Simone Ashley Reveals How She Prepared For 'Sex Education' Intimate Scenes By Watching Snails

Simone Ashley, who played Olivia Hanan in the Netflix series "Sex Education," has opened up about the strange preparation process the cast followed before filming intimate scenes – they watched snails mate.

"In 'Sex Education,' we had like a sex intimacy workshop where we completely broke the ice," Ashley said on the "The Envelope" podcast Tuesday. "Anything that was said, it was the most embarrassing or the most vulnerable, but it was a safe, intimate space."

The 27-year-old actress said they "explored the movement of different animals to kind of portray different paces or different sexualities or how sensual something could be," before giving an example of how watching "snails mate" helped her.

"For example, we look to how snails mate, and when snails mate, they actually produce a plasma that intertwines," she added. "So if it was a really sensual, slow kind of scene, we’d be like, 'Oh, it's like the snail.'"

"It's super like the plasma, like falling like honey," she explained. "So we would make it about that or how dogs mate or chimpanzees mate. It's very fast-paced and a different kind of style. So this kind of scene, we're going to make it very funny and quirky and just silly, and let’s think of like, this animal."

The actress shared that the intimacy coordinators who worked with her on the "Sex Education" series were "amazing" and they treated sex scenes like dancing.

"You're making sure that you're protected and feel safe," she continued. "You're doing the same for whoever you're working with, and your co-star and you really have to trust one another. And I definitely found that within 'Bridgerton.'"

Ashley confirmed in April that she won't return for the upcoming fourth season of the series as she was working on another Netflix series, "Bridgerton."

The actress was a regular on "Sex Education" from 2019 to 2021. She joined "Bridgerton" this year as Kathani "Kate" Sharma. Apart from featuring in TV series, she will also lend her voice to the short-animated movie "Bulldog," which is helmed by David James Holloway.