'The Sex Lives of College Girls' showrunner explains why Leighton opened up to Kimberly on the finale: 'They had the most room to grow'

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the season one finale of "The Sex Lives of College Girls."
• Showrunner Justin Noble broke down Leighton's pivotal, emotional scene with Kimberly.

"The Sex Lives of College Girls" showrunner Justin Noble unpacked Leighton Murray's emotional coming-out scene and explained why it was fitting for Kimberly Finkle to be her confidant.

"That was one of the things that I knew from the jump I desperately wanted to do," Noble told Insider. "As a gay writer, coming out stories are something that are obviously very near and dear to my heart and I wanted to handle it with care."

On the season one finale, released on Thursday on HBO Max, Leighton (played by Reneé Rapp) reveals to Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) that she's gay.

Leighton discloses her sexuality when Kimberly finds her crying in her bedroom after a breakup. Kimberly, assuming that Leighton was involved with a man, tells her: "Don't cry. He's not worth it."

In response, Leighton tells her, "It wasn't a guy. It was a girl. I'm gay."

Then Leighton cries as she tells Kimberly that she doesn't want to "be like this" because it's "terrifying."

"I don't want my whole life to change," she says, to which Kimberly replies that the only way to be happy is if she's herself.

"When we were approaching the character level of Leighton, something that I really wanted to pursue was a queer character who wasn't quite there yet in terms of their comfort level with their own sexuality," Noble said. "We've all seen lots of coming-out stories, but I think we see them in a shorter span most of the time."

Noble, who cocreated the show with "The Office" star Mindy Kaling, said that he and the writers were intentional in "taking our time" and deciding that Leighton wouldn't come out until later on the show.

As a popular girl who grew up on the Upper East Side, Leighton feels like she has something to lose by coming out and doesn't want her sexuality to define her.

"To me, the thing I don't see a lot on TV is the internal struggle of queerness and coming to terms with that and coming out," Noble said, explaining that, oftentimes, "there's this external force that's crushing them and making them feel like they can't be themselves."

"And while that is a thing that people go through, the more universal experience is waking up and being like, 'Oh my God, I have to tell everyone this aspect of my life that I did not know about until my sexual awakening or puberty or whenever I realized this about myself,'" he added. "And so you have to come to terms with it."

Kimberly's the only person who Leighton opens up to about her sexuality, and it shows how far the two unlikely friends have come since they first met as freshmen at Essex College and became roommates with two other girls, aspiring comedian Bela Malhotra (Amrit Kaur) and soccer star Whitney Chase (Alyah Chanelle Scott).

While Leighton is high-class and walks around with designer handbags, Kimberly hails from Arizona and works five days a week so that she can afford to attend Essex.

"I always wanted Leighton to talk to Kimberly because it felt like they had the most room to grow from the pilot," Noble said. "Kimberly is so quickly dismissed as this country bumpkin who Leighton would never find the time of day for, I think more so than any of the other girls."

The showrunner said that the seed was planted for this interaction between Leighton and Kimberly during episode one when Kimberly repeatedly texted Leighton to check in on her after she didn't show up to a party that all the girls were supposed to attend.

"She's getting texts from Kimberly and she's just like, 'Oh God, this girl from Gilbert, Arizona. How the hell am I living with her?'" Noble said. "But then she ends up being this very earnest and sympathetic character who Leighton can open up to and it's such a status shift for Leighton, who's always been high status, and all of a sudden she's crying to her roommate who she never would have assumed she'd be low-status to."

All 10 episodes of season one of "The Sex Lives of College Girls" are now streaming on HBO Max.