When we last saw Georgia Miller, she was being escorted out of her own wedding in handcuffs. The Ginny & Georgia Season 2 finale ended with Georgia’s arrest for the murder of Tom Fuller—just moments after saying “I do” to Paul. Meanwhile, her daughter Ginny had finally come to terms with her mom’s dark past, only to see it crash back into their lives in the most dramatic way possible.
Now, with Season 3 streaming now on Netflix, creator Sarah Lampert and new showrunner Sarah Glinski hint that the fallout from that shocking moment is just the beginning. The show continues to dive deep into themes of mental health, racial identity, abuse, and sexuality—all while keeping its signature fast-paced, soapy energy.
Q&A with Sarah Lampert and Sarah Glinski
Caitlynn McDaniel: How are you feeling going into the live fan watch party?
Sarah Lampert: I mean, I’m excited I get glam. No, I’m really excited. I mean, honestly, I’m such a creeper on all the Reddit boards, and I love seeing what everyone says about the show. One of my favorite things—the writer’s assistant of Season 2, who then became a staff writer on Season 3—said to me that her favorite part about the show was the online discourse and just how thoughtful and complex the discussions around the show were. And I love that. That’s probably my most proud thing about the show. So I’m really excited to get into it with the fans.
CM: The show is such a complex mix. Yes, people are rooting for relationships, but it also dives into mental health and the messy parts of being human.
Sarah Glinski: Hard to be a human.
Sarah Lampert: Right on the money. No, something my mom always says—which is honestly one of the biggest themes of the show—is everyone’s fighting a battle you can’t see, and everyone’s doing the best they can. And I just think that’s a really beautiful way to approach writing this show.
CM: What was the foundation for the show when you started?
Lampert: I know I get asked this all the time. I’ve yet to perfect the answer, and the only answer is I just have so much fun creating this show and these characters. Some of it’s based on truth, some of it’s pure imagination, some of it’s a group effort of the writer’s room. For the creation of the show, I’m really close with my family. I’m really close with my friends. I’m blessed with a very strong support system. So I just really love messy, dynamic—especially female-to-female—relationships. That’s probably the thing I most just want to watch and write about.
CM: Sarah Glinski, you joined in Season 3, right?
Glinski: Yes. I was a huge fan of the show in Season 1 and Season 2, so it was kind of a dream to get to play with all these characters in Season 3—and to work with Sarah.
CM: What were you most excited to explore as showrunner?
Glinski: Wow. So many things. One of the themes that I’m most excited about exploring is: there are many different ways to be a woman—and even more specifically, a young woman. And I love that this show has many different characters who go through life in different ways, and we celebrate all of them. It’s kind of nonjudgmental. We’re just like, “Here are all these people living life, doing the best that they can.” And they’re all flawed and beautiful and wonderful.
Also, I just love shows that are entertaining but also important. I think you watch this show, and it’s so fun—and then you leave it, and there’s so much to think about. So just getting to do both of those things that I’m so passionate about was really a dream come true.
Lampert: One of my favorite things Glinski has ever said is—when I was talking to her about coming on to do the show—she said, “I love all the romance in the show. I’m happiest when a character is kissing. I love all the love triangles. But the real will-they relationship of this show is Ginny and Georgia. And I don’t even know what the happy ending is—if they should end up together or not.” And I just thought that that was such a beautiful window to look into the show with. She knew exactly what we were trying to do.
Glinski: And like Sarah, I’m very close to my mother. So mother-daughter relationships are really important to me to explore. I also have daughters, so being able to look at it from both as a daughter and as a mother is extraordinary.
Lampert: I will say, I’m going to say something that I’ve actually only said in this interview, so you can take this and do whatever you want, but the first scene I ever wrote for this show is actually the opening scene to Season 3—where Ginny’s walking down the hallway, and it’s just become public knowledge that her mom was arrested for murder. Originally, that was the very first scene of the show. Then ultimately, I decided there was a lot of story to tell before getting to that point. But that scene is always how I wanted to open Season 3, because that was the seed of inspiration for the show as a whole: What would it be like to be in high school and have your mother just arrested for murder?
