If you've been dying from the lack of new episodes of Faking It, the MTV comedy about two high school girls in a complicated friendship, then get ready to be resuscitated and resurrected on Tuesday 10:30 p.m. ET/CT, when it returns for a third season.

Joining Karma, Amy, Shane, Lauren and Liam's often hilarious and sometimes emotional journey of growing up this year is a Noah, a transgendered character (played by an actual trans actor). With Amy and Karma's relationship in turmoil and friends having to choose between them, more storylines will be added in, some more unexpected than others.

Faking It's Showrunner/Executive Producer Carter Covington recently spoke to Enstars about the new season and all the drama that's been going on, as well the legality of creating and casting a trans character.

Enstars: What can you tell us about this new character Noah?
Carter Covington: I knew that we wanted to include transgender actors in the family. That's been a part of the show that I'd been really excited to explore. We worked really hard this year to make sure that we were doing this the right way. We really wanted to tell a storyline that we thought was groundbreaking, but also relatable. And we wanted to make every effort we could to cast a trans actor in the role as well as to incorporate more transgender actors in our speaking roles and in our background. So we did a national casting call and we got almost over 200 submissions from people nation-wide who submitted a video...and we saw so many amazing people. We were really impressed and we ordered speaking roles for one of those people and we had about 12 of them come and work with us on set as background actors. And then we also found Elliot [Fletcher] who went to a rigorous casting process to win the part of Noah who is introduced in Episode 4 and he will be in Episodes 4 and then 7,8,9 and 10. And his character-- without giving too much away--joins a band that Karma and Shane start. And per usual on Faking It, his entrance into the show creates a lot of new drama.

We heard there was a legal issue with casting a character like this. Can you explain that?
It's illegal to say you're only gonna look for gay, transgender, African-American, white- anything where you're saying we're only gonna select from this pool, is illegal. I'm a big believer that trans actors need the opportunity to tell their own stories if at all possible. And so we just had to be careful about the wording and as we were putting it out and we had to make sure that everyone knew that was our goal, but it wasn't a mandate. And we also had to do some casting sessions for non-trans actors for the part just to show that we were making a broad effort, but I made it very clear that my hope and my goal was to find a trans actor for the role because I think that there would be an authenticity that's really important and essential for the part.

What was it like to produce Liam's bar mitzvah that we see in the trailer?
We had so much fun. Liam comes back in the season opener, having gone to found his father and his father has died sadly. But he found out his dad was Jewish so he starts to connect with his Jewish roots. And in the second episode, there's a bar mitzvah thrown for him. We had never seen a bar mitzvah in a comedic setting and I was a little nervous because I didn't want to insult the Jewish faith. But I had a lot of support on the staff, people were like, "You can make that joke." And shooting that scene was really fun, I think the crew got really into it.

Are there any new friendships coming aboard this season?
The theme of at least the first half of this season is how friendships can be more intense and more complicated than romantic relationships so we're really playing, like, Shane is caught in between Karma and Amy who are still struggling to get back together. Same with Lauren, she's grown closer to Amy as Karma and Amy have been not as close. And the same with Liam who spent a summer away is kind of missing out because Shane and Karma have become such good friends. So when your friends become close with someone else and there's that competition for friendship, it can be way more intense than with a boyfriend or girlfriend. So that's really kind of the early part of the season where the first five episodes are talking about that.

Tags
Faking It, Television, MTV