‘Younger’ Star Miriam Shor, Season 5’s Only Female Director, Opens Up About Experience

When “Younger” returns on Tuesday, it’ll bring with it not just a fresh storyline, but a new director, too. Miriam Shor grabbed the director reins for this Season 5 episode and, though this is her first time stepping into this role, fans of the series already know exactly who she is.

Shor plays Diana Trout, the bold-necklace-wearing, dynamite head of marketing at Empirical on the TV Land comedy. Now, she’s taken a break from being in front of the camera to step behind it for Season 5, episode 5 of “Younger,” titled, “Big Little Liza.”

“I’m not sure I would’ve been that comfortable being a boss before playing a character who is a boss,” Shor told International Business Times about directing for the first time. “I think there’s something I learned from being a person who is responsible for making choices in the workplace. And that was sort of my fear, like, ‘Will I be able to step up to this?’ And I could, I did. I was very proud of myself for it.”

How did this opportunity come about? “I asked,” she told IBT. “I had the audacity to ask. That’s not a small thing.”

The actress has been in the entertainment industry for over 20 years, but she has never directed before this “Younger” episode. Because of this, she had a lot of fears both before asking to direct and while she was actually taking on the role.

“I had to ask myself why I hadn’t asked to do this before. If it was because I genuinely wasn’t interested in directing, that’s fine,” Shor said. “But if it was because I felt like I didn’t have a place at that table or didn’t earn it or didn’t deserve it, I thought, ‘Well, that’s a [expletive] answer,’ and I have to kind of explore this. And so when I did, I thought, ‘No, I actually do want to do this.’”

Once she decided that directing was something she wanted to try her hand at, the next step was to make it happen. Fortunately, the show’s creator, Darren Star, was very receptive to the idea.

“Darren Star’s response was, ‘Absolutely,’” she said. “Which is amazing. And terrifying. It was a fantastic, fantastic opportunity and I loved it and I hope I get to do it more.”

Shor’s directorial debut on Tuesday brings the grand total of female-directed episodes this season of “Younger,” of both-already aired episodes and those still to come, to one. Despite the series centering around a 40-something-year-old woman and focusing on females taking charge and being boss women, these storylines are mostly directed by men.

In the first season of “Younger,” almost half of the episodes had women attached as directors, but that number has decreased since. By the second season, only two episodes were directed by a woman, down from the Season 1’s five. Season 3 had three, Season 4 had one, and, now, Season 5 has just one as well.

Though Shor knows that the show has a few “female directors that we’ve worked with throughout our whole series that we love, who come back and return because we love working with them and they work really well with the way our story is told,” she still questioned the low number.

She said, “But then I thought, ‘Well, I’m a woman. I’ve been known to be a woman. So, how about me?’”

Then she was thrown into the world of directing. To Shor’s surprise, she “actually knew a lot more than I thought would” because of her years of television experience and her constant desire to learn. Plus, she also had the “greatest support system,” between the show’s crew and her co-stars.

“They could not have been more supportive and more loving,” Shor said. “Everyone gave 100 percent of themselves. They were so there for me. It was really incredible.”

When all was said and done, Shor said it was “really nice to be a 46-year-old person in the world who tried something that’s scary and new and feels very successful at it.”

Catch Shor’s directorial debut when “Younger” Season 5, episode 5 airs on Tuesday at 10 p.m. EDT on TV Land.