Warning: This article contains spoilers for Sweet Magnolias season 4.
The town of Serenity lost one of its own.
In the third episode of Sweet Magnolias season 4, it’s revealed that Bill Townsend (Chris Klein) died after leaving Serenity for his Texas hometown at the end of season 3. “We were looking for a cataclysmic event that would shake up everybody’s lives,” showrunner Sheryl J. Anderson tells Entertainment Weekly.
Shake up, indeed. Bill’s mother, Bonnie Townsend (Judith Ivey), arrives in Serenity to share the news of her son’s death, which sends shockwaves through the small town. As the season unfolds, audiences see how Bill’s death impacts his ex-wife Maddie Townsend (JoAnna Garcia Swisher), his long-lost son, chef Isaac Downey (Chris Medlin), and Noreen Fitzgibbons (Jamie Lynn Spears), with whom Bill shared a child.
We spoke to Anderson about how Bonnie delivers the news (and turns the town upside down), why it was time for the truth about Isaac to come out, and more.
Courtesy of Netflix
Chris Klein as Bill on ‘Sweet Magnolias’
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you decide to kill Bill? Was that always the plan?
SHERYL J. ANDERSON: It was not part of the plan from the get-go. We felt that Bill and Kathy had reached their redemption in Serenity. We were looking for a cataclysmic event that would shake up everybody’s lives. The first person you lose in your friend group, you’re always too young to lose a friend, but especially when you’re at an age where it’s completely unexpected, makes you question as you grieve, am I where I want to be? Am I with the person or people I’m meant to be with? We wanted to be able to trace the shock waves of a single event across this tightly bound group of friends and, of course, his family, in a way that everybody had to stop and take a really deep, thoughtful look at what they were doing with their lives, which leads more than one person to make some bold changes.
What was Chris Klein’s reaction to the news?
It was really hard for us to do this, because we all love Chris Klein, and when I told him we [felt] very strongly that this is a good direction to go story-wise, he was so gracious about it and so understanding.
Related: Sweet Magnolias star JoAnna Garcia Swisher on Maddie’s ‘brave’ transformation in season 2
Courtesy of Netflix
Heather Headley, Justin Bruening, JoAnna Garcia Swisher and Brooke Elliott on ‘Sweet Magnolias.’
Why was now the right time to introduce Bill’s mother, Bonnie?
At the very beginning of the show, we had talked a lot about how a man like Bill [grew] up. Who are the parents who poured into him and told him that he was the golden child and that he deserved everything and that he was always right and he should always come first, which were the character traits that we had found in Bill in the books. We hadn’t had the right moment to bring them to town. We thought well, his parents have to come for his funeral, so that when everybody is raw from the grief, everything Bonnie says is going to hit twice as hard. And we knew she was going to be what my dad would have called “a tough cookie,” because that made sense in terms of how Bill was raised.
Maddie and Bonnie clash from the start, but it comes to a head when Bonnie tries to slap Maddie. What does that moment reveal about their characters?
We wanted to see Maddie, despite her grief, protecting her children [and] her community from a woman who hadn’t been part of the community for a very long time. [Bonnie] held onto certain assumptions about everybody, but most particularly about Maddie. When she shares that story about Bill telling her to back off, we felt like that was a gift to Maddie to help her realize there had been more moments of strength and joy in her marriage than she might have been aware of. We wanted to give Maddie an opportunity to sort through the complex feelings that she had boxed up when she and Bill got divorced.
Even though they’re in conflict, Maddie is able to see the brokenness and the vulnerability and the regret that Bonnie has. What moved us most in crafting the arc of this relationship is that they come to a place of perhaps still slightly uneasy, but mutual respect by the time Bonnie leaves town. We felt like the almost-slap was Maddie — who had been trying very, very hard to be polite and supportive to Bonnie — [taking] control of the relationship. [Maddie] draws a boundary, protects her children first, then protects herself, and that helps Bonnie see how grief has clouded her priorities.
Courtesy of Netflix
Chris Medlin on ‘Sweet Magnolias’
How did you decide that everyone would find out Isaac is Bill’s son as a result of Bill’s death?
It was a way for us to have everybody know the secret, and for Isaac to realize that he had come to the point where everybody loved him so much they could absorb that news, and it didn’t change how they felt about him.
The only reason Noreen is mad at [Isaac for not telling her] is because he could have told her. It’s about the notion that your best friend doesn’t trust your friendship enough to share with you completely. We wanted to have both of them work through that, and then she extends him love and grace, and he accepts it, and they mend their friendship, which we thought was a beautiful model. Not just for the ruptures that arise out of grief, but anytime you have a falling out with somebody that you love, that there’s always a road back.
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When Bonnie tells everyone Isaac’s secret, she says she thought everyone knew. Did she actually think they all knew who Isaac’s father was?
She honestly thought everybody knew, and that’s actually to Bill’s credit. He didn’t come home and say, “Mama, you remember that baby you helped hide? I met him, but nobody knows.” He was like, “I met him. He’s a fine young man. He’s a fabulous addition to Serenity.” It speaks well of Bill, but also of Isaac. Bill never imagined his mother would go back to Serenity without [him] and share that news. It was our vision that he had shared it with her out of pride.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sweet Magnolias season 4 is streaming on Netflix now.
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