You cannot compare them at all! Like, Lily is such a one in a billion. There's no one like her. That's what's so wonderful about her, she's such her own creation. There's no similarities - apart from the fact that I'm the one playing them! I hope that it will get some Sex Ed fans, hopefully.
Hopefully some diehard Lily fans will follow her and watch. I'm trying to think if there's any way you can compare them, but I really don't think you can.
Lily is very much like a character that we created. Whereas Charlie feels like much more kind of me... like a worse version of myself, but certainly a version of me.
I guess that's where they're similar, they are both versions of me, but I think Lily, I have to go further to get her whereas Charlie is just kind of there.
While Lily on Sex Ed may be considered your breakthrough role, is there a moment in your career that you consider your first real crack in to the industry?
Yeah, big time. My first job. I graduated from drama school in 2015, and I got my first job on this independent film called Fanny Lye Deliver'd. It was a BFI independent film with Maxine Peake and Charles Dance, and it was my first proper job.
To this day I don't even know how that happened. I don't know how I got that, because it was like a dream being on set and meeting Maxine.
Honestly that will stand out as one of the best jobs of my life because it was my first job and it was such an incredible first job. The cast was amazing and it was just such a good film and such a weird but great experience that I didn't realise at the time how amazing and how rare it was.
It's really... it's so hard to just get in, to get a foot in the door, and I wasn't anticipating to get a foot in the door for a long, long time.
At drama school they kind of prepare you to be working for no money for at least five years. That was what our drama school was like – they said, 'You will have five years of just doing really low paid work, probably not getting into TV and or film'.
That was what I was very much expecting and I don't know how I got so lucky quite quickly. I don't understand really how the universe works, just sheer luck. I think just absolute luck.
What do you hope to do next in your career? Do you want to stay in comedy or do something more dramatic? Maybe Marvel!
Yeah! Do you want a gangly, goofy superhero?! [laughs] For me personally, it's really important for me... about a year ago, it was being on the cusp of turning 30 and thinking I kind of had to reconnect to why I do what I do. Why do I act? Why do I do this? Why do I love it?
And it all comes down to the fact that I just love playing different people and I love playing as many different people as possible. For me, a happy career is just in the versatility of it.
So I don't have any huge goals. I'm not after any superheroes or anything like that. I just want to play. I just want to have a versatile career and I just want to learn and get better at it and I just want to act but I just want to act in things that are really interesting.
Whether they are funny or dramatic, I'm not precious about genre, it's more about the characters and the stories. I just want to do as many different things as I can really.
What are your hopes for a second season of I Hate You? What do you want to happen to everyone?
I really hope there is a second season. I think with comedy especially, it's just good to have... I feel like you need a couple of seasons, or at least two seasons, to find the stride of it.
The great thing about the show is because the episodes are kind of self-contained, there are so many things that can happen to these girls – so much shit can happen!
I Hate You launches Thursday, September 29 on Channel 4 and 4OD.
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