The fifth season of Sweet Magnolias saw plenty of change in the Netflix series—including the relationship between Kyle Townsend and Lily Song flourishing as they both contemplated their futures. But what stands out about their arc is that each of them continue to develop individually, as well. Sweet Magnolias Season 5 is Lily’s best season.

Artemis joined TVBrittanyF.com after the Season 5 premiere to give her perspective on Lily’s trajectory. What were her favorite scenes? How have she and Logan Allen developed their wonderful rapport? And how is she continuing to expand her already versatile career?

Brittany Frederick: What’s your perception of Lily in Sweet Magnolias Season 5? You’ve had four seasons of developing her and now it feels like all that development is coming together.

Artemis: She’s trying to figure out where she fits in and how she can navigate her way in this new town where everyone knows each other, but she doesn’t know anybody. I feel like in this season, we really see her. She has her full community around her, her friends, her relationship with Kyle. And now she is just trying new things and seeing how she can make the most of her last summer in Serenity before everything changes.

Her relationship with Kyle is front and center this season. How would you describe building that dynamic with Logan Allen and getting viewers to invest in them as a duo?

Logan is one of my favorite scene partners ever. He’s so present when we’re filming—and there’s just something special about shooting scenes where you’re one-on-one with another person. In this show, it’s always really fun when we have those group scenes and everyone’s together. I’ve been likening it to a school reunion in a way, because everyone’s here. It’s like a semester where you’re all finally back together. But one-on-one scenes are so special because you connect with that person. You’re looking in their eyes. You’re reacting to everything they have to say. And Logan is such a wonderful partner in scenes to do that with.

We also, off-set, talk about a lot of our acting processes. Something we started doing this season is we were like well, we may as well use our downtime wisely. Let’s start asking all these amazing actors who we get to work with about their processes of how they get into character, how they really feel these moments, and maybe get some tips and tricks. I feel like having a partner like him, where he also just craves to keep getting better at his craft, has been such a growing experience for me.

And also, our chemistry has grown off screen so much. I feel like he’s a really good friend of mine now, that it feels so easy to just talk to him. So when we’re in a scene, it almost feels like we’re having a conversation that we would have had right before they called action, and we’re just continuing that energy into the scene.

What are some of your favorite Season 5 scenes, either because they’re great for your character or they were just enjoyable for you as an actor?

There is a scene with me and Logan that we filmed pretty early on… Kyle really wants to have all these grand gestures to show his love for Lily, and she wants him to just bring it down and speak from his heart. He keeps quoting poetry and quoting the greats to try to express his love, and she’s telling him that all she needs to hear is what’s coming truly from his heart.

The reason why that scene sticks in my mind is because we were originally supposed to film it in another location, but that day we were getting thunderstorms all day. I think I stayed in my trailer for hours and fell asleep because we’re waiting and waiting and waiting. And we were really disappointed at the time because we had been rehearsing, talking about it, getting so prepared.

But then because we rescheduled it and we had been prepared for so long, it felt so second nature already. [There was] no memorization needed. It was already just so deep within us that it flowed so smoothly. And I believe that was directed by Norman [Buckley]; Norman is such a wonderful director to work with. I really like any scenes I get to film with him. And he was the first director I ever worked with on Sweet Magnolias.

As a whole, how do you look back on Season 5? Because there really is such growth and change, which to your point is also opportunity for you as a performer.

I think that this is such a special season. All of the characters throughout the show have been going through all these different problems in life and dealing with them maybe not in the best way at first—but I feel like one of the most beautiful parts of the show is how they are able to find a way to find grace for everyone and to turn any bad situation into something beautiful. And it’s no different this season.

My character in particular, she graduates from high school and then there’s the question of how are we going to spend this final summer before everything changes for all of us? She’s going to college, Annie’s going to college, Kyle is still in high school—so how are we going to navigate that? It’s been really great to see how these teenagers are moving into adult life… and then seeing how they are maturing in how they handle these kinds of things that come up in life.

We hope that they handle everything well. We hope that all their maturing that we’ve seen throughout the seasons has brought them to a good place where they do have the capacity to handle things in a very mature way. And it’s a really fun season. There is a part of my arc that was so, so fun to play. I got to tap into my inner theater nerd… I thought it was so fun to be able to do Shakespeare, something I’ve never done before as an actor. But then even more than that, I’m an actor playing a character who’s doing Shakespeare for the first time. So there were a lot of layers to it that were fun to play around with.

You, like Logan, have creative interests beyond just acting. So what do you do between seasons? Are there other things you’re working on, or other things you’d like to try that you haven’t yet?

I’ve been very lucky that a lot of times there [has] been great, great scheduling for me. I’ve been able to film a couple films and TV shows in between some seasons of Sweet Magnolias, which I’m so grateful it worked out that way. Because I was always telling everyone, my Sweet Magnolias schedule comes first, so if this doesn’t fit in it, oh well—but it somehow always did. I was very fortunate to have that work out.

And up until recently, I’ve also been working on school and getting my degree as well. That took up a lot of my time, but I actually graduated last month. So I’ve been filling that extra time with working on my writing.

Has that experience developing as a writer begun to inform the way you approach material as an actor? Have you found a commonality between the two?

My love for writing started before my love for acting, and it actually caused me to want to be an actor. In middle school, I had a best friend and we both loved to write. We would work on stories together, or just sit next to each other in one of our rooms and write for hours. And we started getting this idea of, what if we saw what we’re writing actually on a screen? So we would get dressed up and act out the scenes we wrote—and that’s when I realized I actually really love living in this kind of story and portraying it that way. That’s where I first got the idea of maybe I want to be an actor.

But now, as more of an actor and someone who’s trying to get back into my writing, my minors are in English and creative writing. In this last semester of school, I was in a screenwriting class. And I did feel like working regularly as an actor really informed how I wrote for the screen, because I was able to look at it myself and read the dialogue and feel like, is this clunky at all? Is this something that would feel weird as an actor? Am I over-directing the actors with this writing? Should I leave some things up for interpretation? And so it was cool. I would step away from the computer, do something else, come back and try to look at it with fresh eyes as an actor and see how I would feel about it then. It really has impacted how I write.

Other than Sweet Magnolias, what are some of your favorite roles? What should people go and watch after Season 5?

One I’m really proud of is this kids’ film called Popular Theory. It’s about a young genius, trying to come up with her own new invention. She does succeed at it, but then it has crazy consequences that she could have never foreseen. The invention she comes up with is she finds a formula for popularity and is able to try to use that to her advantage, but it quickly spirals out of control and then she has to deal with it.

I think it’s the cutest movie ever. I got to play the bully, the popular girl—basically Regina George in the film. [Laughs.] So I’m not a character you should root for, but I think it’s a really good film.

Sweet Magnolias Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix. For more with Artemis, you can also follow her on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook and X. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Netflix.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.