Comic's first major acting role

Eshaan Akbar is to appear in the fourth season of Sex Education.

The stand-up’s exact role in the hit Netflix comedy has not yet been revealed, but Chortle understands he will appear across several episodes.

Filming is just wrapping on the next season – which is expected to be the last – ahead of its release later this year, and Akbar said he was ‘absolutely astounded and honoured’ to have landed the part.

The Emmy-winning series revolves around the socially awkward Otis (Asa Butterfield) and his mother Jean (Gillian Anderson), a sex therapist who sets up a clinic at his school .

Other returning cast include Ncuti Gatwa, the next Doctor Who, who will be back as Otis's  best friend Eric Effiong, and Emma Mackey, who is Otis's love interest Maeve Wiley.

Also joining the cast is Schitt's Creek star Dan Levy, who will be playing Thomas Molloy, Maeve's mentor while she studies in the States

This will be Akbar’s first TV acting role although he has voiced the likes of Rishi Sunak, and Sajid Javid in Spitting Image – despite not being an impressionist.

In an interview last month, he said: "If you ever listen to me on YouTube, you’ll say, "Well Eshaan’s just doing his normal voice" and therein lies part of the problem.

‘The reason, and some of this I talk about in the show, is decision makers want to make the right decision by casting a brown person to do brown people voices, but the people’s voices I did, well, Rishi Sunak is very much a British guy, born and raised in Southampton. So it’s just as feasible that you would do Rishi Sunak as I would, but the discourse seems to be that only a brown person can do a brown person’s voice, and it’s not a brown person’s voice, he’s got an English person’s voice, but there we are.

He added ‘that’s one of the things that I talk about’ in his  first UK stand-up tour, The Pretender, which has just got under way.. Dates

Published: 6 Mar 2023