“It was amazing, scary, but empowering as an actor because for Season 2 [Taylor Sheridan] really just said, ‘Go. You guys have got this. You know the characters, and there’s the writing, and go.’”
“I look at a scene Rolin [Jones] has adapted, look at Anne Rice’s original material and play them both at the same time. You have the backstory of what was originally there in the material in the mind of the character and Rolin’s adaptation presented foremost.”
“Everybody was like, ‘How are you going to get [Emily] out of prison?’ I’m like, ‘Come on – Marvel brings people back from the dead. We can get somebody out of prison!’”
“I love that as an actor, I get to step in the shoes of a character that is reflecting what the definitive nature of justice should be and can translate and communicate that the experience is not monolithic. But as he walks through, he’s going to fight his hardest to stand up for his morality and never change his ethics. That to me is what a true hero looks like.”
“It’s definitely not a role you’ve ever seen a South Asian woman play; you don’t see women play these types of roles. But she is stabbing someone with her left hand and shooting someone else with her right while taking somebody’s eye out with her heel. It’s on all possible fronts.”
“It’s a love story between these two men who have been incarcerated since they were 15, put in a system that told them they can’t be anything and released into the world still trying to figure out what kind of men they want to be. They just decide to pretend to be DEA agents and rob trap houses.”
“This is a show about people who love to create and who love art and will sacrifice anything to do it. I hope that maybe inspires other people that they can do the same.”
“There’s jet planes, cargo planes, tanks … and there’s real soldiers advising you. Off in the distance they’re really drilling for something. You feel really intimidated.”
“It’s so glaring to me. These people just make these terrible choices, these unthoughtful choices, and they’re just convinced that they’re the victim. And I find that fascinating.”
“I love the idea of playing something different. This woman is a very good mom and a really good person deep down, and my other characters not so much, and I just wanted to do something different.”
“Originally there was a bunch of dialogue in those scenes. Taylor and I talked it over. You know what, I don’t know if I should say anything. People are going to get it. We don’t need to put a hat on a hat. It was a very powerful scene even doing it. Getting a coyote to stand still and stare at you is not easy but we managed.”
“When we shot that … I just thought, ‘OK, now we’ve got a show. We’ve got two strong women who can duke it out and who can fall in love with each other.’ That’s what the series, I think, is.”
“When you see somebody whose body moves differently than yours or or communicates differently from you … presume that they’re a competent human being. Presume that they have a personality and an inner life.”
“I had had two margaritas, trashed. I told my boyfriend: ‘That’s Charli XCX. I want her to do the music for my show.’ He was like, ‘Feels kinda bold for a party, but go for it, live your life.’”
“I’ve loved this dude for such a long time, and after Jury Duty, where the man makes me pee on myself … to have a role that I knew was going to be rich and layered and fun that he could bring his loveliness to … I think James kills it. Kills it.”
“In a comedy like this, there’s a lot of wild stuff, and … they don’t give us parameters. And they’re not scared about what we might do, which, if someone was doing the show loosely based or loosely inspired on me, I’d be pretty protective, which isn’t good for comedy.”
“Ben [Stiller] and I … had been playing around with very different types of sound palettes, but there was this one sort of thematic idea that I thought that Ben was really responding to. He has really good instincts, so we always follow Ben’s ideas …”
“I think the thing that really stuck with us when I was reading was this idea that siblings get different versions of their parents depending on birth order, and that shapes your identity.”
“There [are] so many shows that pull punches now … that want to take the correct boxes and do things right — and this has never been a show that’s done that.”
“This season is so much about choice — choice whether to go towards the light or go towards the dark. The choices they make are sometimes surprising and you won’t see them coming for sure.”
“There’s definitely some doubt that Ellie has about that lie that Joel told her at the end of Season 1, so I think that plays a big part in the shift in the relationship [in Season 2]. It’s really difficult playing being cold to him … it’s sadder for sure. And it will continue to just get sadder and more cold … so look forward to that.”
“There’s no differentiation between the foreground and the background crew. We are all the company, and we are all going to have a very immersive experience. It’s a very atypical way of working, and hopefully, they’ll come away with something very special.”
“You don’t read everything on the call sheet, so you would be there acting and go, ‘Oh, that’s Jean Smart. They got Jean Smart. There’s Aaron Sorkin.’ It was crazy how many people showed up.”
“Everything that happens this season in terms of the downward spiral of all these women, and their younger selves, was something that we had thought of from the very beginning.”
