JC: It’s also fun that they’re flashbacks, because I put on my long hair and we kind of jump into our dynamic, which is fun.
RB: The death scenes, or when I was sick, those were just so sad to shoot. Sometimes you’d come home tired, but then the other ones were fun, then sad again.
Han answers our burning questions about the season 3 finale.
TV: Susannah has gotten a lot of flack this season online. Yeah. Do you feel like that’s fair? What kind of responsibility does she hold for bringing this situation into existence?
RB: I think she would’ve been really sad to know that this was the result of what they interpreted her wishes to be, because I don’t think if she had been around long, I don’t think she thought that maybe they were taking it as literally, that you need to end up together at all costs. I think truly she wanted them to all follow their heart and end up either by themselves or with the right person. She may have thought that Jeremiah and Belly were too young to get married, so I think she had a different intention and it got a bit lost in translation.
TV: It did make me think about grieving a parent. There’s kind a tendency to [idolize] them and make it seem like they never did anything wrong, that they were an angel. Have you thought about that and how Susannah is portrayed with that lens?
RB: That definitely happened. When you’re young and you go through really intense emotional things, especially a parent dying, you hold onto them in a different way. You don’t have the gift of perspective and of being older, so you might think that things that are said are like the law, or you have to sort of misinterpret what the person was telling you. So I think [Belly] was holding on too much to this or too tightly to Susannah’s messages, and Susannha would’ve been heartbroken to know that.
JC: She loves Susannah so much and looked up to her so much. It’s like she etched her words in stone and just held them.
RB: I think Susannah forgot that she was so young or that she was taking it so seriously. I think she didn’t realize that.
TV: The characters spend a lot of time wondering what Susannah would’ve wanted, and Laurel is the first person to say, “We don’t know.” When she has that tense conversation with Jeremiah and Belly and earlier in the season, how were you thinking about Laurel’s motivation there? What is going through her mind?
JC: It was so hard because they were so earnest and full of hope, but I feel like Laurel is a realist and a pragmatist, and it’s true. You really don’t know. You can sort of idealize this version of Susannah, what she would’ve wanted, but we really don’t know, and I think Laurel would think that Susannah would also think it was early. I mean, she’d probably take a different approach than Laurel, but I feel like she knows her well enough that they would probably agree, and so I think she wanted to talk to them, but she wasn’t ready to have this full conversation and to have to go there, so it was hard.
TV: In the books, we learn that Laurel had dated Adam first, and I’m curious if you think that dynamic mirrors the way Conrad, Belly, and Jeremiah work and the idea of handing off someone so they could be with someone else.
RB: Interesting. I wondered if there was love triangle. I would be curious to see that in a prequel.
