Mindy Kaling Explains Why There Isn’t One Lead on The Sex Lives of College Girls

The Sex Lives of College Girls is more than just an eyebrow-raising name.

The HBO Max series provides a comedic look at the lives of four female freshmen—played by Pauline Chalamet, Amrit Kaur, Reneé Rapp and Alyah Chanelle Scott—at the fictional Essex College as they experience everything from first UTIs to illicit affairs. And while the series touches on dramatic elements, too, there is plenty of warmth and laughter driving the narrative.

Why is that? Well, according to co-creator Mindy Kaling, she wanted the show to be different from the college-centric series of her youth.

“When I was growing up, if I saw a show with young people, they were either dramas,” Mindy told E! News, “or shows where the women were the girlfriend.”

You won’t find that on The Sex Lives of College Girls, as all four ladies are the leads. “They do crazy stuff and they make big mistakes,” she said of her main characters, “but they feel real.”

Imagine telling your friends that you’re the lead of your group. We doubt that would go over well!

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However, Mindy isn’t throwing shade at shows like Sex and the City or Girls, where Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie and Lena Dunham’s Hannah were the leads, respectively.

“I love those shows. I talk about their shows all of the time,” she continued. “We, of course, think about their shows when we’re doing ours.”

FilmMagic/FilmMagic for HBO

As for how her own college experience shaped the show? Mindy revealed that The Sex Lives of College Girls is “a reaction to my college experience.”

“I was a repressed Indian girl who hated my body, so that’s not what the show is about,” she explained. “Obviously, the girls have neuroses and insecurities and bad things happened to them, but I didn’t want the same hang-ups that I had growing up in the late ’90s to be reflected in the generation now.”

Season one of The Sex Lives of College Girls is available to stream on HBO Max.

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