Philadelphia, PA. — (The Hollywood Times) 02/11/2025 — With the enduring small-town charm of Serenity, Season 4 of Sweet Magnolias is bringing us huge drama and more than a few twists and turns, including a surprise wedding, and a shocking funeral.
Sherryl Woods, the best-selling author of 150 romance novels, created these characters for the 11 “Sweet Magnolias” books and is an executive producer on the hit Netflix series. Season 4 of the popular series debuted on Thursday, Feb, 6.
We are thrilled to rejoin Maddie (Joanna Garcia Swisher) Helen (Heather Headley and Dana Sue (Brooke Elliott), as they experience the joys and challenges that life and love have to offer, and through it all they make sure they always have one another’s backs.
For the following Q and A Sherryl Woods looks at some spoilers, teasers, cliffhangers, and other storylines in a show that brings us love, romance, family, friendship, and faith amid the trials and tribulations we can all relate to.
Sherryl, it is wonderful to talk to you again. Please discuss the overall themes for season 4, the surprises, and what excites you.
Sherryl Woods: I think the thing that excited me the most, and it’s a spoiler, is the continuation of the relationship between Helen (Heather Headley) and Erik (Dion Johnstone), which, of course, was the relationship I wanted in the books. It was ironic when I was on set when they were filming Season 3 and the director pulled me aside and said, “I’m on team Erik, too.” I have been following this storyline closely and waiting for things to heat up between Helen and Erik again.
Overall, what do viewers have to look forward to in Season 4?
I think this season will please those others who are interested in that, as well. Of course, there are several other things that, as I was reading, I was stunned. [Spoiler Alert!] I didn’t know that the surprise wedding of Maddie (Joanna Garcia Swisher) and Cal (Justin Bruening] was coming at the end of episode one. That was a big surprise to me how that all came about.
If Maddie and Cal had a big surprise for people, do you think it would be hard to pull it off? Do you think there would be hurt feelings from her close friends, Dana Sue and Helen? Do you think the good would outweigh the bad?
I was very concerned about hurt feelings. Because of the way it came about, based on where we were at the end of last season, where things were very fragile among the three heroines. I was very much afraid of that. I think that that was dealt with by episode two, how this turn of events could have affected their friendship. I think they did a pretty good job of working that out as far as these are people who would want to be involved and weren’t. I think that it ended up being handled, but it did make me very nervous.
So, I’m trying to remember exactly when certain things took place. Of course, there’s the big surprise at the end of episode two [Spoiler Alert!] Bill Townsend’s sudden death [of a heart attack] that is completely unexpected. I wasn’t expecting it at all. That certainly opened up a lot of wounds and a lot of emotions for everybody.
I think it was unexpected for Maddie that she had so many mixed emotions. I think it raised a lot of issues for the kids again that they had had from episode one of Season 1 in terms of the relationship with their dad. I think all of that then got played out and gave us some new insights into Bill’s personality and his family background in a way.
I know you were on the set for Season 3, did you return for Season 4?
I was not on set for Season 4. I did not get to go back this past year while they were filming it. I was there when they were filming in the middle of Season 3. Of course, after that, I was able to have lunch at Sullivan’s when I was on set. Then, of course, in Season 3 they changed it to Sullivan and Friends, and so the set that I was on that felt like I got to be a customer at Sullivan’s was no more, that got changed.
I think one of the things that’s interesting and has been from the beginning, and we probably have talked about this in the past is grappling with that idea that readers have so much trouble with, which is they want everything to be precisely like the books.TV can’t be like that for a whole variety of reasons. So, what I’ve always said to people, to readers, is I wrote about these characters at one specific moment in their lives. It may have been more than one moment. But big crises, big relationship changes, whatever the case may be. Now that it’s on TV this is their life after that!
It’s fascinating for me to sort of treat it that way, almost like I’m hearing what’s new with an old friend. When you look at it that way for me it makes it – it’s never unpalatable to me in the first place because I sort of get it, that times change and for dramatic reasons they do all these changes from the books. I think when I look at it as I would with a real friend, when you see them maybe once a year you all get together, or however infrequently it might be, and you catch up on each other’s lives, there’s so much you’ve missed. Even somebody you see every week you miss stuff. This fills in all those gaps for you.
