While the Good Wife spinoff’s first season centered around the titular lawyer’s investigation into Captain Wagner and whether he was corrupt, the upcoming season is about “trying to overcome your past,” showrunner Jonathan Tolins tells TVLine. “It’s going to be about them meeting the challenges of their past and trying to make a fresh start.”
Read on as Tolins previews what’s ahead for Elsbeth & Co., the new faces joining the precinct and which characters will put in a return appearance. Plus, watch an exclusive sneak peek above from the season premiere, featuring guest star Nathan Lane as an opera aficionado who’s driven to murder.
TVLINE | When you look back at Season 1, what did you find that you thought really worked and you want to do more of in Season 2 or delve into more, or maybe do differently? I think that Season 2, because the Wagner investigation is done, we’re going to have some room to play with. We are adding some new serialized elements and things, but I think we’re going to get to have a little bit more time in the lives of our main three characters, and that’s going to be fun to do. But we’re going to keep playing with the format so that it doesn’t fall into a routine, and that’s always something I’m concerned about. I don’t want it to feel like the episodes just always follow the same pattern. I think we have the advantage that each episode feels so different because we go to a different world, and what I learned from the first season is that the show works best when we really dig into the fun details of the world we’re taking on in that episode.
TVLINE | One of the things I talked with Carrie Preston about was how, in the finale, Elsbeth didn’t know right away who the murderer was and whether she was worried about maybe the character becoming too infallible, so to speak. Is that something that’s going to continue in Season 2, where maybe she won’t always be right on the money when it comes to who the murderer is? Yeah, we’ll let her make some mistakes. I kind of believe very strongly in the “content dictates form” philosophy, and that each story that we take on, we’re going to look at what is the best, most surprising way to tell this particular story. Sometimes, it might be we don’t see who did it. Sometimes, we see someone do it, but we don’t understand the context. Sometimes, we think we understand it, and then we don’t. Everything comes down to surprise. What delights an audience is surprise, and so, we’re trying, in the writers’ room, to keep surprising ourselves.
TVLINE | During the TCA panel, you talked about past coming back to haunt the characters. Is that across the board for all three main characters? In a way. We talked about how, at the end of Season 1, Matteo Hart says you can’t escape history, and we’re kind of building a little bit off of that. All three of our main characters, something comes back. They’re not the same thing, but they each have to deal with something that happened before the season began.
TVLINE | How is Wagner’s relationship with Elsbeth developing coming off the investigation? Is there still tension there? Yeah, there will be tension. We may have a new character who comes in who adds tension in the precinct that will help upset the sort of stability that we ended up with in Season 1.
TVLINE | And what about for Kaya? What can we expect in terms of challenges for her in Season 2 as she pursues, hopefully, becoming a detective? She’s going to come up against some unexpected twists and challenges that lead to some new things she’s going to have to do on her road to becoming a detective.
TVLINE | One of the things I loved about Season 1 was the relationship between Elsbeth and Kaya. Was that something that you wrote to as you saw it developing between the two actresses? Or was that always the plan, to have a strong female friendship at the center of the show? The first episode that I wrote was the reality TV episode, and that was the first time where they got to spend time together. They go to Kaya’s house, and she tutors her on reality television, and immediately, you saw something really lovely happening between the two of them. It just grew from there.
Daniel Davis returns as Dr. Yablonsky Courtesy of CBS
TVLINE | I also really loved Elsbeth’s relationship with Laura Benanti’s character in the finale. She’s really built this community around herself. So can we expect to see more returning guest stars next season? Well, that character, certainly, it’s a possibility because she didn’t murder anybody. Most of them are in prison. [At] her housewarming party, all the guests were people who had been small characters in the season so far, because she’s someone who just collects people, and people love to be around her. In fact, actually, in the premiere of Season 2, there is a character [from] Season 1, who pops up again. Like on The Good Wife and The Good Fight , we’re exploring the sense that we have our world. It’s New York. You always run into people you know in New York. One of the great things about New York is you walk down the street, and you see people you know, and we’re going to see some of our favorites just keep popping up. But not murderers. They’re in prison.
TVLINE | I feel like that is something [executive producers] Robert and Michelle King do very well on all their shows is have this ensemble of secondary characters that are very memorable and kind of rotate in and out, and I saw that with the detectives on the show. That was a very conscious thing. We said we want our detectives to be like the judges in the Good shows.
TVLINE | Are there going to be more detectives in Season 2? Or is it just going to be the ones that we saw in the first season? Yes. You’re going to get more. In the season premiere, we’ll have a new detective.
Elsbeth fans, what are you most excited to see in Season 2? Hit the comments!
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