One thing to know about the cast of Ginny & Georgia is that when they have downtime from filming the Netflix drama in Toronto, they do a ton of karaoke. 

“That’s our cast thing; Season 1, we were going every weekend,” Sara Waisglass, who plays Ginny’s best pal Max Baker on the series, tells Tudum. 

At Tudum’s photo shoot, Waisglass is posing on top of a seafoam green Chevy with castmates Antonia Gentry (Ginny), Brianne Howey (Georgia) and Felix Mallard (Marcus), when Gentry and Waisglass suddenly freeze as the opening notes of The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” blast from the nearby speaker. “Oh, my God! It’s your fave,” Waisglass screams to a sheepish Mallard, before she and Gentry start dancing to his go-to karaoke song. “The way to get any Aussie excited at karaoke is to put [“Mr. Brightside”] on,” admits Mallard, who hails from Melbourne.

The upbeat tempo of The Killers’ signature anthem belies some pretty dark themes, and while the breezy Thursday afternoon photo shoot is brimming with buoyant energy, Season 2 of Ginny & Georgia starts in a grim place. When we saw them last, Ginny is on the outs with her former best friend Max after Max discovers that Ginny has secretly been seeing her twin brother, Marcus. To make things worse, in a crushing hallway confrontation, Marcus — in a moment of panic — tells all of Ginny’s friends that sleeping with her was a mistake. 

But that heartbreak has nothing on the rift tearing the eponymous mother-daughter duo apart. Devastated and in shock after learning from Cordova (the P.I. sniffing around all season played by Alex Mallari Jr.) that Georgia poisoned her ex-husband Kenny (Darryl Scheelar), Ginny steals her pseudo-boyfriend’s motorcycle and skips town.

Like many viewers suspected, Ginny is hiding out at her dad Zion’s (Nathan Mitchell) apartment in Boston when Season 2 picks up two weeks after the events of the Season 1 finale. “Where else would she turn?” says Gentry.

Even though Ginny has found sanctuary with her dad, internally she’s in crisis mode. “We see Ginny at the very end of her rope at the beginning of the season,” says Gentry. After all, Ginny skedaddles only after burning her mother’s poison of choice (wolfsbane plant) in their fireplace, sending a very clear message that Georgia can’t easily smooth over this problem with her usual Southern charm and a smile. Ginny’s saying, “I know what you did. I know how you did it. And I’m out,” series creator and executive producer Sarah Lampert tells Tudum.

Since Georgia killed Kenny to protect Ginny (after she witnessed him touching her daughter inappropriately), Lampert says that, in a way, Ginny is returning the favor by torching the evidence. “She knows Cordova is onto her mom, and even on her way out the door, even in feeling all this horror about this information that she just learned, she still has to protect her mom right back. They always protect each other at the end of the day.”

If you’re thinking that Georgia seems like her own version of the Mafia — a survivor of abuse and circumstances, who’s been forced to inflict justice where the system won’t — then you’re not alone. Howey agrees with you. “She has a limited toolbox, but the tools she does have, she uses to her advantage,” she says with pride. “She knows how to play those cards.” 

But her house of cards crumbles in Season 2. “We’re in the throes of devastation for Georgia,” says Howey. Coming off the high of her now-fiancé, Mayor Paul Randolph (Scott Porter), winning the election, “she’s so excited to be the mayoress, and then she gets home only to discover that not only are the kids gone, but they’ve figured out her deepest, darkest secret, which is the only thing in her life she’s been trying to make sure nobody ever found out, let alone the people who mean the most to her. She’s at her rock bottom, unfortunately.”

Watch Georgia Discover Ginny Knows Her Darkest Secret | Ginny & Georgia S2E1

Ginny and Georgia aren’t the only ones who ended Season 1 with a widening wedge in their relationship. Despite what Mallard describes as “little glimmers” of affection between the siblings, Marcus and Max spend most of the show’s first season sparring, before their tensions bubble over in the dramatic hallway showdown with Ginny.

“Marcus and Max are always two sides of the same coin,” says Mallard. “They deal with things in different ways, but they have a similar need to give love and be loved.” Since they both love and are loved by Ginny, it’s unsurprising that she’s at the root of their fighting by season’s end. For Waisglass, Max values loyalty above all, so of course she feels betrayed that Ginny kept her relationship with Marcus from her. “[Max] spent all of Season 1 having such a positive, happy, bubbly energy,” says Waisglass. “In Season 2, fans are going to see a very different side of her, a very angry side — ‘Mad Max,’ I like to call it.’” 

On the flip side of the Baker coin, Marcus is simply distraught. “At the end of Season 1, he and Ginny professed their love for each other and Marcus, as per usual, messes it up,” says Mallard. “Not necessarily intentionally, but just because he doesn’t know how to handle big emotions.” (Plus, he’s — understandably — kinda pissed that his ex ran off with his motorcycle without a word.)

Basically, every character is “picking up the pieces” after the fallout of Season 1, says Mallard. For Ginny and Georgia, one of those pieces is rather heavy. “There’s an enormous emotional elephant in the room,” says Howey, adding that it festers until “we acknowledge it head-on and put words to it.” But Gentry promises in time we will see Ginny’s “journey to healing, and to trust, and rebuilding all of the relationships that fell apart at the end of Season 1.”

That’s one way to look on the brightside. 

Ginny & Georgia Season 2 premieres on Jan. 5.

Additional reporting by Aramide Tinubu.