Just be warned, a few very mild spoilers for season six can be found below.
Normally if I were to find myself on a crowded pink carpet with the stars of a hit TV show gliding around me while my feet touched down in New York for a mere 24 hours I would be convinced it was just a fever dream brought on by an obsessive over-indulgence of rosé and streaming services.
But in this case, it was cold, hard reality.
I journeyed to the Big Apple for the season six premiere of Younger, which will be available to watch only on Stan from this Thursday 13 June. I was there representing Australia (do they award medals for that? I hope so) and my mission was to dig up as much behind-the-scenes information as possible about what will go down in this highly-anticipated new season.
While the early seasons of Younger, the TV series based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Pamela Redmond Satran, revolved heavily around divorced single-mother-of-one Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) posing as a single 26-year-old woman in order to get back into the workforce and score a job at Empirical Publishing, the sixth series will see our heroes take on a whole new set of challenges.
Some relationships will flourish while others will very much crash and burn, there will be a few long-held revelations finally come to light and of course, we’ll continue to get a very overly fictionalised and glossy account of how the book publishing industry actually works.
One of my first encounters on the pink carpet was with none other than the best-dressed woman on TV herself, Diana Trout, who is, of course, brought to life by the talented Miriam Shor. Even though her neck was currently free of any of the character’s signature overly-adorned neckpieces, there was still a touch of ‘Trout’ about her during the night as she moved amongst her castmates and talked with waiting press.
Before we could speak she expertly helped a series of nearby hovering handlers move the excited cast together for a group picture, calling out in a clear and commanding voice “come on everyone, just one more, do it for Mum and Dad!” while a pit of photographers furiously clicked and snapped away.
When we last left Diana in season five, she was floored by the news that Charles (Peter Hermann) had handed over the reins of the company to Kelsey (Hilary Duff) but had also found happiness with her plumber turned true love Enzo (Chris Tardio).
When she greets me on the carpet she starts off our conversation by saying “just what the hell Australia! I love it there, love the wine, love everything” before going on to explain why this season is the most volatile in the show’s history.
“There’s a lot of emotions this season, there are a lot of big reveals,” she told me. “These people now all really care about each other. It’s the most intense season yet and it’s a pretty intense show already. It’s also a very bumpy road for Enzo and Diana, but it’s a road you want to journey on with them. At the end of the season, it’s a really big finish to the story, it’s awesome.”
There are a lot of people clamouring at the event to know if this season will feature a brutal showdown between the characters of Liza, Diana, and Kelsey since they appear to be very much at odds with each other thanks to the new company regime.
But Miriam is quick to shut any of that talk down, saying ‘that’s just not our show”.
“Sutton is an incredible actor so whenever I need to play any scene with her, we’re going to have a lot of emotional depth,” she explains to me. “It’s like getting to sword fight with the best sword fighter in the world except you don’t die in the end, well at least I don’t die in season six, anyway.”
So, I ask, is some of the tension from this season going to culminate in Diana Trout finally finding out her long-time assistant Liza’s real age?
“I will say that things are revealed in season six, not in the way you’d think and certainly not in the order you’d think,” she replied. “In my own mind though, I’ve thought a lot about how Diana will react to the news. I like to think that she has secretly known the entire time and she’ll just look at Liza and say ‘ah, I knew it, whatever you got to do to get ahead lady.”
For Nico Tortorella, who plays Liza's former and much younger love, Josh, this is the season where Josh finally gets what he's been craving for so long.
"Josh has spent his whole life desperately trying to take care of someone and he really gets to do that in a new special way this season," Tortorella told me. "He also still gets to hold onto his own career and his relationships so it’s a blessing for him.
"As for whether or not he and Liza will get back together in the future, from my perspective, their relationship just never went anywhere and it needed to evolve and change to survive. They'll never really get back to the place they were in. Will they ever be romantic again though? I hope so, because I really love making out with Sutton Foster.
Tortorella, who is openly sexually fluid and uses the pronoun 'they' told me in a past interview that the show needs to evolve past the storylines and characters that it has been utilizing so far, going as far as to say the “Team Josh” and “Team Charles” campaign that has plagued Younger for seasons was misguided and upsetting to watch.
"There’s only one more storyline that I really want Josh to play out on the show," They said. "And that is that I just really want to see him date a trans girl. I mean, come on! I keep saying it to everyone. We need more inclusion and representation on this show."
It was easy to see just from being around this cast for one night only that they all care fiercely for the show and for the characters they portray, which is what has prompted a legion of fans to follow their lead and become so emotionally invested in their futures over the years.
And there are a lot more twists and turns yet to come, as season six is shaping up to be a bombshell-filled ride.
While making my way around the Younger premiere, in a high-rise rooftop bar overlooking the twinkling lights of Manhatten where the cast and their guests knocked back specialised and deadly cocktails called 'Millennial Spiritz', I picked up a few more season six secret we might need to keep just between us.
Molly Bernard, who plays PR maven Lauren Heller, said her character has a whole new storyline this season. For the first time ever, she's part of all the action going down at Empirical Publishing and things end up getting a little loose.
"Having Lauren at Empirical is like watching a poodle run around a grocery store," she confided to me."She sticks out a little at the office but she takes her job very seriously, Kelsey is her star."
While Debi Mazar, who plays Liza's best friend Maggie Amato, let it slip that Maggie gets a new love interest this season and there is a lot of 'physical comedy' to play with, while Charles Michael Davis who plays Zane Anders barely put up a fight before confirming to me that his character's relationship with Hilary Duff's Kelsey is very much full steam ahead this season, even though last year it appeared they were heading for a breakdown.
There's always been a special touch of magic about Younger, and this season is set to be no exception.
The first five seasons of Younger are available to watch now, only on Stan. Season six will drop weekly on Stan on Thursdays, the same day as it airs in the US.
For more stories like this, you can follow Mamamia Entertainment Editor Laura Brodnik on Facebook. You can also visit our newsletter page and sign up to “TV and Movies” for a backstage pass to the best movies, TV shows and celebrity interviews (see one of her newsletters here).