Husband and wife team Jeremy Carver (Supernatural) and Anna Fricke (The Beautiful Life, Everwood) spoke with press Tuesday about the second season of Being Human on Syfy, which kicks off Monday, January 16 at 9PM. One of the themes that hangs over the second season and seen in the promotional teasers is temptation and how each of the roommates confront their monstrosity and how each is enmeshed in their own species that leads each of them down a darker path.
There is less of a safety net with each other because that support structure is not there for them when they come home. But don’t worry, there will be plenty of the three roommates in the same scene or a combination of the three. Josh and Aidan’s bromance will flourish as usual and the showrunners know that the three of the main characters in the house is the “beating heart of the show,” however, each character will be dealing with the fallout of the events of the Season One finale. For those that want to stay in the dark, beware of season two spoilers!
Aidan (Sam Witwer) – must come to grips with the death of Bishop and Rebecca and this season we are introduced to another member of the vampire hierarchy called Mother who is like the Queen Elizabeth of the vampires. She offers Aidan freedom if he agrees to train her disgraced daughter Suren, played by season two regular Dichen Lachman (Dollhouse). Mother and Suren are biological vampires in the sense that it was Mother who turned her own daughter. Aidan has known Suren for about 100 years. We are also introduced to Aidan’s vampire protĂ©gĂ©, the last vampire he turned who is played by Kyle Schmid (History of Violence). “And both of these people will greatly, greatly complicate Aidan’s life,” Carver said. “And will play a major part in sort of leading him down this dark hole that he may end up going down this season.”
Josh (Sammy Huntington) – is completely unaware that he scratched Nora and they both away the first full moon not knowing what to expect. Last season Josh came into contact with just two others like him. We are going to see an expansion of the types of werewolves, to show that there is more than one species. Josh’s past also comes back in unexpected ways.
Sally (Meaghan Rath) – deals with choosing to help her friend in need over her door and she is introduced to lots of different types of ghosts that show her a variety of spectral temptations. Also her passing up her door unwittingly brings specific ghosts looking for her. Like Josh, her past will come back to greet her in ways she was not expecting.
Nora (Kristen Hager) – Not to be forgotten is Josh’s girlfriend who is the unofficial #4 of the show, who Carver said is a “fantastically integral part of the show” who deserves more mentions. She will become more self-sufficient as a result of Josh scratching her and that will have “massive implications” on their relationship.
As we all know, some of the fun of Being Human was to see what carries over from other vampire, werewolf and ghost lore, but also the original spins on the three monsters whether it’s powers or abilities. I wanted to know how much they played with the traditional knowledge of these monsters and then adding to their legends.
“It’s always a balance right,” Carver said. “Because there are certain expectations. I mean part of the fun that goes back to the BBC series was particularly how they played with the vampires in that they could exist in sunlight et cetera, et cetera. hey took great, great liberties with their ghost character, Annie right, its name is Annie, in that she – not only should she – could she touch things but she could be seen by people if I’m not mistaken. I think their Season 2 she was totally able to be seen by folks.”
“We took our ghost character in much smaller steps but you’ll remember at the end of last season, one of the sort of like good-bad, immediate good-bad things that happened after Sally missed her door was that she discovered that she was able to connect more to Earthbound objects, which of course also implies that she is more Earthbound now that her door is gone. That’s the good and bad of it.”
“We’ll see in Season 2 Sally is able to basically interact with inanimate objects on Earth more, but we get a huge kick it out. Look one of our favorite, if not favorite scene from Season 1, was Josh and Aidan in the bathroom in Episode Seven when Aidan has that reaction to garlic, in which we spun that to be that, the garlic lore doesn’t actually ward off vampires, but that it was something that if a vampire eats garlic it would expose him even more.”
“We always tried to sort of take the lore and just try to do what makes sense to us.” Fricke said. “We just like to be able to follow it in a way that is going to make sense to us in a logical way. We have some new writers and they span from like huge genre geeks to straight up character writers so we’ll have a lot of notions flying around the room. There’s always one guy who’s like the BS detector, who like the big genre fans say, ‘Okay this guys, Does this make sense to you?’
“We all have a lot of notions that we like to play with, but we try to reign it in and make sure that’s following some kind of logic that keeps with what we set up before. We tried to be careful about that.”
I also asked Carver and Fricke if there would be other kids of monsters that would enter into the series and Carver said that they can’t speak to the entire series but as far as this season there will be more interactions with different species or types of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts rather than new monsters altogether.
“You’re going to see variations of the species we’ve already introduced,” Carver said. “But we’re not necessarily seeing new monsters. Everything is – say, you might see a third cousin type of werewolf that you have seen before or it’s in the same family tree of monsters, but we’re not introducing for example–”
“Fairies.” Fricke interjected. “It’s a tough call though, because, you know, once you’re in a supernatural world you’re saying that vampires and werewolves exist, but you don’t have to say other things do also. As a series notion we’re totally open to it, but we’re not going to see that this season.”
Based on the way the first season ended with Aidan inheriting the Boston chapter of vampires, I wanted to know how much we were going to see the Dutch elders and Terry Kinny as Heggeman as a recurring character.
“I think the Dutch play a pretty big role,” Carver said. “This year we’ll be introducing new Dutch characters this season. And as for Terry Kenny, you’ll definitely be seeing Terry Kinny and he will be involved in a very explosive storyline kicking off our season.”
Also returning this season is Josh’s sister, Emily. Bishop (Mark Pellegrino) will also return most assuredly in flashbacks but Fricke teased the press by saying, “He will return, but who knows what form?”
Other things revealed about Carver, Fricke and Being Human Season Two:
• The entire writing staff from Season One will return with the addition of four new writers, who will provide a even blended staff that specializes in genre, character writing, action, and dark humor. Carver and Fricke will be writing three of the episodes themselves.
• Carver and Fricke are inspired by early episodes of Rescue Me and Friday Night lights and try to get fellow writers on the staff who have similar tastes and voices.
• Both Carver and Fricke admitted that season openers are the trickiest to write and Aidan is the most challenging character to write as well as how they reveal the vampire politics and something they hope to be able to show more of but probably won’t get to it this season is the entire story and truth surrounding what happened to Aidan’s family.
• As far as vampires go, they try to show diversity by showing that men and women aren’t always feeding off of each other, that it’s more of a “anything goes” atmosphere where men can feed off of men and women can feed off of women too.
• Boston will be primarily the setting of the show but can vary with the flashbacks.
For a refresher of what happened in the season one finale click here. And be sure to check out five season two teasers and once again tune into the Syfy channel on Monday, January 16 at 9PM ET/PT for the season premiere, “Turn This Mother Out.”
