‘The Bold Type’ Boss Teases What’s to Come for Jane, Kat & Sutton’s Careers and Love Lives After the Finale

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Season 3 finale of The Bold Type, “Breaking Through the Noise.”]

Things are changing at Scarlet for The Bold Type Season 4. We just don’t know exactly how yet.

Season 3 of the Freeform drama ended with Jacqueline (Melora Hardin) making changes to ensure Scarlet remain “a leader when it comes to empowering women” rather than help sell a certain image. To that end, she had them redo much of the new fall issue going to press in 17 hours. When the girls arrived at work at the end of the finale, however, it was complete and total chaos. People were moving furniture and packing boxes. And Jacqueline was MIA.

As for the girls’ professional and personal lives, Sutton’s (Meghann Fahy) fashion show was a success, but she realized Scarlet, not designing, was her passion. She and Richard (Sam Page) remained in the excellent place they’ve been this season, but she insisted he pursue a career opportunity that would take him to San Francisco.

After losing the election, Kat (Aisha Dee) set out to use her position in social media to help in ways similar to what she would have done in politics, starting with promoting important causes through a lipstick campaign. She also decided she needed to be by herself for a while — just as Adena (Nikohl Boosheri) accepted a job at Scarlet as its in-house photographer.

Jane’s (Katie Stevens) two worlds briefly collided, when she went on a public panel in promotion of her and Jacqueline’s story about Pamela Dolan and Ryan/Pinstripe (Dan Jeannotte) showed up to publicly apologize for kissing another woman. In the end, she accepted his apology but made it clear he can’t make another mistake.

TV Insider went to showrunner Amanda Lasher to break down the Season 3 finale. (Wendy Straker Hauser is taking over as showrunner for Season 4.)

First of all, what’s going on with Scarlet? Restructuring? Should we be more worried about the magazine than the digital side since Jacqueline’s not there?

Amanda Lasher: Let’s just say that the girls and Jacqueline are facing a new challenge that they did not anticipate.

You really played up the magazine vs. digital, Jacqueline vs. Patrick angles this season. What did you want to accomplish by doing so, especially when it comes to where you wanted to get at the end of the season?

There is this ongoing tension between the digital world with magazines and the print magazine and in all of the conversations that we had with magazine writers and Joanna Coles, with publications like Teen Vogue going online, it just felt like a very natural place to go and to deny it was denying the reality of what was happening in the publishing world.

Then it also played into this whole dynamic about millennials versus the old guard and the idea of being a wunderkind and what does that mean and what’s the value in fresh voices, which I think there’s tremendous value, and what’s the value in somebody who really knows what they’re doing and has a vision like Jacqueline. And Jacqueline’s so passionate about Scarlet, and she’s going to fight for Scarlet, but she’s always open to new ideas.

And then you have someone like Patrick who comes in, who also has amazing ideas, but he’s younger and more insecure, so he’s more defensive about it and seeing somebody be able to evolve in that way, where they can let go of their defensiveness and actually be open to collaboration and new ideas, because it takes a certain level of confidence to be able to collaborate and hear other people’s ideas.

You could have easily made Patrick into a villain, and I like the way you set that up, especially with Jane writing up that story about him in the beginning.

Sometimes when people come in and they think that they know it all, it can come off as just really unappealing, but a lot of times, that’s motivated by people feeling insecure and defensive and it’s only after he’s able to see what Jacqueline does and have a little bit more humility, he’s able to be stronger for it.

Can you talk about keeping the focus on the girls’ friendship, especially showing how they met? It’s something this show does so well.

It really is the truest love story of the show, and so it’s the one that the fans are here for and as writers, it’s one that we’re here for as well. And so we love just being able to dig deeper into the girls’ friendships and see different aspects of that.

Doing the flashback episode, that was just a perfect example of fans’ desires and our desires dove-tailing because we were just in love with the idea of seeing them on their first day and seeing who they were before the people we met in the first episode and who they are now.

I’ve really enjoyed watching Jane’s growth, in her writing and in how she handles public appearances, like with the panel in the finale. What did you want to do with her professionally this season and where did you want to leave her at the end of it?

One of the things that we really love about Jacqueline and we’ve referenced it a lot in the past is that she has this past as a pretty heavy-hitting journalist, but it’s not something that we get to see as much because she’s so wrapped up in the day-to-day parts of Scarlet. We just loved the idea of Jane, who really does seem like she’s the one walking in Jacqueline’s footsteps, to learn about investigative journalism through Jacqueline and deepen her voice and deepen her experience with Jacqueline.

Does a Pinstripe change his pinstripes? Is that something that should be a concern for Jane now that she’s decided to move forward with him despite what he did?

