‘The Girlfriend Experience’: Season 2 Will Give Audiences More Choices in How to Watch It
After one season on the air, “The Girlfriend Experience” has already established itself as one of the most innovative limited series on TV.
Season 2 will add something extra for viewers.
“The Girlfriend Experience” Season 2 will follow two parallel storylines, with co-creators Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz directing their respective halves. The upcoming season will air its 14 episodes in hourlong sections over seven weeks, and each creator’s storyline will make up one half of the hour-long pairings.
Separating those storylines means that audiences will be able to select whether they’ll watch the show week by week or binge each storyline individually, all at once, after they’ve been released.
“Lodge and I both had conversations about thematic elements that we wanted to see and wanted to have that conversation with the audience,” Seimetz said. “Once they drop, you can also have the experience of watching a three-and-a-half hour movie that I’ve written and directed myself or a three-and-a-half hour movie that Lodge has written and directed himself. When you pair them together, it’s a conversation between Lodge and I in that format.”
As an idea of what fans can expect from Season 2, each of the co-creators brought clips to introduce how their respective halves will differ. Seimetz’s story, which takes place in New Mexico, follows Bria (Carmen Ejogo), who returns to the GFE world while living under witness protection. The panorama shot, complete with Ejogo’s voiceover, scans across the Southwest landscape, ending with Bria in a red trenchcoat as a gunshot echoes over a cut to black.
The clip from Kerrigan’s half feels more in line with what audiences saw in Season 1, with the camera floating through a doorway, finding Anna Garner (Louisa Krause) with a client.
Kerrigan addressed the idea that Erica Myles, Anna Friel’s character in the D.C. half, works for a GOP superPAC. All seven of his episodes were written before the 2016 election, but he admitted that he had to change the content slightly after November.
“I was open to the idea that reality is now becoming stranger than fiction,” Kerrigan said. “The self-serving nature of the political world seemed to be very apt in this time. There’s so much self-interest in the veneer of democracy that we live in.”
Both actresses present were hesitant to reveal details about their characters, but discussed how they were able to step into the psychological framework of the show established by Kerrigan, Seimetz, and Season 1 star Riley Keough.
“Lodge wrote such a specific script. I’m all about surrendering to the material and I was thrilled to be part of such a fearless and provocative, raw showing of truth,” Krause said.
“We’re dealing with the bravery of these women, but also the duplicity of them, the manipulation of them, whether they are proactive or reactive. There’s so many colors to these personalities that we delve into that I think it’s not smart to put one label or one type on them,” Ejogo said.
“The Girlfriend Experience” Season 2 premieres November 5 at 9 p.m. ET on Starz.
