Runaways Season Two has already dropped on Hulu in the United States, but UK fans can expect it on January 2nd at 9pm over on the Syfy channel. Before embarking on another journey with everyone’s favorite misfit teens and their evil parents, Executive Producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage chatted with us about the changes from the comics and the difficulty of balancing the cast.
While the parents in the first run of Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona’s comic series were set up as one-dimensional antagonists for the most part, showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage went out of their way to not only reveal their motivations early but also to emphasize their love for their own children amidst their total disregard for everyone else’s. Schwartz addressed this balancing act by first pointing out that the parents were by no means innocent. “We wanted to dirty their hands up at the beginning of Season 2 to remind the audience, to make sure they don’t get too soft.”
But at the same time, the Runaways themselves can’t let go of their families when there is still love there. “If their parents do love them and if their parents are in other ways nuanced characters, it just makes it messier and harder for the kids,” Schwartz explained. “And every parent has their own sort of rationale for the way they behave – which by the way is true of parents in real life, even the ones who aren’t killing people but just are parenting in different ways or that are doing things that their kids don’t necessarily like or don’t have the full context for why they’re doing what they’re doing. So to us, it just made for a richer, more interesting, more layered story if the parents weren’t all bad.”
With thirteen episodes this year instead of ten, Runaways took the opportunity to flesh out more of the younger cast’s new environment and the characters they encountered along the way. Since the focus has shifted more to them than before, Savage discussed the ways their approach to younger stories has shifted as well since the days of The O.C. and Gossip Girl as well. “I think literally it’s changed in terms of talking to our actors, where when we first started working we were much closer to the age of our actors,” she first joked. But more than a generational gap, there’s been a broadening of younger mindsets as well. “Young people have changed, especially in the last couple of years in terms of their social awareness, their activism, their feeling empowered and taking stands on things. And in the show we try to reflect that, and a lot of that comes from conversations that we have with our young cast.”
One way that manifested was in the storyline with Gert and her anxiety meds, which Schwartz testified that actress Ariela Barer had strong feelings about. She wanted to be fearless about tackling that storyline which led to a discussion regarding “just what are those stigmas in society that we can kind of now explore and tell stories about.” Societal shifts are also reflected in the diversity of Runaways, which is partially due to the way the comics were written. Building on that, Schwartz and Savage expanded certain storylines, such as the Karolina and Nico relationship. “[It] wasn’t really explored in the initial run of the comics,” Schwartz pointed out. “[But it] was something that we obviously leaned into much more quickly and very continually do this year.” He also added that even more diverse and inclusive characters enter the story this year.
Make sure to check out the new Runaways episodes, and come back to Geek Syndicate for more interviews with the cast!
G.S Interviewer:: Tatiana Hullender (@myrcellasear)
