(Warning: Spoilers ahead for “Ginny and Georgia” season two, most likely…probably. Go watch it if you haven’t and then come on back, y’hear?)

When Felix Mallard and I talk about the second season of Ginny and Georgia, in which he reappears as resident troubled deeper-than-your-average-bad-boy Marcus Baker, there’s one scene, in particular, we both gush over.

At the top of the fourth episode, Marcus and Ginny (played by Antoina Gentry) are fooling around in her bedroom when a suspicious Georgia (Brianne Howey) comes a-knockin’. After sending her daughter off on a bogus birth control run, she questions her “boyfriend,” who’s making himself at home in her closet. The whip-smart mom then simply instructs him to “get dressed and come out here, please.”

“It’s a fairly long scene,” Felix Mallard explains. “It’s got a lot of moving parts, and we shoot that on a stage. So I have to jump through the window, go into the closet, come in, do their thing, and then jump out.”

Moving parts have been part of the 24-year-old’s journey in the film machine since the very beginning, who started out as a model in his native Australia before landing one of the two main paths to stardom as an actor – a gig on the soap legend Neighbours.

“I really wanted to take it upon myself to make sure that the opportunity wasn’t lost on me,” he explains. “I was going to be able to fulfill as much as I could of what was expected of me.”

As Marcus finds his way out of Ginny’s closet/safe space, he comes across Georgia on a chair across from him with a wide grin, lit blunt in hand, crooning out “Hi, there!” in her most saccharine Southern drawl.

She invites him to chat while trying to determine how he really feels about her daughter, all the while holding smoking and then passing it on to Marcus, who finally admits he loves her daughter.

The conversation starts light, like any proud mom’s would, as she deems Ginny “special,” saying she’ll go off and do “big, wonderful things.”

The idea was the same for Felix when he moved to Hollywood, with the biggest obstacle he had to overcome was finding and knowing himself.

Following his exit from Neighbours, he moved to California in 2018 and landed a leading role in the CBS sitcom Happy Together and recurring parts in Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist and Locke and Key.

“It’s so easy to get lost and get caught up in the wrong crowd or caught up in things that aren’t necessarily you,” Mallard explains. “L.A. is a really hard city to find yourself in. You kind of have to be comfortable with making things happen for yourself. And you can’t really do that unless you know yourself a little bit. So I think that was the biggest culture shock for me.” Well, that and the lack of meat pies while filming in Canada.

Since becoming an internet sensation thanks to Marcus Baker (and that hair swoop), his main job has been honing in on his craft while ensuring he can evoke the complicated and vulnerable feelings that the Netflix series is trying to.

“With any art form, there’s a sense of: ‘What are you trying to do? What are you trying to communicate? What are you trying to say with it?’…I was struggling to kind of find why acting made me so happy,” he says. “When you can communicate to someone that it’s okay to go through an emotional journey, then you’ve done your job. And I love seeing people represented on screen. I love when you can see exactly what you’re going through and your feelings are validated.”

Marcus and Georgia aren’t particularly close as a duo, but they bond over being “damaged,” individuals with baggage, who feel like they’re holding Ginny back.

“Those scenes where Marcus gets to talk to Georgia are really two people being honest and being vulnerable and saying, ‘Hey look, I’m this way. She’s good. Don’t ruin it.’”

Georgia advises Marcus to recognize when to let Ginny go if the time came for it, kickstarting the character’s difficult journey through depression and pain, culminating in a raw few episodes in the tail half of the season shown from his perspective.

“I will say that this season is super close to my heart in the sense of reflecting the story of depression and that while someone on the surface for a while might seem like they’re okay, they might be struggling with something that you can’t necessarily see,” shares the actor.

“I was so taken aback that [Executive Producers Debra J. Fisher and Sarah Lampert] had entrusted me with this kind of process, and I wanted to treat it with as much respect as I could. I think it’s really important for young men, in particular, to see that you can go through this and ask for help, that it’s okay to go through these things, that you are not alone.”

Mallard even created a Spotify playlist titled “Marcus is Depressed” with songs to fit the mood so he could get into character more. I ask him whether there are any happier playlists for him to be found and he replies, “He does. Absolutely. You can’t have the light without the shade.”

With Marcus’ shade comes Felix’s light, back to sweeping through Netflix screens with new Ginny and Georgia, plus upcoming work on the movie Turtles All the Way Down, based on a John Green novel, and time on the side to ride some California waves and hopefully work on more music with his band Enemies Alike.

“I’m really excited to settle down,” Mallard says, “And find a sense of stability and build my home up. That’s all that I’m really thinking of. Just trying to even out the last couple of years. Not put it behind us because I think what we go through makes us who we are, but if we can find some joy next year in 2023, I think that’s really the goal.”

And honestly, speaking on behalf of Marcus and all of us, same.