‘Ginny & Georgia’ Creator Sarah Lampert Breaks Down “Explosive” Season 3

Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia is a lot of things: a YA show, a cheeky mother-daughter comedy, a heart-wrenching drama, and a totally off-the-wall story featuring multiple murders and musicals. The popular series, which first premiered in 2021 and released its third season this June, has never been limited to just one genre or style of storytelling.

The show centers on unconventional mother Georgia (Brianne Howey) and her teenage daughter Ginny (Antonia Gentry) as they attempt to escape Georgia’s troubled past and start a new life in the charming small town of Wellsbury, Massachusetts. But starting over is never that easy — especially when there’s a trail of bodies involved.

Season 3 sees Georgia finally have to answer for her actions when she’s put on trial for the murder of her former friend Cynthia’s (Sabrina Grdevich) terminally ill husband, Tom. With her mother behind bars and the entire world awaiting a verdict, Ginny’s life is turned upside down like never before. It’s always been her and Georgia against the world. Now what is she supposed to do?

While Ginny & Georgia has always been a roller coaster of a show, this season takes things to a whole new level of intensity. “Season 3 was always going to be our biggest season,” series creator Sarah Lampert, who also serves as a writer and co-executive producer, tells The Nerds of Color over Zoom. “We knew that it was going to be the season where the most happened and everything changed.”

In addition to Howey and Gentry, the show features a stacked ensemble cast that includes Diesel La Torraca (Austin), Felix Mallard (Marcus), Sara Waisglass (Maxine) Jennifer Robertson (Ellen), Scott Porter (Paul), Raymond Ablack (Joe), Katie Douglas (Abby), Chelsea Clark (Norah), Nathan Mitchell (Zion), Humberly González (Sophie), Tameka Griffiths (Bracia), and more. Of course, the beating heart of the series has always been Ginny and Georgia and their complex relationship.

“When you put Bri and Toni together, it really is the spine of the show,” Lampert says of the starring duo. “It’s such magic.”

The Nerds of Color sat down to chat with Lampert about this season’s groundbreaking portrayal of topics like substance abuse and abortion, Georgia’s warped understanding of morality, Ginny and Marcus’ on-and-off relationship, Maxine’s mental health, what fans can expect from Season 4, and more. Check out the full interview below!

WARNING: This interview contains major spoilers for Season 3.

THE NERDS OF COLOR: The show has always had a big fandom, but it feels like there’s been a kind of vibe shift this season. Suddenly, people aren’t just viewing it as a guilty pleasure YA show, but really taking it seriously. I’ve seen so many posts from people about how Episode 5 made them cry, how amazing the portrayal of mental health is…what has it been like for you to see the reactions to Season 3?

LAMPERT: Yeah, I felt that vibe shift too. My younger cousin Brett, who’s in high school, texted me, “Sarah, all my friends are posting on their privates: ‘Brett’s cousin ate.’” [laughs] I think what happened is, with the success of the show, Netflix started to trust us creatively a little bit more. We were able to really push it in the direction we wanted. I also think, as a creator, I got better. Season 1 was my first time ever being in a writers’ room or on set, and now I have a firmer grip on it. The actors really know their characters now — they’re willing to take big risks, challenge who these people are, and give them a lot of layers and complexities, which is also in the writing. Ultimately, it feels like the same show, but it also does feel different. If people are watching the show and [thinking] it’s cringe, that’s fine. That’s okay. I think when you make a show, you just want to entertain people and connect to your audience in some way. But the reception has been great. I love seeing all the videos of everyone crying. I’m loving the tweets.

There was so much back and forth with Marcus and Ginny this season. When he tells her he doesn’t love her anymore… I know he was pushing her away to “protect” her, but it was still so brutal to watch. Can you give me a little more insight into what was going on in his head during that scene?

When he says, “I don’t love you anymore,” we’re dealing with a character who is really struggling with his mental health. The reason he broke up with her in Season 2 is because he’s just too depressed. He’s not in a state where he can be in a relationship, and he recognizes that. It’s a little bit of a self-sacrifice in the sense of, “Don’t be with me. I’m damaged. You’re better off without me.” But part of it too is, he doesn’t have the energy to give her what she wants. He’s in a place where there’s just nothing in the tank for him to give.

