‘I Was Red in the Face’ : ‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Star Pauline Chalamet on That ‘Mortifying’ Sex Toy Scene

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from Season 3, Episode 3 of “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” now streaming on Max.

Pauline Chalamet’s character Kimberly in “The Sex Lives of College Girls” is no stranger to severely humbling experiences. She is endearingly naive and well-intentioned, but sometimes her overeagerness to do good leads her to some hilariously cringe-worthy scenes.

In the third episode of Season 3, “Four to a Suite,” there is a particularly awkward scene with a vibrating dildo in a backpack that would make most viewers want to turn off their TVs just to avoid the secondhand embarrassment. Chalamet admits she too felt this way while filming.

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This season, Kimberly starts seeing a very attractive bisexual student at Essex and feels anxious that she might not be adventurous enough to meet his needs, so she goes to a sex shop. This leads to a very awkward scene that gets exponentially worse when Kimberly drops her backpack on the floor, and the dildo starts violently shaking.

“When the props team showed me how much the bag was gonna shake, I was red in the face. Mortifying. Like, ‘Please, can we not make it shake as much? Please!’” says Chalamet, still blushing. -

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She tried to convince the team to make it more of an audible effect, but her request was ignored for the sake of comedy. In between laughs, she comments, “Oh my God! I really was trying to shut that thing up. I was like, maybe I can break it and we have to use something else.”

However mortifying, Chalamet says she understands where her character is coming from. She says that part of playing a 20-year-old college student is touching on these learning experiences. Specifically for this scene, she says, “It’s young thinking. It’s very naive. It’s kind of like how I want to be an ally, and less about, how do you need me to be an ally.”

Chalamet notes that playing a college student excites her, adding that this coming-of-age period in a person’s life has always fascinated her. “You’re starting from a place where it’s like, ‘This is what I believe fundamentally, and if you deviate from this thought, you’re wrong.’ So, when other things in life happen, and you start to kind of see things differently, you create more depth to your opinion.”

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