I think even when I’ve interviewed Julia Quinn about Bridgerton, I think she’s up against that, too. She created them and let them go and didn’t expect the series to be just like the books. She has set fans who are book purists like you do. And some that just know the TV series.
Right, right. It’s funny because I was just telling this story to someone. When I first moved to Ormond Beach in Florida from Miami, I hired somebody to take care of my lawn. His wife does his billing. I had not met her at all. At some point, months after we had been communicating about the bills and stuff like that, she said, “You know, I watch this show on Netflix. It’s my favorite show. And one of the people involved with it has the same name as you.” I said, “Well, that would be me.” She says, “You’re kidding me.” She was so excited. She didn’t realize – even though there’s a credit that says about the books I don’t think she paid attention to what the credit was. It was just the name struck her when she saw it. So, she was all excited and she ran out and started reading the books.
The other day they were supposed to come over here to do something for me. Paul checked in with me and said, “By the way, Jennifer wants to come because she wants to talk about Season 4 Sweet Magnolias.” I said I can’t tell her any spoilers, but I could talk and talk and talk about it.
What are you writing now?
I’m working on some other TV projects. I’m trying my hand at a script for a Christmas movie that’s based on one of my books. It’s a process because I’ve only done one other script in my life. I did one for Chesapeake Shores when I was working on that a little bit.
Can you say if the new work is for a Netflix series?
We don’t know. I don’t know where or what we’ll do with it when we do anything with it. That’s what I’ve been sort of focused on recently. Then there are a couple of other projects I’m doing with other people doing the bulk of it, I’m just involved on the periphery. Again, like all things TV, you never know whether it’s going to come together or not. Fingers crossed; I’ve got something else still working.
We’ve talked about the time-honored margarita nights. You don’t call them that. You said some people drink; some people don’t drink. Are you still doing them with your friends?
Yes. It was interesting because this summer I did an event in Colonial Beach, where I spent my summers up in Virginia. I had a bunch of the same friends there. When we were chatting with the crowd and I said some of my original margarita friends are here tonight and they’re scattered around, they immediately jumped up out of their seats. They love to be identified as part of margarita night. We still do them. Maybe we don’t do them as often as the Sweet Magnolias do. We probably get together maybe two or three times a summer and catch up on everything.
If these three leading ladies and best friends were ever separated for any reason, (such as Maddie taking a job in Manhattan as the Season 4 cliffhanger suggests), how would that work?
I don’t think it would be logical that they would be separated for terribly long. First of all, I think they would find a way just as I have, or any of us do, with people who are an extremely active part of our regular lives and they move to different locations. I experienced that a lot when I was still working in journalism because newspaper people roam. Journalists roam. They were in different locations. So, we always found ways to stay connected. I think the same thing would happen with Maddie, Helen, and Dana Sue, if something were to change in their lives, they would find ways to continue to stay connected. It just becomes harder.
I suppose in the real world there are some people you do lose touch with and you lose that sense of continuity. One of my friends in the real-life margarita group in Virginia ended up moving to New Mexico. She came back summer before last to visit, and we had a margarita night when she was there and it was like she’d never left. We were all still catching up and laughing and drinking margaritas.
Other people move on, it happens when your interests change, your direction changes, and your life changes. You just don’t have those opportunities anymore. But I suspect our three Sweet Magnolias gals will stay connected pretty tightly.
What about has anybody talked to you or have you ever thought about a spinoff of any of the characters, especially the teenagers? Is that something if they came to you that you’d be interested in?
I think if there were a way to do it that would make sense. I think that anything, even with writing books, books that I started out intending to be only three, like the Sweet Magnolias books, suddenly a character or an idea appears from out of nowhere. I think that if somebody came to me and said we could take these characters and spin them off.
In Season 4 of Sweet Magnolias, we’ve got grief, loss, and difficult family members who come and try to rock the boat. Please talk about the themes that we’ve been talking about for four seasons.
