“Scandal” Season 6 cast members Kerry Washington, Bellamy Young, Tony Goldwyn, along with executive producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers, headlined the Television Critics Association winter press tour (via Variety) for the hit ABC series on Tuesday night.

While there, the exec shared new and exciting information about the upcoming sixth season of the Kerry Washington-starrer. Here are four things we learned from the event.

1. Election Night in the series will be different from the recent elections in the United States

According to Rhimes, even though “Scandal” is primarily focused on the lives of the president of the United States and professional fixer Olivia Pope (Washington), the series doesn't exactly reflect the politics of the country. “I don’t really equate the two. That’s not the goal, obviously. If that were the goal, we’d wait until after the election to write about an election. The goal was to tell the story about an election and the journey,” she said.

2. Season 6 will feature multiple flashbacks and flash forwards

“Scandal” Season 6 will be very different from the previous seasons because of the flashbacks and flash forwards. “Because of the way we laid out this season, we really do have this beautiful way of telling this season this year where we’re really stepping back in time and going forward in time…” Rhimes said.

3. Stronger storylines will be part of the series

Since “Scandal” Season 6 will only have a total of 16 episodes, Rhimes and her team had no choice but to come up with more impactful stories for the characters. This doesn’t add any pressure on the exec’s shoulders because having 16 episodes is what she actually asked for from the heads of the network.

4. President Fitz is better at being unemployed

Goldwyn thinks that his character, President Fitzgerald Grant, might be happier as an unemployed man than as the leader of a country. However, Goldwyn still doesn’t know what Rhimes has planned for his character, so it’s possible that Fitz will also take on a different job.

“Scandal” Season 6, episode 1 will air on ABC on Jan. 26 at 9 p.m. EST.

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