The Flight Attendant Season 2 premieres Thursday, April 21, on HBO Max.
TV Fanatic got the chance to speak with the cast and showrunners ahead of the highly-anticipated premiere.
As previously reported in our Flight Attendant Season 2 review, Cassie (Kaley Cuoco) is in a much different place when we pick back up.
“When we meet Cassie at the top of season two, she appears to be an entirely new Cassie. She’s a year into her sobriety,” teases co-showrunner Natalie Chaidez.
“In fact, she has matching appliances. She does yoga. She has a super hot perfect boyfriend, so we were definitely making a choice to set where she is at the beginning of the season so that we could sort of unravel it and see what was beneath the veneer and peel away.”
Chaidez says that this makes for a very different show because it highlights that Cassie is making better choices.
Chaidez is excited for fans to see the globe-trotting season because having the storylines spread across the world adds to the “propulsion of the season.”
The showrunner says that part of the fun of the series is in watching this tight rope of Cassie’s journey, which means that things are poised to fall apart at some point for her.
“I think that tension really propels the first part of the season because you’re watching her do all of this stuff to really avoid dealing with her real sobriety,” Natalie adds.
The full-length trailer for The Flight Attendant Season 2 confirmed that things would be very different, thanks to the multiple iterations of Cassie in the Mind Palace.
“It sort of started with the end of season one with Cassie recognizing this darker part of herself that she kind of had to take ownership of,” series creator Steve Yockey shared, adding that the addition of Natalie Chaidez as co-showrunner helped bring this storytelling mechanic to life.
“Natalie came in and joined us, and she brought in this idea of doubles that ended up informing so much about the season, but I obviously fell in love with that idea and then took it and ran with it,” Yockey adds.
“And I was like, ‘why just have two Cassies when we could have five?”‘
“So we carved out all of these different aspects of Cassie to put into the mind palace.”
Yockey revealed that it was challenging to shoot, but it was something that worked out very well for the show.
Natalie added that it was also about Kaley Cuoco because she’s such a terrific actress.
“I think this idea of multiple Cassies really appealed to Steve and I as an opportunity to really push her into places that people hadn’t seen and that we hadn’t seen her as an actress.”
“And we really feel she just knocked it out of the park.”
Zosia Mamet and Deniz Akdeniz return as Annie and Max, and the pair are excited to show more of the relationship as they move to Los Angeles.
“Their relationship has had a new chapter, and they’re moving forward in a new direction,” Deniz shared.
“Baby steps for them, but big milestones as well,” the star added.
“In many ways, they’re in a better place than they were when we left them at the end of season one. And then I think in other ways, um, you know, Annie, in particular, is a bit more of a mess,” Mamet adds.
“Max is lovingly putting up with it, and they’re watching their friend, Cassie, who seemingly has it all together, all of a sudden get mixed up in another crazy wild goose chase.”
“As in season one, they just jump in headfirst, and then we’re off to the races.”
Callie Hernandez and Joseph Julian Soria play Gabrielle and Esteban Diaz in the second season.
“We are one basically, and we are driven, passionate about what we do, and very loyal to each other,” Soria shares of the characters, adding that they are both “very fashionable in our pursuit of getting what we want and we get ourselves into some mischief, to say the least.”
Soria said that he liked playing this role because of the situations his character got into and working alongside Callie.
“It’s just fun. It was good to be bad and just to play out those scenarios.
“I second that,” adds Hernandez.
“Working with such a warm and talented set to, you know, our incredible costume designer too.”
“The crew was incredible, and you know, It’s fun to be bad. And it’s also incredibly fun when you’re working with something like this when you are spanning so many different genres, the comedy and dark comedy,” the star added.
“It’s also scary and terrifying and kind of finding those layers, in that regard, and having love exist between Gabrielle and Esteban and, and also being capable of some really wild things.”
“It’s fun to explore as an actor,” Hernandez shares.
Mo Mcrae is also on board.
“I play a Benjamin Berry, who is a hyper-focused, diligent, maybe even obsessive CIA officer who was tasked with intimately working with Cassie’s character to facilitate her work for the organization, and things end up taking a lot of unexpected twists and turns with this character,” McRae teases.
Mae Martin also appears on The Flight Attendant Season 2 as Grace, and the star said they were immediately drawn to the show because of the depth of the writing and characters.
“Nobody’s just good or just bad. Everybody’s got this moral ambiguity that is really attractive, I think,” Martin shared with TV Fanatic.
“As soon as I knew that most of my scenes were going to be with Kaley, I was like, ‘oh, of course.'”
“I think she’s so good in this, and it’s just really fun to watch her character struggle. She’s so likable and charismatic that it’s just really, really fun to watch how the writers torture that character.”
“Grace is a fellow flight attendant and kind of a dangerous influence in terms of Cassie’s sobriety,” Martin teases.
“They’re definitely kindred spirits in a way. They’re rebels. They got along really well. Like every character in this show, Grace has secrets, and she has the version of herself that she presents and then a whole shadow self that she’s struggling to integrate with this new friendship.”
Griffin Matthews also returns as Shane, and the star said that the revelation that Shane was in the CIA was a shock.
“I did a lot of season one, not really knowing about Shane’s secret, and when I read it in the script and talked about it with the producers, it got so much more exciting for me,” Matthews shared.
“I think that in season two, we really have to now deal with Shane’s real job, or his other job, I should say.”
“We have to deal with the fact that his job is to save people’s lives, including Cassie’s. His job is to not get himself killed, so there’s like a real threat, and as Cassie’s life is spiraling out of control, it’s also creating a really dangerous situation for Shane,” the star adds, stating that the pair’s relationship will be put to the test.
“He has to draw boundaries to keep them both alive. You get to see a deeper layer of their friendship and a deeper layer of humanity.”
“It’s super funny as per usual, but I think we hit some emotional depth in this season that was not a part of season one, and I’m excited for people to get to see it,” Griffin concluded.
Return to TV Fanatic for episodic reviews and post-mortem interviews with the cast as the season is airing.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.