HBO Max’s Sex Lives of College Girls: Gavin Leatherwood Says He Won’t Be Returning for Season 2
Bad news for The Sex Lives of College Girls‘ Kimberly: Gavin Leatherwood, who played love interest Nico Murray on the HBO Max comedy, will not be back for Season 2, the actor recently told Us Weekly. (A source has confirmed the news to TVLine.)
“There is a Season 2, but I’m not going to go back,” Leatherwood said, adding that he was “happy to do the first season,” but he will now be “branching off and going in a different direction.”
“It was such an incredible experience. I think [co-creator] Mindy [Kaling] is brilliant, and the cast, everyone’s lovely,” Leatherwood continued. “But with so many amazing opportunities out there, we want to keep spreading our wings and leading ourselves to other projects so that’s the move.”
Leatherwood’s Nico was a student/frat member who developed a secret relationship with his sister Leighton’s bookish roommate Kimberly. In the Season 1 finale, Kimberly discovered that Nico had a long-distance girlfriend that he didn’t tell her about. When he later found Kimberly trying to steal the frat’s collection of tests to hand over to the honor board, he told her to take the exams if it meant that she wouldn’t get kicked out of school.
“I think Nico does have real feelings for Kimberly, and I think he kind of had them all along,” co-creator/showrunner Justin Noble told TVLine during a post mortem Q&A. “We wanted it to feel like we were living in a gray area where we didn’t exactly know what was up with these two, and the performers played that beautifully. We saw Kimberly pining after Nico, and we were watching Nico in a way where we couldn’t quite pin down where he was. But in the finale, we see he does care about this girl who kind of pursued him at her own expense. … He was a bad guy in terms of a love interest to her. But it does show that he cares about her, and maybe he’s an imperfect character, but he did have true feelings for her all along.”
Sex Lives of College Girls, how are you feeling about the surprising departure? Hit the comments!
That sucks! With how things ended, it definitely seemed like they had more planned for him in season 2.
How did they not sign this guy to a decent long contract? The guy’s got a right to pursue his ambitions but it’s frustrating when actors (and it seems like it’s usually the guys) mess up potential stories and romances on shows by leaving early.
The way he just ended one of my favourite plotline from the show… He’s not a strong actor so I wonder which “other” direction he is headed to…
Lol
This is so disappointing.
What a tool.
Interesting. The quartet is the show but he made an interesting foil for both Kim and Leighton. I’ll miss his abs. Maybe they can bring in what’s his face from Never Have I Ever.
hot guy with abs has a name you know – Dylan Barnett.
Ah, Rege syndrome. They don’t even know they’re the Katherine Heigls of their TV generation.
In Rege-Jean Page’s case though, I don’t know where he would have fit into Bridgerton Season Two. There wouldn’t have been much for him to narratively do there without the writers pulling focus away from Anthony and Kate.
Gavin Leatherwood, otoh, would have had a pretty good role in Sex Lives…very sad to see him leave.
It’s rather different. Rege had a one season contract, as is the norm in the UK, and he had other work scheduled that conflicted with Bridgerton’s shooting dates.
you don’t even know how to get the analogy right b/c Rege is way more talented than Katherine ever was.
I think Katherine Heigls gets way overblown derision. I don’t remember all the details but she complained that women of Knocked Up had a more uptight role except for Charlyne Yi and she didn’t think she should nominated for an Emmy for Greys Anatomy.
Which I mean, c’mon has Greys Anatomy does not derserve any Emmys. And there is prejudice that women aren’t funny, that’s one thing SLOFCS kind of tackles from the get-go.
Recast to another actor for the same role.
Recast with another actor. After the first episode, no one will care.
That’s a shame, but I do hope they recast the character. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I would have liked to have seen more storylines he played a role in, not just as a romantic interest.