SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from Season 3, Episode 3 of “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” streaming now on Max.
Pauline Chalamet’s character Kimberly in “The Sex Lives of College Girls” is no stranger to seriously humiliating experiences. She’s endearingly naive and well-intentioned, but sometimes her overzealousness to do good leads her to some hilariously cringe-inducing scenes.
In the third episode of Season 3, “Four to a Suite,” there’s a particularly awkward scene involving a vibrating dildo in a backpack that would make most viewers want to turn off their TV just to avoid the second-hand embarrassment. Chalamet admits she felt the same way during filming.
This season, Kimberly starts seeing a very attractive bisexual student in Essex and worries that she may not be adventurous enough to meet his needs, so she goes to a sex shop. This leads to a very uncomfortable scene that gets exponentially worse when Kimberly drops her backpack on the floor and the dildo starts to vibrate violently.
“When the props [team] showed me how much the bag would shake, I was red in the face. Terrified. Like, ‘Can we please not make it vibrate like that? Please!’” Chalamet says, still blushing. She tried to convince the team to make it a more audible effect, but her request was ignored for the sake of comedy. Between laughs she says, “Oh my God! I really tried to shut that thing up. I thought, maybe I can break it and we should use something else.
As scary as it is, Chalamet says she understands where her character is coming from. She says part of playing a 20-year-old student touches on these learning experiences. Specific to this scene, she says, “It’s young thinking. It’s very naive. It’s a little bit like how do I want to be an ally, and less like how do you want me to be an ally.”
Chalamet notes that playing a college student excites her, adding that this coming-of-age period in one’s life has always fascinated her. “You start at a place where it says, ‘This is what I fundamentally believe, and if you stray from this thought, you’re wrong.’ So when other things happen in life and you start to see things in a different way, you create more depth in your opinions.”