[The following story includes major spoilers from Ginny & Georgia season two.]
Season two of Netflix’s mother-daughter coming-of-age series Ginny & Georgia brought more drama, lovable family moments, shocking developments and even more questions heading into a possible season three.
Created by Sarah Lampert and showrun by Debra J. Fisher, the show follows the confusing, lovable and sometimes unpredictable relationship between angsty teen Ginny Miller (Antonia Gentry) and her dynamic 30-year-old mother Georgia Miller (Brianne Howey). In the first season, audiences saw Georgia move her family to Wellsbury, Massachusetts, trying desperately to put down roots after years on the run. In the season one finale, Ginny and her younger brother, Austin, run away themselves after Ginny learns her late stepfather Kenny’s death was no accident.
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In the latest season, Ginny is forced to return to her mother’s house when she discovers Georgia’s involvement in Kenny’s death. But her return only brings a storm of emotions — anger, confusion and retaliation. While the mother-daughter-duo work to repair their relationship, more from Georgia’s past wreaks havoc on her new life and current relationships. At the same time, Ginny tries to work through her own relationships and the emotional impact her mother has had on her.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Fisher discusses the bombshell finale and how they weaved discussions about mental health, body image and race into the show’s storylines. She also teases what could be ahead in season three if they get one.
How do you think this being a female-forward series, including among the cast and production crew, shaped this season and the series in general?
Ginny & Georgia, it’s a show about women, by women, but for everyone. What I love to hear when people watch the show is that “I didn’t expect to like it.” And I love hearing that from men, like my friends’ and family’s brothers and husbands and significant others. They think this is just a show for women. Then they watch it, like my dad who has just seen the whole series, and he’s just blown away. My dad’s in his 70s. So, I really do think that our show has themes and struggles that are universal to us all. We are really attempting to try to tell important stories, so I think that is transcending through all ages and how people identify.
This series speaks to family relationships, especially mothers and daughters. What do you hope families take away from this season?
I think that so many people can identify with when your mom just doesn’t understand you. Yes, we are depicting a 16-year-old, biracial daughter — that’s very specific. [But] at the core, it’s a complicated mother-daughter relationship with a mother who doesn’t understand her daughter. And that is what I hope, if you are a father or brother, you can still find something [in] the show — our struggles and our themes — that you can relate to and identify with.
This season especially tackles a lot of important topics. Why did you want to weave those storylines in and what do you hope people take away from those discussions?
For me specifically, [it was] trying our best to authentically represent and to bring to the surface mental health. We have Ginny with her self-harm, which we showed in season one and continue to show. And now we have also a 16-year-old young man [Marcus] who’s struggling with mental health. We really want to have a conversation around that through the lens of making that OK. We show therapy, we show one parent who’s supportive of that [and] we show one parent who is not. What’s so great is we did season one just like [we did] season two and [took] such care with these topics. We consulted with a licensed psychologist, Dr. Taji Huang, and she specializes in self-harm. She read all of our scripts and watched cuts of the episodes. Sarah Lampert, who created Ginny & Georgia, and I would have many conversations with her regarding it way back in season one, and we knew where we wanted to go in season two.
Additionally, we consulted with Mental Health America. They also watched all of the scenes in season one and in season two. Something that a lot of people don’t know about that I’m also really proud of is Ginny & Georgia won an award from Mental Health America in season one for our grounded and accurate depiction of mental health. That’s something that I’m so proud about. I really want people to be able to have conversations with their parents and their friends about it because it’s OK not to be OK.
We have the luxury of being able to slowly parcel out these beautiful storylines over the course of season one and slowly through season two. And I really love that we can really dig deep and get into these emotional arcs with the characters. Also, it’s the tone of our show, too. We’re not all sadness. Ginny & Georgia is a very delicate tone of light and dark. You are laughing and crying within the same scene.
Sometimes there can be stereotypes around depression, anxiety and therapy, such as Georgia’s reaction to the teacher suggesting help for Austin and her reaction to Ginny in therapy. What would you say was your goal with that storyline?
