“Six months can make a big difference physically, too,” Sink explained of the gap that the pandemic wedged into their production schedule. Filming with a group of teenage kids means that even a short break brings about lots of change. “There’s definitely a scene in season four, episode four where we’re in Mike’s basement. Max is going around handing out letters, and then she wants Steve to drive her to a few places. So we exit the basement, and it’s one continuous scene. But as we’re leaving, in the next shot, we look about a year and a half older because we didn’t get back to that scene until the last chunk of filming. You can definitely tell,” she laughed. “Or at least, we can.”
Continuity breaks aside, stepping back into her character felt seamless. “In a way, Max feels like an old friend,” she told me. “When I read the scripts [for this season], I was really proud of her. You see how much of a fighter she really is.” Season four shines a light on a side of Max Mayfield we hadn’t yet seen. Therefore, we’re also seeing a new side of Sink. Max occupies a much greater focus of the plotline, and each time she appears on-screen this season, we’re introduced to an even deeper layer of Sink’s acting chops. “I found that so much of the season revolves around dark and intrusive thoughts that eat away at you,” she explained of Max’s arc. To get into this darker headspace, Sink turned to journaling, which she picked up from her theater-school days as a kid. “It really helped to write journal entries as her and get inside her head a little bit,” she continued. “ There’s so much that she doesn’t tell people that it can be so frustrating. She’s in a gloomy place and definitely isolated herself a lot. Getting into that mindset was a nice challenge.”
