Ginny & Georgia has become one of Netflix’s most popular shows ever since its February 2021 release. The final episode featured Ginny getting the heck out of Wellsbury with Austin, while Georgia thinks she’s finally won it all. Ginny pulled a Georgia, and nothing will ever be the same.
HollywoodLife chatted EXCLUSIVELY with Ginny & Georgia bosses Sarah Lampert and Debra J. Fisher about the Netflix series. They discussed Georgia’s love for both Paul and Zion, the importance of Joe, and all things MANG. Read our Q&A below:
The finale ends with Ginny and Austin on a motorcycle heading out of Wellsbury. Where is Ginny going? Does she have a plan?
Sarah Lampert: We can’t answer that. Because we need that burning curiosity to get us a season 2.
Georgia’s had to fight and adapt to survive her whole life. She’s got a lot of secrets that we see unravel over the course of the season. When it comes to Georgia, do you think she’s capable of being completely honest with anyone, even herself?
Sarah Lampert: That is an amazing, layered, nuanced question. And the answer is just simply no. Deb, jump in… I don’t know if we’ve ever fully discussed that, but jump in if you disagree. But I feel like what we see time and time again in the show, especially in episode 6, is no, she’s not even honest with herself. There’s a huge part of herself where her whole personal mantra is just keep running. I think that’s internally true as well.
Debra J. Fisher: I will jump in and add on to that. When you talk about lying in Georgia’s character I also think about mental health and how mental health is such a huge part of our show and showing responsibly how Georgia is and how important it was for us to treat that really accurately and responsibly. Not just with Georgia, but for other characters as well like Ginny, Marcus, and Abby.
I feel like Georgia spent her life bearing a lot of her trauma. She has yet to really talk about it and bring those feelings to the surface.
Sarah Lampert: She makes it really clear her stance on mental health and therapy in the show. You know, in my perspective, therapy is a very good thing. I think what we’re doing by showing Georgia’s aversion to that is kind of linked hand-in-hand with how she doesn’t deal with her own issues and how that’s not a success story.
Debra J. Fisher: We were really super gratified that Mental Health America really supported all the detail that we went into with all of our characters. Their feedback was super important so that we could shine a light on these issues.
Sarah Lampert: It’s funny because Georgia’s my age, but I just so fully related more to Ginny and MANG than I do to Georgia, even though I’m the same age as Georgia. She really is just such an enigma of a person and so put together and strong in ways that I can’t even comprehend, but she’s also deeply flawed. The other thing was we also spoke to a psychiatrist really in-depth about how we want to approach the mental health for all the characters on the show.
By the end of the season, Georgia is engaged to Paul. Do you think her love for Paul is true? Or is he the guy that she wishes she could love completely?
Sarah Lampert: So in the writers’ room how we approached this is episode 8 we were like, alright, make us fall in love with Zion. Make Zion the clear choice for who Georgia should be with. And then when we approached episode 9, we were like, okay, now change our mind. Make it be Paul. We wanted to fully commit. But you know, just speaking personally, I’ve been in a love triangle that was really intense, and I think what I came away from that experience with is you can truly love two people for different reasons at the same time. Everything that Paul says to Georgia in that amazing proposal scene in episode 9 is true. But everything that Zion says to Georgia in that amazing scene also in episode 9 is also true.
Debra J. Fisher: I think and I feel deeply that we succeeded in that because we talked about Zion as a character. We finally meet him in episode 8, and when we get to that proposal scene… I don’t think there’s anyone that watches the show who isn’t swept up in Paul’s proposal and isn’t like Georgia say yes and feeling so complicated when she has to go back and talk to Zion. I feel we’ve really accomplished that.
Do you think there’s a part of Georgia that maybe can’t or won’t open her heart completely to Zion again
because she associates him too much with her past?
Sarah Lampert: I think that’s definitely true and definitely a part of it. I also think that Zion gives her a lot of qualities that she ultimately has to decide which quality she values more. He’s a real part of her past when she had wanted nothing to do with her past. He’s the father of her daughter, but Paul is offering this kind of picture-perfect illusion that she has always been on the outside of and has always kind of aspired and desperately tried to prove herself worthy of. To say yes to Paul, instead of Zion, is really to say yes to the illusion of perfection. And she so desperately keeps driving course.
We’ve got to talk about Joe. In his last scene with Georgia, it seemed like he was going to tell her that he was in love with her, or at least knew about their past. Would Joe be a part of a season 2?
Debra J. Fisher: Joe would definitely be a part of any season 2 if we were lucky enough to get one.
I would love to see more of him because I felt that he was such a great sounding board for Ginny and Georgia.
Sarah Lampert: Joe’s really the only character that walks the line between both of them. I mean, Zion does, too, but he’s so monumental to both of them. Whereas Joe is something to Georgia, and he’s something equal but different to Ginny. I think that that’s really special.
Debra J. Fisher: Just to add to what we were talking about with Georgia and Paul and Zion, let’s not forget that flashback that we saw when Georgia meets Joe. He tells her about Wellsbury. That’s the first time she gets the idea of what a wonderful place this could be, so Joe plays an important part in that.
Sarah Lampert: I love that flashback because it’s something that we kind of found organically in the writers’ room as an aha moment where it was like, of course, Wellsbury was her endgame. Even when she was 16 because this is not someone who doesn’t always have an endgame. And to just find out she’s pregnant, and see all these happy kids on a field trip talking about prom and having expensive sunglasses, that was always where her idea of success was.
When it comes to Marcus, MANG completely blows up at the end of the season when Max finds out that Marcus and Ginny slept together. I’ve been a 15 and 16-year-old girl in high school. There’s nothing worse than when best friends are mad at each other. It is painful and brutal. Best friends can say things to each other that you would never say to anyone else. Can MANG come back from this?
Sarah Lampert: I’m really proud that we made 9 episodes out of a 10 episode show where the inner girls never really had big blowout fights. They’re a little nuanced thing, which is just very realistic to being in high school, but we really only had the main plot of them fighting in episode 10. I just think that’s a testament that you can show really complicated, supportive, and screwed up female friendships in a way that doesn’t always pit them against each other.
Ginny found herself torn between two guys: Marcus and Hunter. She ultimately has stronger feelings for Marcus, but the MANG situation threatens that. Could Marcus and Ginny be together given the MANG situation?
Sarah Lampert: I think Ginny’s relationship with Marcus and Hunter is a little bit of a mirror for Georgia’s relationship with Zion and Paul. I think, ultimately, they choose differently.