Ginny & Georgia Creator Sarah Lampert on How Gil Affects Georgia in Season 2 [Interview]

By now, Ginny & Georgia fans have had a chance to binge-watch Ginny & Georgia Season 2 in all its glory. That includes seeing a new character come into the fold, who complicates matters in some major ways.

That character is Austin’s father Gil (played by Aaron Ashmore), who so far, we’ve only heard about.

I recently spoke with creator and executive producer Sarah Lampert about the importance of that character and how he affects the story in Season 2. (You can read the first part of my interview with Lampert here, which focuses on the relationship between Ginny and Georgia, Paul, and more.)

Lampert said that when introducing the character, they wanted to be careful about not making him immediately alarming. That includes Young Gil, played by Ben Caldwell in the flashbacks, as well as Aaron Ashmore as Gil in the present, who Lampert described as “chef’s kiss.”

“We see that Georgia is upset by them, but he’s really sweet in flashback. He orders Chinese food. He’s okay that she has a kid. He shows up with Christmas presents. We very specifically wanted to make this a charming character at first before we revealed that he’s very abusive, because I think it’s really important to show that even a character as smart, even a character as strong, even a character as self-sufficient as Georgia can be a victim and a survivor of abuse,” Lampert said.

“And there’s no one victim, there’s no one picture of what that looks like,” she continued. “So for us, it was really important to show that it started with love bombing. It started with him showing up with a lot of gifts. And then it slowly became more emotional.”

“There was discussion in the writer’s room about whether or not he would even be physically abusive. And ultimately we decided yes, because we wanted the scene in episode nine.”

“But I think a lot of his power over Georgia is that he knows what buttons to push with her. And we see him being really emotionally abusive with her in the sense of he knows that her deepest insecurity is that she doesn’t deserve a good life. And he continues to reinforce that idea in her,” Lampert said.

Gil’s presence really allows the audience to see a different side of Georgia in Season 2. “All of Season 1, Georgia was incredibly strong. We saw her making power moves left and right. There’s a reason audiences loved her,” Lampert noted.

“Then in Season 2, I think audiences are going to struggle a little bit with seeing Georgia, I think, stripped down a little bit because A, Ginny knows her deepest, darkest secret, so she can no longer compartmentalize what she’s done there and she has to face that. And then also Gil comes to town and just further regresses her,” she said. “I really think we break down Georgia in Season 2 a little bit. So I think that was the purpose that character served.”

Ginny & Georgia Season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix. 

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Ginny & Georgia Creator Sarah Lampert Talks Season 2, Says Ginny and Georgia Will Have to ‘Get to Know Each Other on a Deeper Level’ [Interview]