‘Younger’: Sutton Foster Reveals Why the Final Season Felt ‘Incredibly Freeing’
It’s been a great run, but Younger — the hit TV show created by the incredibly successful Darren Star — is coming to an end. Fans are currently saying goodbye to their favorite characters, and the show’s stars are all closing chapters in each of their respective careers. However, while the actors are most likely sad to see the show go, Sutton Foster (Liza Miller) revealed why the last season was also “incredibly freeing.”
‘Younger’ is a hit TV show that highlights ageism
Younger, which first aired in 2015, stars Foster (Liza) and Hilary Duff (Kelsey Peters), two successful women who work for a book publishing company.
However, Liza lied about her age to get her job, as she had recently become a single mother after calling it quits with her former husband and deciding to relaunch her career. The show then follows her around as she pretends to be a woman much younger than she actually is.
“Universally, it’s a story about ageism in general, and for me, I could relate to it, because suddenly I wasn’t the young guy anymore,” Darren Star recently said to Deadline. “I was the older generation, wondering, ‘Who are these millennials?’ … I felt like it was something that I was dealing with in my own life as well.”
Sutton Foster revealed why the final season was ‘incredibly freeing’
When Foster first began playing Liza’s character, she says she was a soon-to-be 40-year-old, which made the role and storyline pretty relatable for her.
“It was an interesting thing, dealing with getting older in my life, playing this character who was facing it head-on,” she said to Deadline.
However, by the time the seventh and final season came around, Liza’s true age had been revealed to everyone important to her. She was no longer living a lie and could actually be her true self.
“Grateful to Darren Star for creating a show that celebrates women of all ages,” she said, per Deadline. “… In this last season especially, Liza’s age is irrelevant and that was incredibly freeing. She’s just rockin’ it in her job, and truly living her most authentic self.”
Foster, of course, will also miss the show and the character she has played for seven season.
“It’s been seven years of my life and I’ve grown up so much too, parallel to her journey,” she also said to Deadline. “It was a real pleasure to play her and to play a character that was hopeful and optimistic. The environment of the show was just infused with so much love and respect, and it was a very special place to come to work. I’ll miss that so much.”
The final season of ‘Younger’ is currently streaming
COVID-19, of course, impacted the final season of Younger, but the TV show’s creator chose not to touch on it in the actual series.
“We had discussions about possibly including COVID,” Star said to The Hollywood Reporter. “We mapped out some story directions. But our timeline picked up where we left off — which, in the real-world timeline, was at least eight months before COVID would have affected the lives of these characters.”
Star said he ultimately used lessons he learned from making Sex and the City, as he chose not to include the 9/11 tragedy in the series.
“Younger is timeless. This [is] a series you can watch years from now. And COVID, to me, instantly stamps it,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Younger’s final season is currently streaming on Paramount+. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show released the first four episodes of season 7 on the streaming platform and then planned a weekly rollout for the other eight. It will also air on TV Land later this year.
