The Sex Lives of College Girls has returned for season 3, and Essex College is welcoming some new hilarious stars. Premiering on Max on November 21, 2024, the new season sees Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), Bela (Amrit Kaur), and, for part of the season, Leighton (Reneé Rapp) starting their sophomore year and befriending some incoming freshmen, one of which is played by rising star Mia Rodgers.
The British actress quickly stands out among the comedy series' talented cast as Taylor, a queer, first-year international student who doesn't make the best first impression on the main quartet. However, Rodgers is set to become a fan favorite as Taylor's witty, sarcastic personality wins the girls over. Below, read on for an introduction to rising comedy star Mia Rodgers.
Mia Rodgers is a British actress making her U.S. debut on 'The Sex Lives of College Girls.'
Rodgers is a rising star who recently graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She's best known for small roles in television shows in her home country; she previously appeared in the 2018 ITV miniseries Trauma, set in a hospital's trauma unit, and an episode of the BBC legal comedy Defending the Guilty. She has also acted in two short films, Angels in the Asylum and Diary of a Ghost.
She had her first on-screen kiss on the first day of shooting 'The Sex Lives of College Girls.'
It sounds like Rodgers was thrown right into the deep end when it came to joining the raunchy college comedy. In an interview with TV Insider, the actress recalled her first day on the set of the Max series, where she had to "make out with a girl" at the start of her first scene.
"I remember my first scene on my first day. It was with Bela, but I was at a party, and before any form of dialogue I was kissing this girl, which was my first kiss on camera ever," she recalled to the outlet. "I was literally so nervous. It was in a room with 150 people, and I was like, Right, I've gotta have my first on-screen kiss, and I've gotta remember like six pages of dialogue. It's my first day. I'm literally terrified. But it was amazing and it obviously worked out really well."
Rodgers also described Taylor to the outlet as someone who's "very queer, very loud, very proud about it." The star also noted that she "gets into a lot" in her first semester at Essex.
"She's a complex character," Rodgers said. "She's very strong in who she is, which is amazing, but kind of unfaltering. That can sometimes come to her detriment. She can be quite defensive and come across a bit harsher than I think she actually is. And so throughout that season, you start to learn more about her and why she is the way she is, and that [defensiveness] slightly starts to melt away, weirdly enough, through her friendships and her dating life."
She thought she would be a singer before she discovered acting.
Speaking to WhoWhatWear, Rodgers revealed that she is a huge music and fashion fan, having grown up in a musical household and with parents who worked in the fashion industry. She also teased that, sometime soon, she may release a secret project.
"Music was big in my household and encouraged as a way to express yourself," she told the outlet. "It was my first love, and I thought I was going to become a professional singer until I discovered acting. It is the classic story of your school putting you in the musical because you can sing but soon realized acting was my future. That's why getting back into the performance and writing element of music has been so exciting over the past couple of years. I have a little project I am working on at the moment and hope to show the world soon."
