Ginny and Georgia‘s Sara Waisglass weighed in on the surprising recast concerns about Diesel La Torraca‘s fan-favorite character Austin.
“He’s doing a great job with it. He’s taking it all in stride,” Waisglass, 27, exclusively told Us Weekly while discussing her new film How to Lose a Popularity Contest. “And how lucky are we all to have a job that we can grow through?”
Waisglass, who plays Max on the hit Netflix series, noted La Torraca’s growth spurt, adding, “He’s taller than me and he’s always been my peer because I was a child actor. So I remember that I was too young to hang out with the adults but too old to hang out with people my own age. So I really understood.”
She continued: “It’s weird that I met him when he was 8 years old and now here’s this man who is talking about his process and stuff. It’s wild. But the funniest was the first time we had a read through. We always go through the table. We’re like, ‘Hi, I’m playing Max.’ And we get to Diesel and he has his deep voice. We laughed so hard.”
After season 3 aired in 2025, viewers questioned whether La Torraca, 14, was now too old to play Ginny’s half-brother while pointing out the lengths the Netflix show went to in season 3 to conceal the young actor’s growth spurt.
Creator Sarah Lampert weighed in at the time on why the show wasn’t trying to be accurate with Austin’s age.
“Anyone who works on the show will tell you I am fastidious about the details. I am just specific with so many things. Then things like Diesel growing five years [older], I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ Because you can’t control it,” she exclusively told Us in June 2025. “We can’t recast. Diesel is Austin.”
Lampert made it clear there were no plans to bring in someone younger to play Austin.
“There are a few jokes we’re planning to make. We’re aware that he’s growing up and that helps us,” she said before acknowledging that viewers will have to “suspend their disbelief” because La Torraca “grew [up] and it’s a TV show.”
“You don’t want to do a big time leap because that really misses emotional storytelling. Because of that, the flashbacks already make no sense in terms of the timeline of the flashbacks,” she added. “Time is but a construct in Wellsbury.”
La Torraca, meanwhile, addressed the concerns while sharing the creative ways the show disguised his obvious growth spurt.
“Well, honestly, we kind of ignore it a little bit!” he told Teen Vogue that same month. “It’s kind of just like … there’s a 14-year-old sitting at the table with Harry Potter glasses on that’s supposed to be 9. And that’s OK! In some shots, I did have to bend my knees a little bit to look a little shorter than [Antonia], or they got her an apple box a few times, but for the most part, we’ve kind of just kept the show running.”
La Torraca continued: “Playing a 9-year-old for six years when you are growing … I’ve grown with him, but I’ve also kind of departed from him because I was 8 when we started, now I’m 14. There are a lot of differences in the way that he would move and act and speak. I have to heighten my voice register, slouch a little bit [to] feel like I’m actually a shy, insecure 9-year-old.”
Before Ginny & Georgia returns for season 4, Waisglass scored a role in Tubi’s How to Lose a Popularity Contest, which allowed her to play someone different than Max Baker.
“One of my biggest fears is that I can only play Maxine Baker, because, like, my energy does bleed into my performances,” Waisglass told Us. “And something I was very worried about was, in this movie, is it just going to be Max in a different film?”
Waisglass said she tried “really hard” to find aspects of the character that felt different.
“I was very intentional about silly things like posture and tone of voice,” she explained. “So it was the same energy, just a different execution, I guess. And I’m hoping that that played out right.”
How to Lose a Popularity Contest is streaming on Tubi now.
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