CM: It was going to be a foreshadowing moment, but you held off?
Lampert: Yeah. I just realized there were two seasons before we got to that.
CM: This show had me thinking a lot about my own mom. It really makes you reflect on those relationships.
Lampert: My favorite thing—and Glinski watched the show with her daughter—my favorite thing is when people watch it with their moms and then talk about that.
And my other favorite thing is some people say they started therapy because of the show. I just think that’s a surprising, beautiful thing I never expected.
But yeah, I love when people say they watch it with their mothers—although part of me is like, “Oh, so you watched people dry hump in jeans for seven minutes together?” But I used to watch Sex and the City with my mom, and during the sex scenes we’d both kind of be like, “Hmm.” But yeah—I love that.
Glinski: I think shows like this get conversations started—between mothers and daughters, between friends. I think it’s really, again, important—all the things that we explore and talk about.
CM: I told the cast, I think the biggest theme of the show is: everyone needs therapy.
Lampert: I think we can all benefit from a little bit of kindness. And I think that’s really what the show tries to emphasize. It’s hard to human, and you don’t know what other people are going through. The reason that fans connect to the show—I genuinely believe this—is because everyone involved in the show really treats it with so much care and puts so much of their own heart into it. And I think that connects with fans.
Glinski: It’s funny—we often get asked what our favorite moments of the show are. And for me, it’s the small moments of kindness between the characters. There’s no one big moment, but those little tiny moments of kindness—when the character needs it most. It’s one of the things I love most about the show.
CM: Any character that surprised you this season or evolved in a way you didn’t expect?
Lampert: It’s similar to the show. The inside of my brain is a frightening place to be. I would say it’s meticulous chaos. Because we know in the writer’s room there’s a lot of room to play, there are always surprises. Some of the best ideas that happen on the show are birthed in the writer’s room and genuinely shock me.
At the same time, it feels like a really strong breadcrumb trail to follow, because we’re just following the emotional truth of each character—and really mapping out where each character feels like they are emotionally. And because it’s grounded in character, that’s why the plot has the ability to be so wild.
Glinski: For every twist and turn or anything that comes up in the writer’s room, we look at it as: Does this feel right, or real, or authentic to the character in this moment? And that’s what helps us make the decision in terms of which way to take the character.
Lampert: Yeah. We would never want to do plot for plot’s sake. I think the reason the twists feel so gratifying and surprising and fun is because you believe the characters are real. And that’s a testament to the acting, and that’s a testament to the writers in the room.
CM: I have to ask about Max—my queer icon.
Lampert: Super intentional. I think it was always the plan that when we introduced Max as a character, we weren’t giving her a coming out storyline. That had already happened.
One of my favorite lines in Season 3 is, “When you came out, you had a press conference under the jungle gym in third grade,” or whatever it was—which feels very Max.
Who that character is, is just such an open beating heart. She genuinely wants the best for everyone around her. She genuinely cares and takes on the responsibility of everyone else—right? She’s a protector. She’s Marcus’s protector. She’s her parents’ protector. She’s such a loyal friend.
At the same time, her emotions are so big. We saw her really go overboard in Season 2 with her reactions because she is a live wire. She feels so deeply—and so much. And all the characters on the show—their greatest strength is also their biggest weakness.
CM: This season is even more gay than before.
Lampert: I think we’re just letting the characters be the characters—and really letting them thrive. Thrive might be the wrong word. I wouldn’t say they’re all thriving, necessarily. But we let them just exist and explore and bounce around just being who they are. And I think that’s what makes them so fun and dynamic to watch.
CM: Anything else you’d like to tease?
Glinski: We’re just so excited for everyone to see it. That’s the truth. We love the season, and we hope everyone else does too.
Lampert: I think the actors really stepped up their game this season. We’re always in the writer’s room—very awed and inspired by the actors. So coming off of seeing all of the performances in Season 3, it’s only inspiring us more in Season 4 to push the characters in new and interesting ways—because the actors always make the interesting choice.