Well, when you mention grief, I think one of the things that the books did and that the TV series has done, and you have to do it in careful doses, is to take real-life issues and transitions. If you’re going to do a series that’s about – that people can truly relate to, you need to have those themes come into it. So that they continue to relate to it. And you can’t be static. It can’t always be about the romance. Because then it’s way too static. But when you can introduce a particular character’s grief or a particular character’s romantic loss or a change of career or a change – a transition of direction for somebody, we’ve seen that from the very beginning in terms of transitions. We had Cal, who was a baseball coach and then lost his job and now has to face who is he without baseball and coaching. What that then created was a whole new opening with the guys (Cal, Erik, and Isaac) taking on Sullivan’s.
I think in future seasons, Dana Sue has sort of transitioned away from Sullivan’s and is finding her footing with new opportunities with the foundation that she might do. I think that’s what keeps a series like this, or any dramatic series, fresh and relatable, is bringing in those elements.
You can’t dwell on them. You can’t dwell on grief in every single episode, you can’t dwell on just one romance. Even that one romance, as people learned in soap operas, and as a viewer, it used to drive me crazy, when the characters that I wanted to be together would get split apart. That’s happened in Sweet Magnolias where you see are Cal and Maddie going to make it because of this incident.
Or Erik and Helen and Ryan came into the picture just when they were getting together and that split them up. Now they have another chance, maybe. Dana Sue and Ronnie. Ronnie has come back after a divorce. All those kinds of things are relatable to real people.
That’s what I think long-lasting drama has to have, is that relatability that makes sense and reminds people that life is not static. And that change is the most constant thing in life, is that things change. Sometimes it’s by your choosing, sometimes it’s thrust upon you and you’ve got to figure out how to cope with it. I think that’s what it shows people. It shows people how to do it and go through those transitions.
When people contact you in person or on social media, what kind of feedback are you getting?
I think for the most part I think that it’s sort of what I was talking about, is that these are women and life situations that they’ve dealt with. And somebody may relate more to Helen or somebody may relate more to Dana Sue or to Maddie. Or some particular transition or one character, something like I went through that. I think that’s what has made it strong for them. Or I’ve had that problem with my kids, my kids have just gone through that. And trying to figure out how to cope with it.
I think that if you in the show help them find their way, it may not be the same way but at least it shows the audience that there is a way forward. We haven’t gone into some of the extremely tough subjects in the show yet that I felt like the books did, like Annie’s anorexia in the books. We haven’t really dealt with that in the show. But I think that things like what you’re going to see in Season 4 right now with the grief and the sense of loss and the transitions that people are facing, and even that big external thing of the hurricane.
We’ve had natural disasters this year up the wazoo in real life, between the fires in Los Angeles and two different hurricanes here in Florida. All that upheaval that comes along with that. Again, it’s taking people you know and they make it through. They can’t do it easily; they have to do it authentically and sort of show you the way and that it can be done kind of thing. If you gloss it over – that’s the other thing, is trying not to gloss it over and letting it last long enough in the show that it kind of sinks in.
I know I’ve asked you this before, but what is your current advice for aspiring writers of all ages and backgrounds?
Sit down and just do it and write what’s in your heart and what you feel like you need to tell the world. As opposed to trying to chase the market. Because the publishing world changes on a dime and what’s in today and you think I need to be writing X, Y, or Z because I can tell that’s what’s selling right now or that’s what’s being talked about on BookTok or TikTok or wherever by the time you write it that may not be what people are reading anymore anyway. So, write what’s in your heart. So, bring your passion to it. As opposed to trying to chase what’s convenient or trendy.
Did I ever tell you that I found Stealing Home, one of the 11 Sweet Magnolias books in a hospital gift shop when my mother was having a major heart procedure and it helped me through a difficult time?
I knew that you had discovered me on your own at some point, but I didn’t realize it was Stealing Home was the first one you found. The most rewarding thing as a writer is to hear those kinds of stories from people.
I get emails all the time from people that their mom was in the hospital, the same type of thing, and it got them through a tough time. Or it got them through a health crisis or it got them through a divorce. Whether it was because it made them laugh or because it gave them a reason to cry. That’s the best of anything that a writer could do, is to have people feel so emotionally attached to a book at a particular time. Whether it helped them to laugh or whatever the situation is, that’s the best part of doing this.
Seasons 1 to 4 of Sweet Magnolias are currently streaming on Netflix.