“Younger” kicked off its fifth season by chiding itself in wake of the #MeToo movement.
“I think that it’s remarkable that the show actually takes itself to task about behavior that the show presented as funny,” star Peter Hermann recently told Page Six. “I think [series creator] Darren [Star] always has his ear to culture, in an uncanny way. We all live in this culture, we listen, we absorb this moment in time. Not everyone can weave it so elegantly into a romantic comedy.”
This season, with Empirical Publishing set to release a new fantasy installment from a beloved author, series heroine Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) addresses the scirbe’s pervy comments with boss Charles (Hermann), who ends up scrapping the costly project altogether.
“It wasn’t a writers room saying, ‘You know what? We’re going to graft this #MeToo movement onto the show because it’s an interesting thing to do,'” Hermann, 50, explained. “The show actually looked at itself and said, ‘Here we have this character, L.L. Moore (Richard Masur), who behaved in ways that we excused with all of these excuses, that he’s just a dirty old man, or he didn’t mean it or he’s from a different generation and all of that.’ I’ll say horses–t, and finally said, time’s up, no more, enough.”
Though Moore’s downfall might lead to Liza’s true identity being exposed, Hermann could not be more proud of the product produced.
“It is a very, elegantly written story that comes organically out of the show, and I think that we, the show, and everybody cannot do enough to celebrate this pivotal, long-awaited and hard-won moment in our culture,” he said.
“Younger” airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on TV Land.