Foster gets ‘Younger’
PERSONALLY, SAYS Sutton Foster, she’s just as happy not to be twentysomething again.
“I don’t know what I’d do,” says Foster, who turned 40 last week. “I felt like such a gypsy in my 20s. The only way I’d want to go back is if I could redo what I did.”
So instead Foster will go back to someone else’s 20s. As Liza Miller in the TV Land sitcom “Younger,” which premieres Tuesday, she’s a divorced woman of 40 who discovers she can only get back into the workforce if she can pass for a recent college graduate.
With the help of her friend Maggie (Debi Mazar), she does. Now she has to learn how to be 25 today.
“When I was growing up, there was no Instagram, no Twitter,” she says. “It’s a whole different world today.”
Nor is technology the only complication. After Liza makes a new female friend, Hilary Duff's Kelsey, she catches the eye of Josh (Nico Tortorella), and that’s a whole new ballgame.
“She doesn’t want to hurt anybody,” says Foster. “But she has the secret to protect, so how does she balance that?”
There are a few upsides to losing 15 years, Foster concedes.
“I started in theater when I was 17,” she notes, “so for a long time I was the youngest. Then you get older and suddenly I’m the one with the outdated jeans.
“Now I get to be the cool kid again.”
But she’s fine, she says, that it’s just a role.
“Ageism is very frustrating for me,” she says. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else in my life. I’m looking forward to being an actress in my 40s. It will be interesting to navigate.
“And I think TV has become a place where women can look like women. Like real people.”