Sutton Foster Says Working on Younger Taught Her to Be 'Strong and Wrong'

Sutton Foster still remembers what she was thinking the very first time she read the script for Younger. 

On the Tuesday, April 1, episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson's podcast Dinner's on Me, the actress, 50, was asked about her transition from Broadway to TV on Bunheads and Younger.

“I was like, ‘I’m theater, I’m theater, I’m theater.’ People ask me, do you wanna do more TV? I'm like, ‘Well, sure. If someone wants me!’ But I was such a Gilmore Girls fan. So when Bunheads came my way, I just read the script, and I'm like, ‘Oh my God. This is incredible,’ " she recalled of getting to work with series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.

Bunheads lasted just one season in 2012, but Foster soon found her new role in Younger.

She admitted that series creator Darren Star being “a big theater fan” may have played a part in her casting.

“I remember reading the script in my kitchen, and I think I was 39,” Foster said. “I was on the verge of turning 40. And I read it, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! I could do this!’ Because it was about a woman trying to pretend she was much younger than she was.”

On the seven-season series, Foster starred as Liza Miller, a single mother who learned to use her youthful look to her advantage.

She pretends to be 26 to revive her personal and professional life, and starts a career at the New York City-based fictional publishing house Empirical Press.

“And that I felt like was like, I went to college and then grad school. And every season, I learned more and more and more about how to be on a set, how to be on camera, how to, like, learn lines, and how to handle a character that grows,” she said.

Earlier in the podcast, Foster recalled not knowing how to read a call sheet prior to her season on Bunheads. 

“You know, we play characters that do the same thing every single night, and then suddenly I'm on a journey,” she said of the theater to TV transition.

She continued, “So there were things about TV that I absolutely loved. Yeah. And there's a thing in TV, too, where you have to leap. You have to be strong and wrong.”

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In addition to Foster, the Younger cast included Hilary Duff, Debi Mazar, Nico Tortorella and Peter Hermann, and marked a start for rising stars like Phoebe Dynevor and Molly Bernard.

The series ran from 2015 to 2021.

When Younger ended, Foster told PEOPLE that she felt "so proud to be a part of this show," adding that "seven seasons of a show is pretty great."