The one thing is we’re able to see [with] Georgia — she’s very layered and also very complicated — and with the flashbacks, [is] a little bit more about how Georgia dealt with abuse. For a parent like Georgia we see a little bit more of the reasons. She’s brought up in a world where systems in place were built to keep her down, so she’s very skeptical of that. We love having different points of view and different disagreements. You have one parent that’s like, “Yes, we’re going to do it,” and sneaks to get his daughter in [therapy], and the other parent doesn’t know it. So it brings up really important discussions.
As for other relationships in the series, what can we expect to see in the future with Ginny and her father, Zion? Georgia and Paul? Austin and his dad, Gil? Ginny and Marcus? Georgia and Joe?
If you can convince Netflix to give us a season three, we will gladly tell you everything we have planned for season three. I will say this, Sarah Lampert and I, we do know exactly where we want to go and we’ll be addressing all of those things — where we left Georgia, getting arrested at the wedding and Paul. Right now, Marcus and Ginny are in a very positive place as friends. Zion lives just outside of Wellsbury in Boston, so he’s going to be around. Season three is going to be a big roller coaster, just like season two, given the cliffhanger that we left you with.
Audiences saw a change in Ginny’s style between season one and season two. What was behind that shift?
We really wanted to honor a teenage experience. When we first meet Ginny, she’s wearing concert tees and Dr. Martens. When she gets to Wellsbury, and she wants to fit in with this new, shiny group of friends, we see that transition. She’s straightening her hair and she’s wearing very Wellsbury-type, let’s fit into this [kind of clothes]. Then at the end, when things are going wrong, she’s back to her hoodies. For this season, it was very deliberate. This is the season where Ginny is trying to create space for herself, where she is trying to find a voice and experiment. I have pictures of me with crazy-colored hair. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. [But] you see her evolution. “I’m loud. I’m here. I’m taking up space.” That was the thinking this season with Ginny.
The season finale has a huge bombshell with Georgia’s arrest but audiences didn’t get to see much of what led up to the decision to arrest her. Can fans expect those answers in a potential season three? And was there a reason they weren’t included in this season?
It’s so funny. A friend of mine called me last night and she was like, “I just finished…” and she was asking me all these same questions. I was like, “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen.” So she caught the conversation between [PI Gabriel] Cordova and Nick when Nick says, “Oh, Georgia was in the room when Tom died” — lightbulb. Then we see Cordova pick up the phone, so we know it’s related to Tom’s death. We know that’s the reason that she was arrested. We will absolutely go into much, much greater detail at [Georgia’s murder] trial.
Georgia has given Ginny a reason for her actions up until killing Cynthia’s husband, Tom. They were typically tied to protecting her family. But Tom wasn’t in her family, so what do you think was her reasoning there?
We had so many discussions about this in the writers room. For months, we talked about this moment. I will say, Georgia is very complicated and Georgia is very nuanced. What we’ve only ever seen as an audience is that she’s a momma bear [and] she will do anything to protect her kids. And this moment, we have seen a man from her past — Austin’s father, Gil — and we know he was physically abusing her. We see Cynthia in that hallway when Gil grabs [Georgia] and they’re in the elementary school and he’s shaking her. We see Cynthia clock that and go up and make up a story: “Georgia, we need you over here.” That was an unspoken moment between those two women where Georgia knows exactly what Cynthia saw and then exactly what Cynthia knows. We see there was a little build-up to that.
I love Georgia and Cynthia’s arc this season. They were arch-nemesis in season one. We kind of tried to humanize Cynthia a little bit at the end [of season one], [when] we see that Tom [her husband] was dying. And Georgia is up to her old tricks [in season two], like she wants to get into the neighborhood club. But they’re forging an interesting friendship. Their sons are hanging out. But that big moment that I’m referring to at the elementary school was a big change for [Georgia]. So I wouldn’t call them friends, but they’re certainly are friendly. [Leading up to the scene where Georgia kills Tom] they’re sharing a couple of whiskies, and for Georgia, seeing what Cynthia did for her was a very big deal for Georgia. And Cynthia to be in such pain, and [Tom’s death] to be so close — he’s moments and breaths away. Only Georgia could do something like that.
