Erika Henningsen didn’t always see a clear path for her Four Seasons character, Ginny, in season two.
“I thought I would maybe have to say goodbye to this lovely show after season one,” Henningsen tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent Zoom call from her Los Angeles home.
Season one ended with the tragic death of Ginny’s boyfriend, Nick (Steve Carell), and the reveal that Ginny was pregnant with their child. “To have that cliffhanger and to know that the writers were going to use that to incorporate me into the friend group beyond just as the girlfriend of Steve Carell’s character was so exciting,” Henningsen says.
In season two, Ginny’s still with The Four Seasons gang. The series, which follows a tight-knit group of friends, was created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield. Netflix just announced it’s been renewed for a third season.
It’s fair for Henningsen not to see a clear path back in for her character — the show, after all, is about a friend group, and Ginny was an outsider for most of season one. But Ginny is working through motherhood and the complicated, at times codependent relationship she’s developed with her late boyfriend’s ex-wife, Anne, played by Kerri Kenney-Silver.
Below, Henningsen digs into Ginny’s season two journey, why she loved the Anne and Ginny storyline, continuing to work with Tina Fey and her hopes for season three.
How did you feel coming into ths season? Obviously, you knew things were going to be different.
We were all just so happy to come back. This is a great cast. It’s a great thing to be on. My managers joke about this all the time. They’re like, “We’ve never had a client not call us from set with a problem. This is very rare that every time we call you, you’re just like, we’re on time. Everybody’s happy. I’m having a ball.” It’s really enjoyable. This season was super fun because I think season one was so much about Ginny being just the young, fun one, which I definitely identify with, but having a baby added a bit more gravitas and chaos to the character, which I really enjoyed.
You mentioned in another interview that she was just thrown into adulthood and motherhood and had no choice about it. How do you tackle that mindset? It’s almost like a new character in a way.
Oh my gosh, I totally agree with you. I watched the Ginny that shows up in the first two episodes of season two, and I’m like, oh my gosh, I hope people still like me. I feel like she’s behaving with such fire within her. She’s got some flint. First off, we’re given the best words ever, so we don’t have to do a ton of work, but I guess where I have a blind spot is I’m not a mom. I haven’t been eight to nine months pregnant. I remember getting the script for that big confrontation scene with Anne and being like, “Oh my God, I can’t say this to her. She’s also lost somebody. She’s struggling. I can’t say this. People are going to hate me.”
How did you work through that?
I talked to some of my friends who are moms and they were like, I don’t understand. When you’re that pregnant, all you care about — and really all you care about after you’re pregnant and the baby’s there — is your kid. You will be antagonistic, and you will be aggressive in order to protect that child. That was the backbone from which everything sprang forth, was this allowance to be a little messy and to fight, because Ginny tries to be the peacekeeper in season one. She really wants to smooth over the edges that her presence has created. In this [season], she’s like, “I’ve got a kid now. I got to square up.”
Henningsen as Ginny and Kerri Kenney-Silver as Anne in Episode 202 of ‘The Four Seasons.’
Emily V Aragones/Netflix
Obviously the relationship with Anne was so interesting. Can you tell me a bit about finding that?
They are these weird sister wives for a second there. The odd couple is what I kept calling us. I feel like the biggest thing that Kerri and I agreed on, and what our writers did a great job crafting, was this can’t feel like Ginny’s taking advantage of Anne’s kindness. There’s a great thing that Anne says: “I’m 55 years old. I’m not good at dating, but you know what I’m good at? I’m good at raising a kid.” The nature of the show is we skip forward in time a lot, so there are some gaps we have to fill in. A big question for me is like, why is Ginny with them and not her friends?
Totally.
I don’t know if you remember the friends from season one, but those people are not ready to have a baby at their bottomless brunch. For Kerri and I, so much was crafting this mutual respect and need for the other person. I obviously need her and her wisdom as a mother. She needed Ginny and Gino for a direction. I think we come full circle from sort of [being] at a standoff, and then we become almost too enmeshed. But by the end, I think we come around to an actual friendship because my character is so grateful for what her character has done. But then Ginny, in her own sort of younger way, says to Anne, “You can still be the wild person you were.” I think that is the gift that Ginny gives Anne at the end, so that this doesn’t feel like a one-way street.
What about that moment stuck out?
I remember getting that scene and being like, “Oh, that’s a sweet moment.” But then when I saw it all put together, I realized that moment’s so important because you see Ginny gives back to Anne just by holding up the mirror and saying, “It ain’t over. Your story’s not done.” I’m really happy that it would be so easy for one of the other characters to say that to her, because I know they all believe it, but I think hearing it from this younger generation who sees her not as a story ending but a new chapter beginning, I think that is so powerful for her character and my character’s arc.
