Now in its fourth season, ABC’s “Black-ish” has been able to cover a lot of important issues over the years, but there are still many left to choose from.

Tuesday’s new episode of the Kenya Barris-created sitcom, which now features new-mother-of-five Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross), tackles the topic of postpartum depression.

This subject isn’t often talked about in society and isn’t often covered on TV, which seems to be the in-between area that “Black-ish” covers extremely well. This second episode of Season 4 is no exception, as Ross really gets into character and taps into the writing, as this episode is based on the personal experiences of “Black-ish” co-executive producer and writer Corey Nickerson, who also wrote this episode.

“Corey’s experience and quite a few of the women that are in the writers’ room have experienced post-partum depression, so they wrote from that experience,” Ross told International Business Times on Monday at the “Black-ish” PaleyFest event in New York City. “It was something that they had wanted to put on the show for quite some time, so they wrote from that.”

While it’s important for Ross to do her job well and get the truth of the story out there, she said she didn’t have to prepare much for this episode and was able to “just go in and pull it out.” That’s because the writing was just that good and was all the preparation she needed.

“I just leaned into the writing. It was incredibly well-written and when something’s incredibly well-written, you just take the truth of it and you can kind of just go with it and obviously I tapped into parts of myself that have experiences sadness and depression and let that sort of come forward,” the Golden Globe winner said.

What the actress finds most interesting about covering such important topics is the fact that when it comes down to it, the show’s a comedy, not a drama, which adds a whole other layer to covering these types of issues.

“I had to not lose the reality of the depression while still giving enough lightness that we can call our show a comedy,” Ross told IBT.

That comedic-dramatic balance is necessary for a show like this, but, of course, that means there will many parts that make the audience laugh and some that will make them cry. This Bow-centric episode, which dealt with a significant women’s issue, definitely had scenes that would make any viewer cry, including Ross, herself.

“It made me cry, honestly,” Ross admitted. “When I was watching it, I had forgotten. I just do it, I’m just present. I don’t always remember what I’ve done.”

The strong scene, which made her cry, that she’s referring to is a tense scene between Bow and Dre’s (Anthony Anderson) mom, Ruby (Jenifer Lewis), in the Johnson kitchen when Bow decides she’s had enough of Ruby always picking on her and finally stands up for herself, She explains that Ruby isn’t helping her get better and that this is real and not a time for Ruby’s antics. It’s an extremely emotional scene and was made even more so by the fact that it wasn’t choppy and was all one take.

“What I was really grateful about is that take they used was mine in its entirety,” Ross explained. “So they didn’t use different takes put together of mine. That was one all the way through for me. And so it was very fluid and I was really in that.

This episode of “Black-ish” airs on ABC on Tuesday at 9 p.m. EDT.

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