Yahoo Lifestyle 'Sweet Magnolias' Star Heather Headley Promises Fans Will Get Answers in Season 4
Serenity is calling our name! After a nearly two-year wait, the highly anticipated fourth season of the Netflix hit series Sweet Magnolias dropped on Thursday, February 6, inviting fans to grab their besties and tune into the small-town drama.
To recap, Sweet Magnolias season 3 was one for the books—which, BTW, is fitting considering the series is actually based on a series of books by Sherryl Woods. Anyway, across 10 episodes, Sweet Magnolias season 3 viewers witnessed the ups and downs of relationships of all kinds—romantic, familial, and friendships included. Two standout moments from the season 3 plotline included the crumbling of Helen Decatur and Ryan Wingate’s on-and-off relationship and the fallout between the Magnolias.
To get a better sense of those moments and prepare for what’s next in Serenity, we sat down with Heather Headley, the actress who plays Helen on the show. Ahead, enjoy a sneak peek into Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias.
“I'm excited for [fans] to see some answers,” Heather tells Country Living. “We have a little jump into the future, but I think a lot of people last season weren't happy with Helen for so many reasons. And so I'm excited for them to see answers. I'm excited for them to see storylines develop. I'm excited for them to see how the women continue in this friendship and how it deepens, which I think is a big thing for women and people in friendships—just how we support each other, how we balance each other's crowns and tilt it up for each other if we see somebody's falling, how we stand with each other and hold them up; how you're a magnolia to somebody else.”
That last part is especially poignant, as the unwavering friendship between Helen, Maddie, and Dana Sue is the core of the show, and its momentary fallout in season 3 was hard for viewers to watch, albeit necessary in Heather’s eyes.
“I think that at times you lash out at the people you’re closest to; when the people you're closest to are telling you the truth—that you also know is the truth, but you can't admit it —you lash out,” Heather shares. “I think [the Magnolias’ fallout] was one of those lashing out [moments].”
And it all centered around Ryan. “I think Helen had loved Ryan all her life and all she wants is to be with him,” Heather explains. “And I think even more than that, she wants a family; she wants what the other girls have.”
So when Ryan came back telling her that he loved her and wanted to marry her, of course, she wanted to jump headfirst at the opportunity, even if, after all the back-and-forth over the years, she had her own doubts.
“In the back of your mind, you know this might not be right, and then everybody kind of tells you, ‘It's not right,’ and you just lash out,” Heather says. “I think that's what it was, and I think there's a truth in that.”
Heather also believes that there’s truth in what came next.
“I love the truth of ‘Well, we can come back and reconcile’—that what we cannot have happen between us is some crazy man who's not going to stick around,” she says. “You know what I mean? So I loved the fact that they had to rekindle and to reconcile it, and put that away, to forget that. Like the good book says, as far as the East is from the West, to forget it and then say, ‘We're friends again; that is a moment in time that will never happen.’”
It’s that resilience that touches Heather the most.
“I think that as women, we do have fights, you know? So I'm sure that at some point, the viewers would say, ‘Wait a minute, these dolls never fought each other? These dolls have never said, ‘I don't like your dress’ or ‘Why do you do that?’’ Heather shares. “So I think it was a moment that had to happen, as much as I hated it; as Helen and as an actress, I hated it—but I do love the reconciliation and the restoration of the friendship. And they are back. They are back to normal and even stronger than ever.”
Heather thinks that how Helen handled her romantic relationships—pushing Eric to the side when Ryan came back, and prioritizing Ryan when she perhaps knew better—was necessary, too, as painful, obvious, and disappointing as it may have felt to viewers.
“I remember saying to a showrunner, ‘I think she's got to go see this thing through with Ryan, because if she doesn't and she moves on with Eric, there will always be this part of her that goes, ‘Oh, I wonder what would have happened,’” Heather recalls. “So it's almost like you have to walk through that muck, you know, that dirty water; get dirty and be like, ‘Okay, I'm making the right decision to end it’—because they've always been on and off, on and off. So I was actually happy that she had to go through that. You know, that she maybe picked Ryan so that she can have a clean break this time, and be like, ‘Okay, this is it. I cannot continue like this.’”
Heather applies this notion—of learning your limits—to her everyday life.
“Somebody told me once—this very smart woman—that it's almost like you have burners on the stove, or let's go with this: like you're throwing balls up in the air,” she shares. “And I think sometimes, as women, we want to throw as many balls in the air to juggle them as possible. To everybody else looking at it, it looks amazing. They're like, ‘Oh my gosh, you're juggling so much. Look at you. You're amazing. You're an expert.’ But for us, it's chaos. You're juggling and you can't catch your breath and every now and then, a ball falls and it's complete pandemonium.”
It was in experiencing this that Heather realized it’s better to step back, take a breath, and admit that you can’t do it all. You have to prioritize what’s most important to you, which in her case—like Helen’s—is her family, faith, and career.
“What I've learned is that it can't be [all the balls at once],” she reveals. “Some days, I have to go ‘Not today. Let's put you to the side. Maybe tomorrow I'll put another ball down and we can pick up your drama.’ But I think you have to, at this stage of life, and with all that we have to do and all the priorities—we have all the people that are looking to us, all the things that we have to do—I'm trying to learn which balls need to be picked up every day, and which ones can sit. My kids always have to be in that mix, my husband's in that mix, but there are some days that maybe it's just the three of them. Maybe it's just three balls. It's me, God, the kids, and my husband. I think that's the balance—in knowing when to say no, not today, or not this hour, or not this very minute, and just to take some time.”
Speaking of, Heather is a huge proponent of “me time.”
“I think women in general should take time to breathe; just take that time for yourself—I believe in it,” she says. “I wake up. I hate it sometimes, but I wake up at five o'clock every morning and I do a devotional. I have my quiet time—that's the time that's just me. It's just me in the house. The house is quiet. Nobody's running around. I just breathe and I walk around and I talk to God. I talk to myself. I get everything ready and I can breathe. And I love those moments.”
She also loves the more mundane parts of life: running errands, going to the gym, walking around town, honoring her Trinidadian roots and cooking Caribbean food for her family, and simply standing in front of the ocean. “That's my serenity,” she concludes. “That fills my cup.”
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