I like hearing about the importance of making sure it doesn’t feel like a one-way street. It’s such an exceedingly complicated relationship, of course, no matter what.
Totally. [It’s] so complicated and so weird. I love that it’s weird. I love that we have the couples and the couples are dealing with problems that every couple has seen. And then I love that we have this odd little duo of her and I that’s so chaotic and bizarre. But I love that we’re getting problems that are not marital, but more about motherhood and trusting your intuition. They both need help trusting their inner voice — Ginny’s with being a mother, and with Anne, knowing that she still has so much ahead of her.
When did it become apparent to you that you were necessary to the season two plot?
I think by the time we got to Thanksgiving. From [episodes] one through four, I kept thinking they’re doing such a good job, they must be doing this good a job because I’m going to say goodbye. The arc from one to four is Ginny taking her first steps of being independent as a mom. It’s so beautiful, but of course nobody nails motherhood in five months. When I showed up for the Thanksgiving episode and honestly, I think there’s like a beautiful parallel between in that episode, Kerri Kenney-Silver’s character and her daughter’s home from college, and her daughter is like, “I’m ready to fly.” I feel like I’m kind of the daughter who’s afraid to leave the proverbial nest, the freeloader, if you will. I think by the time we got to that episode and you also sort of see how Ginny is enmeshed with not just Anne but Claude [Marco Calvani], and as a part of the Thanksgiving experience. She’s somehow become a part of this weird chosen family, and I’m excited. I feel like there’s so much to unpack with the way the generations speak to one another.
Erika Henningsen.
Jenny Anderson
What do you hope going forward?
I have no idea if we’ll get to do another season. [This conversation took place before season three was announced.] I have no idea if I’ll be a part of it, but I think we created a great foundation for how all these people can still interact outside of their marriages. I love the scenes that I have with Claude in this season because I just love Marco Calvani. I mean, I love everybody, but Marco is my buddy. Everybody wants that person at the dinner table that they can look at and be like, “Can you believe this happening right now?” I think in the friend group, he is that for her. They operate as sort of outsiders, him because he is an immigrant and her because she is younger, and yet they still find themselves a part of it. So I’m excited to see Ginny, Claude and Gino take a road trip.
What has your partnership with Tina been like? It’s nice to see how it’s grown from the Mean Girls [musical] days.
I think the girl who watched Mean Girls once a week in high school would be kind of shocked that the throughline in my career is Elizabeth Stamatina Fey. It’s changed so much. I still put her, and she will hate this, on a pedestal. I still desperately want to make her proud and impress her and never embarrass her or her project or anything she’s working on, because I met her when I was 24 years old. That little person will still live inside me. But I have felt more confident. I feel like I’m finally sort of hearing the message that she’s tried to instill in me since I was 24, which that nobody’s giving out favors in this business. You’re here because you’re meant to be here, and you earned it. Especially because Tina is a woman who has earned everything that she has worked for, it’s really important, as a young woman who keeps finding my way into her projects, that she really wants me to understand that I am here for a reason. The reason is because of me and my work, and they just happen to be Tina Fey projects. That being said, I still can’t find the words to thank her because if she didn’t make these projects, and if she didn’t sign on the dotted line when my name comes across her desk, I would not be doing them.
Has the relationship changed at all?
Now that we have worked together as collaborators and peers, and not like boss to employee, I just know a lot more about her. She’s such a paradox. She is such an extrovert when you watch her in things. I was watching her in Sisters, which is truly one of my favorite Tina and Amy [Poehler] performances. She’s so extroverted, so crazy and so funny. But what she really wants to do is to sit with a lavender candle and a mug of tea and have people over on the couch. She’s just this wonderful mix of somebody who can keep all the plates spinning at once, but is eager to have a dinner reservation that’s at 5:30 p.m., so we can all be in our jammies with our families at 8 p.m.
Look, I love these shows like Overcompensating and Euphoria. I love these young shows. Even I Love LA, I love that show. I don’t know if I’m cool enough to be on those. I am right where I’m supposed to be with these 50-year-olds because they’re my speed. They’re my style, and I just love them. Part of that is because their resting heart rate is 12 years old. They really do all just want to have fun and be silly and be goofy. I love getting to see that side of Tina. I love getting to see the girl who grew up doing theater in Philadelphia, who wants to sing. I’ve got a video of her and Colman [Domingo] singing Cabaret. Colman also comes from theater, and anytime he starts singing, Tina is like right there. I love that about her.