‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Actress Gracie Lawrence on Her Character’s Confidence and Insecurities: “We’ve Uncovered the Tip of the Iceberg”

‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Actress Gracie Lawrence on Her Character’s Confidence and Insecurities: “We’ve Uncovered the Tip of the Iceberg”

[This story contains spoilers from the third season, including the finale “Essex Strong,” of The Sex Lives of College Girls.]

Gracie Lawrence‘s Kacey joined Max‘s The Sex Lives of College Girls in the third episode of the show’s third season as a transfer student assigned to a four-person suite with Bela (Amrit Kaur), Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) and Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) after Reneé Rapp’s Leighton transferred to MIT.

Initially in a long-term relationship with Calvin (Tyler Barnhardt), with the pair ostensibly saving themselves for marriage, promise rings and all, Kacey quickly discovers that Calvin is cheating on her. As she gets involved with the school’s drama department, she meets Cooper (Roby Attal), who she ends up losing her virginity to in the penultimate episode of the season before he breaks up with her in the season finale, saying their relationship is moving too fast.

The heartbreak leads to an emotional breakdown for the seemingly confident character, with her roommates comforting her as she discovers that she’s developed a real friendship with the group of girls who she initially didn’t even want to hang out with.

“I was just so moved by the generosity that this group of girls showed her when she wasn’t really that open to them in the beginning,” Lawrence tells The Hollywood Reporter of her character. “They did it in the first episode that she’s in when she finds out that her boyfriend’s cheating on her, and they do it in the end, when she’s really at her complete lowest moment with no one else. And it’s the moment that I think solidifies the true reality of their friendship.”

Speaking to THR, Lawrence talks about the “trippy experience” of joining a show she was already a fan of; what she hopes Kacey’s future looks like, including more of an exploration into her “self-confidence journey” (“we’ve uncovered the tip of the iceberg,” she says); additional scenes with her TV mom Missi Pyle; and juggling the Max series with her band Lawrence and her upcoming Broadway musical debut.

Your character goes through a big journey this season with respect to her relationships, after starting off the season in a long-term relationship where she was saving herself and then losing her virginity to Cooper. How do you think that she’s going to be in relationships moving forward? Do you think she’s going to be more open to dating and not being quite as serious about relationships or is she still more of like a long-term commitment person?

I felt really honored to play a role where the character was grappling with a topic as important and weighted as losing their virginity. I feel like it’s something that probably a lot of people watching the show are thinking about themselves, and so it was cool to portray that, since that’s sort of a new storyline on the show. I don’t know what Kacey is going to feel going forward. I think that what I hope she feels, though, is a connection to herself and her own decision making and making decisions coming from a place of empowerment, rather than obligation, and I think that that’s a lot of what she’s learned over the season, just confidence in herself. And I think that’s going to play into her romantic life decisions as well.

Co-showrunner Justin Noble said that when the writers were thinking of the character of Kacey they had this word “confidence” tacked up on the wall and that there was something about your character where she’s trying to project this air of confidence but that might not be so true underneath. Do you feel like she has developed a bit more inner confidence by the end of the season?

There’s a scene in episode 10 where she kind of breaks down and confronts her own hidden insecurities, because she sort of projected a confidence, but it’s been a little bit of a fake confidence, and so in that moment when she finally breaks down and confronts her insecurity, ironically, I think that’s when she kind of becomes more confident, because, previously, her confidence has been a little bit hollow, and I think that it’s only in confronting these sort of really scary feelings inside of her that she really finds herself. So I hope that she finds real confidence going forward, rather than a sort of projected walk and talk that is maybe fake. And that was the part of the character that I felt the most connected to. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for so long. As a young woman, if I can call myself that, I feel like I think about the concepts of confidence and insecurity so much.

