Can you think of anyone you’d rather talk to about friendship than the cast of The Bold Type? Me neither, which is why I spoke with the holy trinity of BFFs themselves—Katie Stevens, Aisha Dee and Meghann Fahy—about just that during a recent visit to the set of the Freeform show, which returns tonight.

The Bold Type has been hailed by fans and critics alike for its nuanced, diverse portrayals of young working women—something that’s unfortunately come few and far between on TV. Each character has a unique storyline, yes, but it still feels as if most women could find a situation or a character they relate to. Whether you connect to Jane (Stevens) and her passionate pursuit of a writing career, Kat (Dee) and her exploration of sexuality, or Sutton (Fahy) and the trials and tribulations of dating, they all have a different take on the world. Those adventures will continue in the third season, and while the trio wouldn’t reveal too much about what’s ahead, they did promise more of the friend porn we’ve come to love and expect.

“What we’re trying our best to do with The Bold Type is to represent [friendships] in the way that we all experience them,” Dee tells Glamour. “We talk about our sex lives. We talk about our periods. We talk about how bloated we feel today. All of that is such a big part of the human experience, and the experience as a woman.”

At the end of season two, each woman’s romantic relationships were pushed to the brink: Jane was forced to choose between the two men in her life, Pinstripe and Ben (and we still don’t know whom she picked); Sutton finally reunited with her ex, Richard; Kat examined the ways in which her relationship to Adena might have negatively affected her girlfriend’s work. But as usual, the northern star of the show was—and remains—Jane, Kat, and Sutton’s friendships with each other.

“I definitely think there’s something special about our show and how we showcase female friendship, navigating your way through your twenties in the workplace, and just living in today’s America,” Stevens says. For her it’s important that The Bold Type highlight each woman’s flaws and downfalls and then examine how those traits inform their relationships with one another. That is, after all, what we experience in real-life friendships with other women.

“The legs that the show stands on are the friendships between the three of us,” Stevens says. “An episode won’t go by without the three of us together hashing through something or being there for each other when something goes wrong.” She promises more of that in season three—in part because her off-screen relationships with Dee and Fahy are eerily similar.

“[The show] reflects our relationship in real life,“ Stevens continues. “If we’re on set and one of us is not having the best day, the other two are like, ’All right, today’s your day. We’re going to lift you up.’”

Fahy tells me that—just like her, Stevens, and Dee—other women often tell the cast that they see themselves in these characters. These fans relate to the good, the bad, and the ugly. “So many people come up to us and say, ‘Oh, I’m a Jane!‘ Or, ‘I’m a Kat, and my best friend’s a Sutton. We watch the show together!’” Fahy agrees with costar Dee’s outlook on the ways in which female friendships are portrayed on this show versus how they’ve been historically depicted in film and TV (which is, uh, poorly).

“There are so many negative portrayals of female relationships in the media, and I think what’s more true than those are the ones on our show,“ Fahy says. “We are girls who communicate with each other, girls who fight but who listen to each other, girls who apologize when they’ve hurt somebody. That to me is more of an honest representation of female friendship than a lot of the other things out there right now.”

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