I think that we all make mistakes and it’s a question of, how does somebody deal with it? It felt to us that Pinstripe was really showing up and was worthy of giving a second chance to because he does see Jane for who she is. She has made mistakes, too, but I think that she would never stand for him doing something more than once.

Fashion design was clearly something that Sutton had to explore to the extent she did this season, but she’s doing so well at Scarlet and it’s where she belongs. Can you talk about her career trajectory this season and what you want for her moving forward?

Sutton’s somebody who loves fashion, but she’s also somebody who got this opportunity at Scarlet, and it was, for her, like a dream come true. But she’s never had the space and the freedom to really explore what part of fashion she would want to be a part of, because for her, she’s never had that luxury.

Part of being in your 20s is going down a road and seeing if it’s right for you or not, and we wanted Sutton to have that experience of figuring out as she goes deeper into the fashion world, where does she want to be in fashion? Because most of the people I know who have whatever their career is, they didn’t take a direct path to it. It had detours, and it had its ups and its downs.

It was nice to see Sutton and Richard’s relationship be the most stable one of the season. What did you want to do with them and how concerned should we be about this move of his?

We really felt that they earned it. They had been so responsible and so respectful of each other, and also we felt that their feelings for each other and feeling that they were right for each other was real and was right and they were not being foolish, and so we wanted to show that. We also wanted to show what it’s like to be in a relationship when each person comes from a totally different background, but that you’re open-hearted enough to try and make it work. That was just a real pleasure to explore.

In terms of going to San Francisco, I can’t speak to what’s going to happen. All I can say though is that Sutton and Richard are two really intelligent people who really love each other, and I think that whatever path they go down, it’s going to be with each other’s best interests at heart and mind.

Moving on to Kat’s career now that she’s lost the election.

I know, poor Kat.

I really liked seeing that side of her and seeing her explore something outside of Scarlet since she’s the most set in her position there. Is the campaign she did with the lipstick an indication of what she wants to do with her career in social media?

Kat is somebody who is really, really good at social media, but she’s also someone who wants to make the world a better place. I think she’s going to try and find a way to bring those two passions together, no matter what she does.

She was so defeated after not winning that election, even though she knew it was a little bit of a Hail Mary to come in so close to the end of the campaign. It really meant a lot to her, and she saw what it was like to be able to interact with people and possibly actually elicit change in the world. So, when she first loses, she feels pretty dejected.

Because Kat cares so much about making an impact on the world and she wasn’t able to do it through the election, she realizes she has opportunities to do that at Scarlet as well, and I think for Kat, it’s just going to be figuring out how she wants to make an impact in the world. Is it going to continue to be at Scarlet? Does she find more of a footing in the political world? I don’t know, but the one thing I do know is that that is hugely important to her.

Kat and Adena have sort of found their way back to each other or at least can in the future. Would you describe things as hopeful between them, at least more so than they were at the beginning of the season?

Absolutely, because I think that they’ve realized who they are to each other and they were able to work through the hurt.

Can you talk about getting to explore Alex more this season, through that “Jeff” article and even being roommates with Jane?

We just love Alex. He’s such a fun character, he’s such an interesting guy, and we really loved finding ways to tell stories about him. We’re so focused on the girls, and we love that, but Episode 3 was an opportunity to learn more about Alex and the more we learn about him, the more we love him and find him so intriguing.

And then when he and Jane moved in together, it was just so much fun to have them as roommates and we loved getting to see Alex out of the office and learn more about him.

We also saw Oliver become a father. We’re so used to seeing him at work and to see him have a personal side was interesting to watch. Is that a way to show Sutton that she can have a career like his and have a family?

Absolutely. Oliver’s such a role model that she’s going to look to see the way he does things and that is something that I think she’s going to be really inspired by. Also, a lot of this year, we loved the opportunities of getting to see other characters in other aspects of their life, and so seeing Oliver at home and seeing this other side to him was something that was really exciting for us and hopefully we get to see more of that.

In the finale, Sutton uses her friends for her fashion show because she makes clothes for real women and we saw Jacqueline taking steps after finding out the model was 14. Can you talk about the importance of continuing to address such issues on the show?

I think that we have a real opportunity on this show to talk about the fashion world and where it fell short sometimes and to open up conversations about that.

What’s really nice is I think that that’s happening in the fashion world and the beauty world as well. A lot of the issues that we wanted to talk about, for example, having differently-abled models in a photoshoot, all that, was actually starting to happen at New York Fashion Week, and so I think that it’s really nice that the conversation’s moving forward and I think we have an opportunity to keep doing that.

The Bold Type, Season 4, Coming Soon, Freeform