On the Atlanta set of “Sweet Magnolias” last September, the character of Helen, played by Heather Headley, was wearing a white wedding dress.
“I’m in harmony with my beloved friends,” Helen proclaimed.
“We are just the backup singer,” said her friend Maddie (JoAnna Garcia Swisher). “You are the soloist.”
This part of the scene didn’t make the final cut for the show’s fifth season, which came out on Netflix last week, but it captures the essence of the show: a Hallmark card to love and friendship in an idealized fictional small town, aptly called Serenity.
Over its five seasons, “Sweet Magnolias” has been a low-simmering hit for Netflix, but it receives scant attention compared with the streaming service’s brasher, more critic-friendly fare like “Beef” or “Adolescence.”
It debuted in the spring of 2020 during the depths of the pandemic and took off with no traditional promotion, Serenity becoming a fictional Eden from the horrors of the real world.
“It’s a beautiful place for people to sit and find beauty and joy and love and kindness and calm in their lives,” said Brooke Elliott, who plays driven entrepreneur Dana Sue. “That’s what people have reflected to me. They can watch it with their kids and there are not a lot of shows you can do that.”
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
On the show, Maddie, Helen and Dana Sue form an indomitable trio of childhood friends who have remained fiercely loyal to each other well into middle age.
The fifth season opens with Helen and Dana Sue visiting Maddie in New York City, where Maddie has landed a new job at a book publishing company.
“The day we shot that was like the hottest day that year in Manhattan,” said Headley on the set of fictional bar/restaurant Sullivan’s on a soundstage in Decatur. (She was still wearing her prop wedding dress, noting that it had been 22 years since her wedding to her real-life husband, former NFL player Brian Musso.) “But we had a good time. We all felt very fashionable.”
The writers, though, weren’t turning the new season into “Sweet Magnolias: Sex and the City Edition.” Instead, Maddie loses her job and returns to Serenity to pursue marketing and publishing close to home.
The season finale is framed around Helen’s marriage to longtime boyfriend Erik, but also hones in on tensions between Dana Sue and her husband Ronnie.
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
The series has used Covington, 40 miles east of downtown Atlanta, as Serenity for most of its outdoor scenes. It’s a town already familiar with film crews courtesy of the hit CW drama “The Vampire Diaries,” which ran from 2009 to 2017.
“It’s a real dividend for us,” said “Sweet Magnolias” showrunner Sheryl J. Anderson. “People who live there are used to it. We didn’t have to train them. We work to minimize our imposition on the citizens but we’re also delighted to portray the beauty of the town.”
While some crew members from “Vampire Diaries” are now part of “Sweet Magnolias,” the two shows don’t share a lot of creative DNA.
People on set, in fact, joke that there is a racier alternative show called “Sweet Magnolias: After Dark” where the characters become vampires.
“No vampires on our show ― yet,” Anderson said. “During Season 4, I stole a joke from Justin (Bruening), who plays Cal. He said he’d be a werewolf and Maddie would be a vampire and they’d have bat babies. I put that in the Halloween script.”
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix.
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix.
The three lead actors each said the show has rubbed off on them in a good way.
Inspired by the small-town vibe of Serenty, Swisher bought a house at Lake Oconee with her husband, former Major League Baseball player Nick Swisher, who played briefly for the Atlanta Braves in 2015.
Headley, a Chicago resident who spent several months in Atlanta in 1998 starring in Elton John’s musical “Aida,” decided to inventory her “magnolias” in her own friend circle: “Who are the girls who will go to bat for me, who I can say anything to, who will hold me accountable, who will celebrate my best self? I ultimately figured out I had maybe three.”
Some “Sweet Magnolias” fan reaction has been less than sweet, with some complaining that the show’s inspirational, feel-good tone has become too saccharine, based on comments on a Reddit fan page. The “Popcornmeter” from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes has dipped over the years, from 71% Season 1 to 44% Season 4.
Anderson said it’s difficult to adjust to fan feedback because she already has storylines ready to go for the next season by the time a new season airs. She hopes the long-awaited Helen/Erik wedding will satisfy the diehards while inserting fresh obstacles for Maddie and Dana Sue.
“My dad used to say when I was growing up, ‘The road will never be easy, but you’ll never be alone,’” Anderson said. “That’s part of my worldview that I’ve filtered into the show.”
Will Netflix give “Sweet Magnolias” a Season 6? It’s too soon to say. Only a handful of Netflix’s original series have made it that far.
Elliott has been down this road before, in a good way. She shot six seasons in metro Atlanta as the comedic lead Jane Bingum of the Lifetime legal comedy “Drop Dead Diva” from 2009 to 2014.
“I hope my good luck with ‘Drop Dead Diva’ will rub off on “Sweet Magnolias,’” she said.
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