'Sex Education' Has Cast Turnover Ahead of Season 4

Netflix's Sex Education is undergoing some growing pains. The successful series, which has launched multiple A-list careers in the last year, is losing cast members right and left ahead of filming for Season 4, which is scheduled to start later this summer. Some are due to the show's success; some are due to the careers it helped create, while others are merely the product of an evolving show. The upshot is a series that is starting to look like it will be very different when it finally returns to streaming.

When Netflix initially announced Sex Education in November 2017, it seemed a natural progression of Netflix's original series. The streaming service was still leaning heavily at that point on a massive influx of BBC and ITV programs to help fill out its offerings; The Crown Seasons 1 and 2 were seeing decent success. A raunchy British teen comedy that would companion well with recent hits like Big Mouth seemed a no-brainer. Starring Asa Butterfield from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children as the awkward Otis and Gillian Anderson (fresh off The Fall) as his sex therapist mother, it seemed a teen comedy hit bound to run well for a few seasons.

But viewers could not have foreseen how many successful careers would come out of the show's cast. The most substantial currently is Simone Ashley, who played Olivia in the show's first three seasons. Having landed the lead role of Kate Sharma in Bridgerton Season 2, which will continue as part of the ensemble in Seasons 3 and 4, she is now exiting Sex Education due to scheduling conflicts between the two series. But sadly, she's not the only one heading out. Tanya Reynolds, who has played fan-favorite (and hairstyle genius), Lily Iglehart, she of the alien erotica, has also announced her departure.