Being the son of one of the most beloved actresses in modern-day pop culture must come with a fair amount of pressure, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ son, actor Charlie Hall, is paving his own way in Season 2 of The Sex Lives of College Girls. In the HBO Max show, Hall plays Andrew, a snarky (yet seductive) “bio bro” that shares a class with Whitney and Bela. After getting into some arguments mid-class with Andrew continuously questioning Whitney’s intelligence, the two get paired up as lab partners for an assignment, and things turn from strictly business to anything but when the two start hooking up. “I mean obviously, you’re not exactly ever rooting for him,” Hall says about his character in an interview with Her Campus. “As an actor, it’s fun to play someone that is a little bit [of] the bad guy. Even if he has glimpses of being sort of nice or fun or whatever, he’s obviously, most of the time, pretty douchey.”
Whitney and Andrew got hot and heavy a few times throughout Season 2 of Sex Lives, something that Hall isn’t excited for Louis-Dreyfus to watch back quite yet. “I haven’t even to told my parents that I have any sex scenes at all. I’ll probably give [my parents] a timestamp and tell them to just skip that,” Hall says. He doesn’t think they’ve seen the scene yet and, “I would like to keep it that way.”
Sex Lives was renewed for a third season on Dec. 14, and Hall is more than willing to potentially reprise his role as Andrew in the future. “[The show was] such a blast that, in any capacity that I can be involved, I’ll take it. […] I’ll walk in the background of [a] scene for Season 3,” he jokes. After giving Whitney the ick with his ill-mannered and overbearing persona, Hall hopes Andrew can return with a little compassion, “to try to win her back.”
Hall was able to portray different layers to Andrew’s character throughout the season, allowing the audience to learn more about him as an individual on a personal level. “I got to play a little basketball [this season], which was really fun,” Hall says. He called basketball his “first love,” having played on the Northwestern University basketball team while in college, graduating in 2019. “When you go to college and you’re playing basketball at a really high level, you are [either] playing or doing something related to basketball, almost all day when you’re not in class.”
The parallels between Hall’s own experience in college and the storylines in Sex Lives extend beyond basketball. “Even though the show is this big comedy [where] crazy sh*t is happening, the beauty of it is, it’s also rooted in reality and feels relatable. I understand Whitney’s competitive side because I played basketball, and then I dabbled in comedy, so there’s [a connection] to Bela.”
Above all, Hall finds himself relating to the overall sense of seeking acceptance and community that many other college students yearn for. “I think generally the idea of just trying to fit in is something that this show tackles a lot in these first two seasons. I constantly felt that in college. I just wanted people to like me. I was just like, ‘Oh, please, let me join your group.’”
Hall’s role in Sex Lives has proven he’s got serious acting chops, but unlike other children of megastars, he didn’t grow up as a child actor. Hall shared that he “sort of had inklings when I was younger” that he’d one day pursue a career in the industry. “It was never something that I was full-fledged, full steam ahead into until super late,” he says. “I would say kind of [around the] back half of my senior year in college. I was so focused on basketball and I did lots of comedy on the side, tangentially just because I liked it and liked making people laugh.”
Majoring in film during his time at Northwestern allowed Hall to get his first real leap into acting. “I made a little web series my senior year with my best friend. And because we didn’t wanna pay anyone else to be in it, I was just like, ‘All right, I’ll be in it,’” he shares. “I had such a blast doing it, so I was like, ‘All right, why not try this for, for a bit?’ So I went on some auditions right when I got out of college and was lucky enough to land some stuff, and then totally fell in love.”
One of his first major on-screen acting roles was on Louis-Dreyfus’ series Veep, which he called a “nice soft opening to the acting world for me because I knew everybody. I felt relatively comfortable, […] so I was more relaxed than I think I would’ve been [otherwise].”
Working with his mom on set was a foreign experience for Hall before Veep, however. “I didn’t know whether to call her Mom or Julia or what the hell to do,” he recalls. “But then once I sort of realized that nobody gave a sh*t what I called her and I was totally overthinking it, then it was really fun.” Hall also shared that he’d definitely be open to working with his mother again in the future. “If she would allow it,” he jokes.
With Season 2 of Sex Lives wrapping up, Hall is looking forward to his upcoming projects, including Sweethearts, a romantic comedy (also starring Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga) set to debut on HBO Max sometime in the future. “[The film is] really funny, [it’s] also a college-aged comedy that I think people are really gonna like,” Hall shares, adding, “My character’s quite different from Andrew. He’s kind of a golden retriever.”
Hall is also set to appear in Season 2 of Bel-Air and Season 2 of Single Drunk Female, which he claims is “even better than Season 1. [The] whole cast is truly brilliant and all amazing.”
And since he originally started behind the camera with his passion for filmmaking, he isn’t ruling out a future in writing and directing either. “I definitely see myself dabbling in hopefully all [forms] of filmmaking, for sure. I have a couple projects in development now that I’m writing and producing. I’d love to, down the road, be a director,” he tells Her Campus. “All of it is super attractive to me, especially the writing side. If I’m not acting and I’m not playing basketball, I’m probably writing.”
One thing is for certain: I can’t wait to see what Hall does next, and I can selfishly say I hope it’s a Sex Lives Season 3 comeback.