And I have a band called Lawrence and before I got cast on the show, I wrote a song and it’s out called “I’m Confident That I’m Insecure.” So these concepts of confidence and insecurity and whether they have to be mutually exclusive and what they really mean have been on my mind. And my brother, who is my co-bandleader, … and I have been talking about that for so long, and so then to have to do this job where all of a sudden these themes of confidence and insecurity were coming up, it felt so fortuitous to be kind of talking about the same things in all artistic forms of my life. And I give all credit to Justin and all of the writers for crafting Kacey’s narrative so beautifully. You’re kind of surprised to see her break down at the end. And reading it, I was just so moved by it. And I found it so relatable.

You were one of a couple of new characters brought on this season with Mia Rodgers’ Taylor and some others. What was it like joining the show and this ensemble a couple of years in?

It was kind of nuts, because I was a fan of the show, so I was, like, so familiar with what was going on in the show. I was so familiar with the sets, like I knew what the cafeteria looked like. Then I was in scenes in the cafeteria … it was a very trippy experience, and I think a very unusual experience, because even for actors who get a job that they’re really excited about, is it often that it’s on a hit show that they were a preexisting fan of? It was just such a weird confluence of events that allowed me to be there, and I was really excited about it and probably had an elevated amount of nervousness because I was already such a fan of the show.

You mentioned your band. It was also recently announced that you would be making your Broadway musical debut. Congratulations. Obviously, you have these other things going on. How do you feel about continuing with the show, if there were more seasons and more episodes, and is this still something that you’d like to be a part of?

Yeah! I’m so deeply invested in all of the characters, having been a fan of the show and, selfishly, very invested in Kacey’s journey. I think she’s changed so much from her introduction to the season finale. And I think that’s such an exciting place to pause, but it really makes me want to know what the writers would say about Kacey for another season and and beyond. So I really hope it comes back because I have such a good time playing this character, and also now I don’t feel as much like the new kid in school, like I’m so close with all of the women on the show and with Justin and all the writers and [co-showrunner] Mindy [Kaling], and I feel like I would be going back to family, so it would be really fun to come back. I hope it does.

Obviously it’s up to the writers what happens with your character, but is there anything that you hope for with Kacey going forward?

I hope that there’s more discussion about her self-confidence journey. I think we’ve uncovered the tip of the iceberg. There was that really powerful scene of her face tuning her photo. I found that really interesting. And I would love to see her continue to grapple with those things and make mistakes and fall backwards and then find progress forward in loving herself, because I think that she’s a character who seems to really love herself almost too much, but, again, it’s not necessarily rooted in anything real. And I would also love to see more from her mother and their relationship, because Missi Pyle is, I mean, a comedic genius, and also I just fell in love with her as a human being and working with her was the most fun. So I would love to have her back and see their relationship evolve, because clearly, they have their own issues, and it would be fun to to see them grow.

As you mentioned, Kacey is very different by the end of this season compared to when we first meet her. How do you think that her relationship with the suitemates and those friendships have evolved over the course of the season? Because they seemed a little resistant at first, but by the end, they were really connected, even though they might seem kind of different.

I think that the show does a great job of placing characters in situations that they are uncomfortable with. Bringing in a character who has no interest in making new friends into a suite with three really tight-knit friends is like a recipe for disaster in a really fun way. And I think that it was so smart of them to set it up from this place of like, utter failure, because there’s so much room to grow. You can see that they all really get along, that they’re all really friends as the season progresses.

But nothing makes that point stronger than in that scene where you know Kacey is is crying after her breakup with Cooper and feeling like she’s messing up her role in the musical and her mom is coming for the wrong reasons. She has no one to turn to except for these friends. All I was thinking about when doing that scene was like, “Oh, this is a girl who’s never really had a support system, a real support system, and she found it in this group of girls that she didn’t even want to be friends with.” And that, honestly, is what made me emotional and cry in the scene. This is a moment where — and not just for my character but for all of the characters throughout that season finale, I think we all really show up for each other. And that’s what I love so much about this show: Ultimately, it’s really about the friendships.

All 10 episodes of the third season of The Sex Lives of College Girls are streaming on Max.