Pauline Chalamet talks naked parties and Nico flirtation on The Sex Lives of College Girls

Warning: This post contains spoilers from the first two episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls.

Kimberly Finkle (Pauline Chalamet) isn't in Arizona anymore. The small-town girl is now a freshman at Essex College in Vermont, and in just the first two episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls, Kimberly has attended a naked party and landed herself a super hot French tutor in Nico (Gavin Leatherwood).

The new series from co-creators Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble follows Kimberly and her three roommates, Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), Leighton (Reneé Rapp), and Bela (Amrit Kaur) as they discover all that college has to offer. EW spoke with star Pauline Chalamet about those first episodes and how the show is helping her work out her own middle school trauma.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you first hear about the project?

PAULINE CHALAMET: My reps sent me the script and I read it and was like, "Oh my god I love this script and I love Kimberly." It was such an easy read and then I put myself on tape and there were these different callbacks, and the callbacks were really technical Zoom-wise so it was like testing two skills at once.

Yeah Mindy and Justin talked about how difficult it was to cast a show via Zoom.

Nuts. In retrospect you're like, "How is that possible?"

So when did you first meet the other three women? Was it on set or did you guys meet up virtually?

Jennifer Euston, who did the casting, looped us into an email one day and said, "It would be really cool for you guys to meet and do a FaceTime before you do the pilot Zoom table read." We were all at four corners of the planet and we met on Zoom and talked. I think we did that a few times but it did make the table read a little better because you felt like you knew these other girls, even though we didn't really. And then the first time we met in person was at a Resident's Inn on S. Ikea Way in Burbank and it was not fancy. But we hung out on the patio that overlooked the freeway and played cards, masked, six feet apart, outside.

You mentioned loving Kimberly from the jump. What was it about her that you connected with?

I was really open to the idea of going back to being 18 years old with all those awkward moments and being able to live them again knowing that I was playing. [Laughs] I just liked this idea of someone who really wants to do well and who has her way of seeing the world and things don't always go according to her plan and how does she cope with that? We all deal with that in some way or another because we grow up and we have ideas of what we want to do and how we want to do it and part of amassing life experience is learning you don't control anything. So I was interested in exploring how someone who's so wide-eyed and eager for life perseveres through different wrenches that are thrown in her path.

How does the show compare to your college experience?

It's a different college experience. But the rural college experience, that's all I know. It compared in that you're in a liberal institution and a liberal arts institution at that, and you're forced to room with people you don't know. It checks the boxes of what people who go to university dorms, a lot of the things that they have to go through.

The most important question I'll ask you: Should pants cost more than $40?

[Laughs] Honestly they shouldn't. No, actually, they should and people should be able to afford them. We shouldn't be using sweatshops and we should be able to employ people and pay them a living wage so maybe it will make pants cost more than $40.

I loved that moment when Kimberly snapped at that kid. I learned so much about her in that scene.

I like it too. Something cracks in her. I think Kimberly has a pretty strong moral compass, which doesn't mean that she doesn't make mistakes and isn't clumsy but she has an innate sense of right and wrong and I think that something snaps in her, it's too much.

Had you ever heard of a naked party before this show?

I had. I didn't hear about it in college but I know naked parties.

What was the filming of that like?

It was amazing! It was so fun! First of all, with COVID, it was all the same background actors in every episode. So they had to, from the get-go, get background actors who, a portion of them would be okay with being the background actors in the naked scene, which meant being fully naked. I think that generally the show did such a good job of casting. The recurring roles, the supporting characters, everybody is good. I'm so impressed when I watch it. But it was really fun because in that moment where we're about to enter the naked party, we were really entering the door to a room full of naked people. When the first guy comes in and gets undressed and then walks in, he would open the door and that reaction is to seeing him open a door to a room full of naked people.

We've seen some flirtation between Kimberly and Nico, and I have to say, I love that they have the hot guy showing interest in the nerdiest girl. What was your reaction to that connection?

I thought it was great because she comes from this small town and we see who her boyfriend was in episode 1 and then the guy running shirtless notices me, like what?! I'm still scarred from this list in middle school. There were these guys in the class and they made like a hot girl list. I was very friendly with them and I was like, "Oh can I see it?" And they were like, "We're not done yet." Then it goes around, they show it to me, and I wasn't on there. They were like, "But you're number one on the pretty list!" I was like, "No I don't want to be on the pretty list, I want to be on the hot list!" So that was my inner self being able to come back for revenge I was like, "Yeah well Nico is into Kimberly!"

New episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls premiere Thursdays on HBO Max.

Related content:

• Yep, they're real! Sex Lives of College Girls bosses share real-life inspiration for that naked party
• Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble preview their hilarious new show The Sex Lives of College Girls
• Mindy Kaling channels female comedy legends with Legally Blonde, Veep, and Insecure Halloween looks

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