As Tanya Reynolds says goodbye to Sex Education she talks to Josh Smith for our latest GLAMOUR column, Josh Smith Meets about how her new comedy TV Show, I Hate You gave her abs through laughter, learning to not gaslight herself and how turning thirty was like a ‘whip’ to get her "sh*t together."
I have heard many well-rehearsed lines for why someone has left a TV show. But I have never heard anything quite like Tanya Reyonolds talking about her exit from the Netflix hit TV show, Sex Education.
“I'm sadly not gonna be in season four,” Tanya says over Zoom, sitting crossed legged on her living room floor. “Which is sad but I think Lily had a happy ending at the end of season three and she had a natural closure. Now I like to think she's on Pluto with Ola and they're just fingering the f**k out of each other, having the time of their lives!”
Now that is the comedic deadpan delivery that makes Tanya so great and a delivery worthy of her new TV show, I Hate You, created by the genius behind Friday Night Dinner, which is far less aggressive than it sounds and with less fingering than her previous role. It follows two best pals, Tanya Reynolds’ Charlie and Becca (Melissa Saint) as they navigate the chaos of their twenties living in London. And who doesn’t love a relatable story about two best friends? Especially one where they double date octogenarians, push each other into bins and erm weirdly date relatives. Okay, maybe some of that is not relatable but it makes for a hilarious boundary pushing comedy.
Pushing boundaries on TV is something Tanya herself has become known for. Having starred as the sexually curious teenager with a thing for her classmate Ola (Patricia Allison) and outerspace, Lily in the aforementioned Sex Education. But I Hate You allowed her some space to just let go and in her own words be “silly.”
“I loved that it was a chance to play and clown and goof around. I think I maybe got abs from doing this just from laughing so much.”
“I got the script in November, 2020,” she tells me, “and it was when the industry was just starting up again. I was reading loads of scripts because it had been so dead and this one just stood out so much for me. I just found it so funny and I loved how it was so quick, silly and punky. I grew up on sitcoms and I just loved that. I loved that it was a chance to play and clown and goof around. I think I maybe got abs from doing this just from laughing so much,” she aptly laughs, “or at least maybe one ab!” Well sounds a lot more fun than a one hour long, ‘is this going to kill me workout’ doesn’t it?
I Hate You hilariously traces the messy stages of life (do we ever get to an unmessy stage of life?!?) and what that has looked like for Tanya I ask? “I've left my twenties now and I'm really quite happy about that,” she responds immediately. “My twenties felt like I was walking around wearing a pair of shoes that just did not fit properly and I had been hobbling around for 10 years. When I turned 30 and it was suddenly like, ‘I'm in these memory foam lovely made to measure clogs and this is lovely!’” Wonder what brand those shoes are? Would love to try them on!
“My twenties were just 10 years of anxiety, dithering - so much dithering - and just so much mess caused by the dithering,” Tanya continues. “With absolutely no self-esteem, no clue what I was doing but I feel like I'm doing things well since I turned 30 last year. I've made a pact with myself to just do things with a bit more conviction. This messy period, which for me was just my entire twenties, was just an absence of steadfast conviction. It was a lot of not really trusting myself and not really knowing what I'm doing and just being a bit of a high functioning mess really.” I for one hard relate.
"When I turned 30 I wanted to start being the woman that I've always wanted to become. I felt like it was time to stop playing."
“When I turned 30 I wanted to start being the woman that I've always wanted to become. I felt like it was time to stop playing. A lot of people get frightened about turning 30 and, but I was really excited about it because it felt like a whip, a ‘come on girl, get your sh*t together.’ I'm a lot more trusting of my instincts, myself, my decisions and believing myself now. I spent a long time gaslighting myself about everything just, ‘oh, you don't really feel that, ‘ or ‘you don't really think that.’ And now I'm like, ‘no, I do think that, and that is what I'm going to do!’”
I wonder if Tanya’s career coinciding with the long overdue representation of messy, complicated women on screen has helped alleviate the pressure to be perfect, too. “A hundred percent,” she answers. “It is different now because we've had such excellent shows like Derry Girls. Traditionally in the past it was always boys that were allowed to be grotesque and comedies that were male led had permission to be silly, stupid and just funny like The Inbetweeners - with characters that were unlikable and it was so great to watch. Whereas with women, traditionally, there has always been a lot more responsibility on our shoulders to represent the best version of womanhood and represent women in a pristine way and that’s got exhausting. It's one of the things that I really loved about I Hate You was like, ‘finally we can just do something funny and silly, that isn’t loaded with anything more serious.’”
Then again, Tanya has never wanted to play to type and you can’t get more varied than going from playing the revenant's sassy wife, Mrs Elton opposite Anya Taylor-Joy in the latest movie adaption of Emma to popping a crown on to play Queen Victoria in the latest adaptation of Oliver Twist, Dodger. “The goal is just to be as versatile as possible,” she says. “The more fun, hilarious, ridiculous, interesting, challenging the better. I could never have expected to play the roles I have done when I was at drama school. I remember getting my headshot done before I went to drama school and I was like, ‘I want to be taken seriously. I want people to see me as Juliet and a very serious actor.’ I showed my principal my headshot that I'd chosen and he laughed at it. I looked very good. I looked like me on an excellent day. And he laughed at me and was like, ‘that's not you!’”
"The roles that I ended up playing were really great for making me unselfconscious."
“The roles that I ended up playing were really great for making me unselfconscious,” Tanya adds. “They helped me not take myself so seriously and you can't really take yourself very seriously when you're playing these characters. And superficially in terms of looks I've become incredibly - and I have gone on a journey and it's been harder at times - at peace with the way I look and that's come from playing characters where you can't think about looking good. I've never had to play anyone glamorous or beautiful or anything like that. That kind of takes the pressure off. It's a horrible thing to even say that women have to think about these things, but sometimes you do, you think, ‘how am I looking in this shot?’ And it's nice to not have to think about that because I'm playing a character that is so much more than the way that she looks. It's made me in my personal life put a bit less pressure on the way I look because no, I'm more than that.”
Does Tanya watch herself on screen though? “I never do. I try to avoid it at all costs if I can, because it's just not worth the self hate. It is good to watch yourself sometimes because you do learn a lot, but I can't be objective. I just look at myself and think, ‘do I look like that every day? Do people just let me out of the house looking like that? So I just would rather not.”
As our time wraps up and Tanya skips off to continue her day as a comedic genius, I wonder given all that she’s done so far - especially in pushing the boundaries for female protagonists on screen - what she is proudest of achieving? “Playing Lily and Sex Ed and just how really upfront she was about wanting to have sex and just getting her tits out being like, ‘will you have sex with me?’ It shouldn't be a taboo but her absolutely just f**king loving herself and being like, ‘I am the sexiest human being. Why is no one having sex with me?’ That was so much fun to play and I will always be very, very proud of her.” And with her latest show, I Hate You, Tanya has a lot to be proud of.
I Hate You is available on All4 now.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qLjApqauqp2WtKLGyKecZ5ufY8Kse8Crq6KbnJp8ta3NsphmqpWuu7C4w6xkoqakmr%2B3tcSwZGtoYmc%3D