We lay the groundwork that he self-medicates with substances as far back as Season 1. The first scene where we meet Marcus, he’s smoking weed. That was very purposeful, because I think oftentimes you don’t see a slide into addiction, especially at that age. Season 3 was the season we were always planning on really going there with it. You see him start to self-medicate with substances, and he’s not ready to admit yet he has a problem. At the end of the season, he’s still adamant he doesn’t need to go to rehab and doesn’t have a problem. [At the dance], he self-medicates by getting blackout drunk, and he finds out the next day that he trashed a classroom and he and Ginny kissed. He doesn’t remember any of it. And it makes him double down on his belief that he shouldn’t be with her. He realizes, “We’re not going to be able to be friends, and we’re not going to be able to be together. The only way that she’s going to really get that message is if I fall on the sword and lie that I don’t love her anymore.”

Another powerful storyline this season is Ginny’s abortion in Episode 7. Now that we’re living in a post-Roe v. Wade era, it feels more timely than ever. What was the process of crafting that episode like?

We were aware that there might be pushback, but I can’t say we thought much about it in that sense. We thought a lot about what the abortion would mean for the character and how to portray that story, why she would choose to do that, and how Georgia would play a factor. But we weren’t really thinking beyond that this was the right decision for the show and for the character. This is something that women have been dealing with since the dawn of time. For Ginny, she sees what her mom went through. She sees what life could look like, and that is just not the right choice for her.

Really, this season was about two things: It was about Georgia realizing the harmful implications that she’s had on her children and learning to become a better mother. And then for Ginny, it was about starting to protect herself and put up firm boundaries — you know, really take a step back, look at her life a little bit more objectively, and gain more agency and control. So, it was the right thing to do for those characters because it gave Georgia the opportunity to be a different kind of mom to Ginny that maybe she wouldn’t have been in an earlier season.

I want to talk a little bit about Max’s arc. Looking back on Season 2, she was so upset about Ginny and Marcus, specifically about Ginny not telling her, and then this season she’s feeling really left out of MANG. Is that part of why she had such a strong reaction to their relationship, because she was always afraid of being left out?

I don’t really want to diagnose Maxine, because she’s so young and there’s so much room for her to grow and change. But I will say that I base her off myself a little bit, and I have ADD, OCD, and high-functioning depression. Being able to put something similar to my inner monologue, and similar to experiences I’ve had with friends, on screen through that character, I knew that it would resonate globally.

I think [Maxine] has rejection sensitivity for sure, and I think part of it stems as far back as being a twin, in the sense that you’re so linked to this other person. And then you add in the fact that she’s always been the more dynamic, social one who things seemingly come easier to. Her twin brother has more obvious struggles, and it makes his parents more protective of him. Maxine has really learned to mask her own mental health, her own problems, her own pain, because Marcus has always been closer to the deep end than her. He’s always just been the one that’s needed more of the attention, which is ironic, because Marcus hates attention, and Maxine loves attention and needs it to survive. And then I think with the MANG dynamic, sometimes friend groups — specifically young girl friend groups — don’t make a lot of sense. There is always someone who feels left out, and there’s always so much miscommunication. It just felt very natural that these characters would ebb and flow in their relationships like that.

The scene in Episode 10 where Ginny tells Max, “Oh, I guess we just grew apart,” is such a gut punch, and it seems like it’s getting a really strong reaction from people. But it’s interesting to see, because in Season 2, there was so much hate towards Max’s character.

Coming out of Season 1, everyone loved Max’s character for the most part. And I was like, “I’m gonna challenge that.” So in Season 2, it was intentional that people were not going to like Max as much. I kind of gave her all of my own negative qualities. Poor Waisglass — she’s so great. She’s so phenomenal at [playing] that character, but she was also brave to go into that season knowing we were going to turn the audience against her. I promised her that in Season 3, we would give her… redemption is the wrong word, because that character’s always been who that character is. She has good and bad qualities. But she’s so deeply human, and Waisglass plays that so believably and so beautifully. I knew that in Season 3, if we could peel inside and get inside her head and relate to her, we would forgive her and understand what she was going through. That’s something I love doing on the show. I hate the idea that people can be so easily dismissed, because everyone is complicated. Everyone goes through ups and downs. I really hope that the show does shift people’s perceptions of the characters enough from season to season, sometimes from episode to episode, or scene to scene. The show’s very deeply messy and very deeply human.

