The Inbetweeners star Emily Atack called out 'perverts' as she reflected on landing the role of Charlotte Hinchcliffe in the E4 sitcom.
Atack, 34, may have spent the past couple of years focusing on her work as a comedian and TV personality, featuring on Celebrity Gogglebox, I'm a Celebrity... and starring in her own series The Emily Atack Show, but the actress was originally known for playing a love interest in The Inbetweeners.
Nicknamed 'Big Jugs' by the other characters on the show, Charlotte was the popular and lusted after foil to blundering schoolboy Will McKenzie (Simon Bird). The role gave Atack a reputation as a 'sex symbol' amongst viewers at the time.
However, the actress has since revealed that this wasn't originally the intention behind the character.
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Speaking to Mo Gilligan on his podcast Beginning, Middle & End Best Bits, Atack reflected on landing the role of Charlotte and the job changed her life.
One of the bigger revelations from the interview was that Charlotte wasn't meant to be seen as a 'sexy schoolgirl' and this was something which viewers later projected onto the character.
"The character of it being this sexy schoolgirl, that wasn't originally meant to be that," she explained.
"They wanted me to just be a schoolgirl because I was a schoolgirl and I was playing a schoolgirl, so there were actually no sexual connotations to it.
"That all just came because the world is full of perverts," she added.
"They see the blonde hair, the school uniform and they go 'oh wow, seductive, what a seductive role', but I was just a schoolgirl playing a schoolgirl."
Atack then went on to reflect on how landing the role of Charlotte at just 17-years-old, revealing that it changed the trajectory of her life.
"[It was] very different then as social media hadn't taken off then really. We had MySpace and, you know, all of that, MSN," she said.
The actress then went on to add that people have often tried to 'blame' The Inbetweeners and her role for the 'abuse' she received later on in her life.
"People try and say, very much about that being linked to The Inbetweeners. [They say] 'Yeah but you played a sexy pin-up school girl.'
"But I really try and split the two because I was just doing my job... I was such a young girl and I was playing a school girl."
Despite the backlash, Atack added that she doesn't 'get upset' if people still refer to her as 'Big Jugs' or quote Inbetweeners lines to her as 'it's fiction'.
"It's a role, it's not me," she added.
Atack is set to make her return to acting in upcoming Disney+ Rivals. An adaption of an 1988 Jilly Cooper novel of the same name, she will star alongside David Tennant, Aidan Turner, Katherine Parkinson, Lisa McGrillis, Alex Hassell, and Danny Dyer.
Meanwhile, she has also welcomed her first child with partner Alistair Garner, a baby boy named Barney James.
Topics: Emily Atack, The Inbetweeners, Podcast, YouTube, TV and Film
Brenna Cooper