Exclusive Interview
‘Sex Lives of College Girls’: Ruby Cruz Breaks Down the ‘Gayest TV Episode’ Ever
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Sex Lives of College Girls Season 3 Episode 7, “The Rodeo.”]
Saddle up, Sex Lives of College Girls fans. In the January 2 episode, the girls attend Essex’s queer rodeo fundraising party to support their fellow students’ queer endeavors, from raising money for a top surgery to line dancing—though everyone has their own motives for the night. It’s messy, it’s drunk, and it’s incredibly gay.
Bela (Amrit Kaur) and Arvind (Nabeel Muscatwalla) want to celebrate their first night off together by going out, and through Taylor (Mia Rodgers), Bela learns about the queer rodeo party happening on campus. Against Taylor’s wishes, Bela rallies the roommates and Arvind for a Western night out—and is convinced that this is the night she and Arvind will finally have sex. Unfortunately for Bela, Arvind doesn’t go out as often as she does and finds it harder to handle his liquor. Though shirts are taken off, no sex is had, but the two end on a sweet note, as they always do.
Meanwhile, in a fight with her incredibly generous (albeit misplaced acts of service) boyfriend, who had his investor father fund Whitney’s $200,000 lab, Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) finds solace in Canaan (Christopher Meyer) at the party, who understands her plight of not wanting to feel like she owes anybody anything. This conversation slowly closes the distance between the two, reinstating the strength of their friendship (and maybe more?).
Kacey (Gracie Lawrence), devastated that she didn’t make the top 50 hottest Essex students list, is determined to look hot and show everyone at school that they made a mistake for not voting for her—and voting for her cheating ex Calvin (Tyler Barnhardt) to boot. However, this leads to an explosive fight on the dance floor with her own boo who calls her beautiful and tells her to just accept the compliment when she’s clearly upset. Fed up with the beauty standards women constantly have to endure, she stomps off the dance floor, cowboy boots and all.
Tina Thorpe / Max
Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) may have met her intellectual match, as she runs into fellow symposium student Brian (Michael Hsu Rosen) who she keeps finding more and more in common with. Despite her professor’s warning that symposium peers should not date, sparks fly between this nerdy pairing who can’t help but banter and talk homework as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. And to them, it is—it’s like they’re a match made in symposium heaven.
Taylor (Rodgers) endures the real rodeo of the night, as she orchestrated her dorm-wide invites just to get her flirtatious roommate to come out (in both the literal sense and the queer one). Despite her roommate identifying as straight, Taylor’s convinced her gaydar never lies and pursues the crush regardless. However, after getting rejected following an awkward dance floor kiss with her still-straight roommate, Taylor runs outside for a breath of air only to be egged by what appears to be a group of homophobic fraternity brothers. By sheer, queer luck, Taylor is saved by Ash (Ruby Cruz), the person she connected with earlier in the season on a speed date, who chases the men off with a half-eaten muffin and a loud and clear “Suck my gay dick!” The two make amends despite Taylor initially ghosting her savior and walk home together to end the night.
Ruby Cruz, who has also appeared in Bottoms and Mare of Easttown, spoke with Swooon to dissect her rescue scene and the “gayest episode of TV” as a whole.
“I think my favorite part of the scene was you sort of just find Ash laying in a bush, half-falling asleep, and she just woke up to the homophobic act and she already had a half eaten muffin in her hand,” laughed Cruz.
According to Cruz, this is all audiences really need to see in order to understand this new character in Taylor’s life. “I feel like you really get to know all you need to know about Ash in this 5-second moment,” said Cruz. “I think Ash had a moment of drunken confidence. I mean, I think Ash was pretty confident in who she is, regardless of the liquor, but I do think that she was happy to tell off the homophobes.”
When it came to the specific wordage of Ash’s insult, Cruz admitted it was the strongest choice of words by far. “Suck my gay dick. I feel like she said that more than once in life, you know,” said Cruz. “I might have played around a little bit on the day, but I think we stuck with that because there is a pinpointed strength to that that I think we needed to convey.”
As for her involvement in the series in the first place, Cruz revealed that showrunner Justin Noble personally called her himself with a pitch she couldn’t turn down. “He was like, ‘Hey I’m Justin, what’s up? I want to make the gayest episode on TV. Do you want to be a part of it?'” Cruz recalled. “And I was like, ‘Duh.’ I feel like he saw this opportunity to bring in a bunch of queer representation.”
Cruz first met Rodgers, the actress who plays her love interest this season, the first day they shot the speed dating episode.
“She was so open and kind. It was really easy to just immediately click with her,” Cruz said of Rodgers. “We talked about [the relationship] a lot because I thought that Ash could balance her really well, and it could be something that is really new for Taylor: Someone that actually just really likes her for her and is interested in getting to know her as a person instead of this party girl that she was used to.”
She continued, “It was a really cool opportunity to represent someone going through something like struggling with sobriety in college.”
When asked if she had been a fan of the show prior, Cruz admitted she knew it well but had a few hurdles when it came to watching the show in its entirety. “I’ve seen it everywhere on posters and stuff,” said Cruz. “But I actually didn’t have an HBO account before that…It’s honestly been a blast.”
Queer line dancing recommendations came easily however, as Cruz is a fan of them herself, regardless of the coast. “I love queer line dancing in New York and LA,” said Cruz. “The one at the back of the Ukrainian restaurant? Oh my god, that one is so fun.”
The Sex Lives of College Girls, Season 3, Thursdays, Max