In episodes eight and nine, we saw the same storylines from different perspectives each time. What was the motivation for filming and editing that way?
Sarah [Lampert] had that idea. She really wanted to do a Marcus-centered episode. She had always wanted to do an episode where someone else voices over — Marcus, specifically. In hindsight, we had two different directors because we do what’s called block shooting. So in one block, one director, Sharon Lewis, was doing [episodes] seven and eight, and another director, Rose Troche, was doing [episodes] nine and 10. In hindsight, it would have been so much easier on everyone if one director did both episodes – a learning experience. Nonetheless, we wanted to do an episode about different perspectives. It was always the intention to have Marcus bookend the beautiful voiceover about his struggle with depression and his mental health issues. And then to really have scenes where you’re like, “What just happened?” — where you don’t have all the information, where Ginny and Georgia are not the center of the scene. Because in everything about our show, it’s about Ginny or Georgia. If they’re not in the scene, it’s usually something about Ginny or Georgia. But we wanted to flip that in [episode] nine, and then to answer that question, “What really happened in that scene from a new perspective.” Playing with different perspectives for characters is really fun and it worked out so well.
Up until the end, Paul had a different view of Georgia. Then she finally opened up to him about her past. What can we expect from him in a potential third season?
I will say, Georgia, has like three men swirling around her that the fans love. She has Paul, she has Zion and Joe. At this point in her life, she and Zion have a history, they share a daughter and they will always share a daughter, and they will always be in each other’s lives. We built up this season that Zion [has] met someone that he is really moving on with, and in success of a season three, we want to continue with that. Where Georgia is right now in her life, she wanted to move to Wellsbury. This is the life she wanted. She’s very much in love with Paul and Paul very much loves her. And she really thought she was going to lose him and Paul wasn’t going to marry her. [There’s] that amazing speech in the dining room where she tells him almost everything — but about [the] murder — and then she ends up getting arrested for a whole different murder. Then we see Paul on the phone, calling his attorney like he doesn’t believe it for one second. For Paul, in the moment, he just married this woman and the police come in to arrest his wife. He doesn’t believe that Georgia is guilty of anything. We will say, in success, Mayor Paul Randolph’s life … the rug is going to get pulled out from under him a little bit.
Have you had talks or at what point are you in the planning process for season 3?
Just from doing it in season one with Netflix, they wait 30 days to get all the numbers and before we have a talk. What’s great is that we all have TVs and we can see that we’re number one. I think Netflix did tell us we’re number one in 84 countries and that was a few days ago, so maybe more. I will say that certainly bodes well for us in 30 days if that keeps going the way that it is. But Netflix’s policy is they wait 30 days to see all the data, and then fingers crossed, they will give us a season three. We’re not writing any scripts or anything like that, but we know where we want to go. We would love to get in a writers room up and running to get going with this. Seeing everybody watch the show and seeing all the excitement for the show, I will say that it’s been hard to not think about season three and where we want to go. Because when Sarah and I pitched the show to Netflix, we did pitch four seasons, so we know what we want the end game to be. We know what we want the last episode to be.
Given the changing landscape around cancellations and renewals, did you write the ending to season two in mind of not getting a renewal?
If we don’t, it will be sad that we can’t show everybody where we want to go, but boy, what a beautiful cliffhanger to end on if we don’t get to season three. We’re always putting out that positive energy that we hope that we get a chance to keep this story going. But I love a good cliffhanger. We did it cinematically, in season one with Ginny and Austin riding away on the motorcycle, [and] season two with Georgia being driven away in the cop car and Austin chasing her. That was all specifically as an homage to ourselves, and we wanted that specificity of it. So hopefully we’ll get it. I keep telling [fans] to keep watching. Tell all your friends to watch, tell your family, tell everyone you know to watch the show and hopefully we’ll get a chance to do that.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
Ginny & Georgia season two is available to stream on Netflix.