Jumping subjects, Georgia is such a fascinating character in so many ways. One thing I was curious about is that throughout the season, in court and in public, she’s constantly like, “I’m not a bad person. I’m not a monster.” And then in the finale when she realizes what Ginny’s done, she’s like, “I know I’m a monster. I don’t want you to be one too.” So, do you think she really has a sense of right and wrong? Is she living by her own moral code? I got the impression that she really doesn’t think she did anything wrong by killing Tom. But then in the last episode, I thought, maybe she does realize it was wrong.

You ask the best questions. I could write an essay dissertation on what you just asked. First off, yes, I think Georgia’s arc over this season is an arc of finally gaining a sense of accountability and finally realizing that her actions have repercussions, most specifically on her children. Do I think she thinks that she did the wrong thing by killing Tom? I think only after she hears Cynthia tell her it’s not what she wanted. Because up until that point, she really did view what she did as a favor. Cynthia protected her from Gil (Aaron Ashmore), and this is a character who never has been protected historically her entire life. She almost doesn’t know how to react to that. She feels indebted. So, when Cynthia talks about how hard it is going through this with Tom and the horrible situation they’re in, Georgia mistakenly takes that to mean, “If I do this [kill Tom], this will help her a lot.” I mean, she’s wrong, but that doesn’t matter. That’s what she thinks.

I think Georgia, similarly to Marcus actually, views herself as a damaged character. In her heart, she’s like, “I already broke my soul, so I can do this thing that Cynthia won’t be able to.” That’s her mindset going into it. I think she’s genuinely surprised that Cynthia’s not on board with what she did. But in terms of her going from a state of, “What? I only killed three men,” to “Don’t be a monster like me,” we picked very specific moments across the season to show that shift in Georgia. One of them is when Ginny is about to self-harm behind the door and Georgia runs up to stop her. You hear Ginny say, “It’s my fault, Mom. I failed us.” And then you hear Georgia say through the door, “No, I did.” That’s when the music shifts… This is the first time we really hear Georgia take responsibility and understand that her actions have had negative effects on her kids, and she doesn’t want that. If there’s one thing she doesn’t want, it’s for her kids to go through anything painful. She’s really forced to confront that, whether or not she’s a bad mother, whether or not she did bad things, her actions have had implications on her children. And that’s what she’s grappling with at the end of the season.

On a final note, another thing I was really struck by was the intensity of that last scene between Ginny and Austin in the finale. Up until now, she’s always been very protective of him, and he’s always adored her. Asking Austin to frame Gil put him in a really tough position. I understand why Ginny did it, but it also seems like it would be a hard thing for them to get past, because you can’t just give him a cookie and be like, “Sorry.”

No, and that’s what’s awesome about it. [Diesel La Torraca’s] growth spurt lines up so perfectly with where we’re taking the character next. It actually really works in our favor that Austin doesn’t feel like a nine-year-old anymore. We could say his birthday is in the summer. So at this point he’s 10, and going into next year, he could be 11. He’s a preteen, right? It works really well for us that he doesn’t look like a child anymore. He was always the little boy, the baby who kind of followed along, who just needed a cookie and he was golden. Now, he’s been pushed and challenged and seen some shit, and he’s coming back into the next season with all that just happened — the decision to blame his father to rescue his mother, which Ginny kind of spearheaded — on him.

Season 4 tonally should almost feel like Season 1 again, but you’re looking at it through funhouse mirrors. Everything looks like it should be the same, but nothing is, because we’re coming out of the explosive bomb that was Season 3. Even though birds are chirping and flowers are growing again, a war happened here. That’s kind of the energy of Season 4. In the pilot episode for Season 1, Georgia says to Ginny, “It’s us against the world.” And you hear Ginny say, “That’s dramatic. What about Austin?” Season 4, we’re at, “What about Austin?”

All of this is intentional. Ginny said the same thing to Austin at the end of Season 3, “It’s us against the world,” which is a very damaging thing to say. That’s an unhealthy perspective on life. Ginny has put that on Austin in the same way Georgia put it on Ginny, and now he’s entering Season 4 with the negative repercussions of having that mindset be forced upon him. Him going through puberty on top of it is just an added bonus, because you rebel anyways at that age. It really lines up with him struggling for the first time with who he is, who his family is, and how he fits into it. That wouldn’t work with a nine-year-old, frankly.