Alison Brown Talks ‘Younger’ Season 4 and Strong Female Friendships [Exclusive Interview]

One more person knows Liza’s secret.

Earlier this month at the ATX Television Festival, creator Darren Star, writer and producer Alison Brown, and several members of the cast gathered for a panel to discuss Younger Season 4 following a special screening of the season premiere. During the panel, we got a few teasers for the upcoming season, including new character pairings, new complications, and a trip to Ireland.

Following that panel, I sat down with writer and co-producer Alison Brown to talk further about the upcoming season and discuss what makes the series so unique.

Brown said one of the most difficult things about this season was the rift between Liza and Kelsey, which we’ll see on the season premiere. “It’s a bomb that was dropped on Kelsey.”

That bomb leads to a surprising moment at the end of Younger Season 4 Episode 1. Without giving anything away, it’s something that was heavily discussed in the writers room. “It was a big debate in the room,” Brown admitted.

“To me, the heart of the show is Kelsey and Liza, and that relationship,” she said. The difficulty came from protecting that relationship while “still allowing this thing to happen, because I do believe it’s a consequence of Liza’s actions.”

Having Kelsey and Liza at odds with each other will be key to this season, and it will take a while for Kelsey to recover from the lie (if at all).  “[With] Thad dying, we gave her a couple of episodes to mourn, but we were like, ‘this is bigger for her,'” Brown revealed.

That moment is still an unforgettable one, and it’s one that opened up new possibilities for the show.

“I loved it so much. That was a Darren Star pitch. We were all sitting in the room like, ‘What can Thad do? How are we gonna have this relationship? And no one thought, ‘well a beam could fall on him.’ Then Darren says it, and we’re like ‘oh… yeah.'”

While everyone has their thoughts being either #TeamCharles or #TeamJosh, the most significant relationships on Younger are the friendships.

“I feel like that the core is the relationships between the women. Liza/Kelsey — also Liza/Diana is a big one too. And the romance is the thing that helps the audience come back. It’s an interesting story, and you kind of want to tune in for that. But I think why people really love the show is because of the strong female friendships. That’s what I think. That’s why I love the show,” Brown said.

Brown also spoke to the fact that we’re able root for a character who has created such a complicated web of lies. She believes that’s due in large part to the actress playing Liza, Sutton Foster.

“I don’t know of many actors who could play someone who’s lying to the people she cares about, but Sutton pulls it off,” she noted. “At her core, she’s a very likable, innocent, sweet person.”

It’s also easy to be on Liza’s side because we see what she’s up against.

“If I needed to get a job and no one was hiring me, I would do the same thing. If I have to lie about my age, sure,” Brown said. “I relate to women in the workplace trying to do their best. I think that’s what I love about the show. It’s like, these women their careers are important to them, and they’re just trying to make it.”

“That is the thing that, if I wasn’t a writer on the show, I would tune in just to see that,” she added.

Brown recalled a moment from the pilot episode that she believes sums up why the show is unique, and it’s one that brings us back to the focus on strong female friendships.

“They walk out of the bathroom and Kelsey says to Liza, ‘I got your back.’ First of all, I didn’t expect her to say that. I don’t know why I didn’t expect her to say that, but I was just so happily surprised, and that’s why I think the show’s different. Because on any other show, I think it would be maybe a catty exchange, or nothing would be said, but she said, ‘I got your back.'”

Younger returns Wednesday, June 28th at 10/9c to TV Land.

Be sure to check out all of our coverage of the ATX Television Festival right here (there is still more to come).

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