‘Minx’ Star & Creator on Joyce’s Necessary Breakthrough With Sister Shelly

[Portions of this interview were conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike authorization.]

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Minx Season 2 Episode 6 “This Is Our Zig.”]

Minx‘s second season is quickly approaching its end, and Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) is learning a big lesson in the latest episode, “This Is Our Zig”: Not everything is about her.

The head of the show’s titular erotic magazine headed to Vassar with sister Shelly (Lennon Parham) with the intention of getting her old professor to write a prologue for her forthcoming book. She didn’t exactly achieve that goal, and in the process, Joyce is rightly put in her place for thinking too narrowly about the unfolding events.

As she introduces Shelly to her school, Joyce discovers that her sister once attended college, albeit briefly, which put a crack in the view Joyce had of her sister. It turns out that when their mother left the family, Shelly left school to help their father take care of Joyce, who was only a child then.

(Credit: Starz)

Further shattering her view of Shelly was discovering her mid-hookup with her former professor, Doreen. Unaware of her sister’s sexual exploration, Joyce’s shock is evident as she bickers with Shelly. But Shelly doesn’t back down as she tells Joyce none of it has anything to do with her and she’d been trying to speak with Joyce about this side of herself for a while.

“I think it’s kind of a step toward Joyce’s redemption, shall we say,” series creator Ellen Rapoport tells TV Insider. “I mean, on the one hand, I think it’s natural for the younger sister with a big age gap to kind of take on more of a child role and see that older sibling as a paternal figure.”

Joyce still sees Shelly a certain way, when in reality she’s much more than that. “I think that’s the thing with kids,” Rapoport continues. “They are narcissists in a way, where they see themselves as the center of the world and everyone else is orbiting them. And I think it’s a natural thing to have happened in their relationship early on because I think Shelly did take on this maternal role with her sister.”

When Joyce approaches Shelly the day after the event, she tries to make amends but ultimately blunders it by claiming they owe each other apologies. Shelly isn’t apologizing though. “Joyce is an adult now, and I think that this is probably an overdue moment where she realizes her sister is not just support and a sounding board, that she’s her own person with her own identity,” Rapoport says. “It really shakes her to realize how much she’s missed in a way and that she’s truly not the center of the universe.”

As for star Lovibond, she admits Joyce “loses her way a little bit.” That much was obvious in the episode’s final moments after a mile-high fling on an airplane. After the encounter, the man asks for her autograph on his issue of Rolling Stone while excitedly ranting about how he’s going to brag to his office mates.

Still, Lovibond says, “She definitely has more power.” While she was “a fish outta water,” Lovibond shares, “she’s got a steady grasp of where she is.” Will she wield that power more as we move ahead into the final episodes of Season 2?

Minx, Season 2, Fridays, 9/8c, Starz