Younger was slated to start production of its seventh and final season in New York last March. “I was all excited,” Debi Mazar, one of the show’s stars, tells me. “I had the scripts, I was about to have a wardrobe fitting, I was going to have my acrylic nails put on.” But then the city was shut down by the pandemic – and soon Mazar herself was, too: She got a positive COVID diagnosis just days after Younger Season 7 closed up shop. “My experience was horrible,” she says. “I was very sick.”

COVID ultimately caused a seven-month shooting delay for the show, and when the actors returned to set, it was with strict protocols and some unexpected adjustments. Some cast members could no longer come to the set (Miriam Shor and Charles Michael Davis had to appear via FaceTime), which opened up a new storyline for Lauren (Molly Bernard) to try to fill the diva shoes of Shor’s Diana. “Of course, we miss Miriam dearly,” Bernard says. “Her FaceTime scene is a lovely breath of, ‘Oh! There she is!’”

The upside of this situation is that viewers get to spend a lot more time with the popular Maggie the OWL (older wiser lesbian) and the pansexual Lauren, who are sometimes lovers and sometimes just pretending to be.

Mazar and Bernard chatted with The Dipp about shooting this last and final season.