"The Affair" returns for a second season tonight on Showtime and while the first season explored the extramarital dalliance of Noah (Dominic West) and Alison (Ruth Wilson), as told through their eyes, expect major changes in season two.
This season, the Golden Globe award-winning show makes a bold move by showing four varied perceptions of the unfolding events, each revealing four distinct truths, something star Joshua Jackson admits may make viewers uncomfortable.
"The discomfort is trying to combine these two stories and figure out where the truth is," he told reporters at the Television Critics Association in July while promoting the show.
"That's the essential mission of the show," he added. "That discomfort we need the audience to feel to go, 'Well, wait a minute, it can't be this and this?' It forces you to be in the position of deciding what feels the most right to you."
"Hopefully over the course of the first season, and now the course of the second season as you live in these people's lives, you will change your opinion as it goes along," Jackson said.
The second season picks up with Jackson's character Cole left an empty shell thanks to the events of season one. He's now faced with picking up the pieces and starting fresh. There's also the arrest of Alison (Ruth Wilson) to contend with, something that will ensure that the characters' lives remain intertwined.
"The point of the crime is, we try very hard to not have a God's eye view or moralizing sense on the show," explains Jackson of the decision to incorporate a crime. "But the point of that crime in a broader sense is the idea of fate. That there are ties that bind that inexplicably draw you toward a group of people."
Season two of "The Affair" premieres on Sunday, Oct. 4 at 10 p.m. on Showtime and continue reading for more with Jackson.
Has this role inspired your own personal relationship, to take care of it in ways you hadn't thought of before?
I don't know if it has a direct effect, but certainly you can't work on a show called 'The Affair' without having a couple of uncomfortable conversations with your better half. Oddly, (executive producer) Sarah (Treem) said it best when she said we went into this show thinking we were going to make a sort of morality-free tale of how life is messy and uncomfortable and difficult. How you make choices and hurt people along with yourself and do crazy things, ultimately we made the best argument for staying inside a marriage you could ever possibly imagine.
So that was completely unintentional?
Unintentional! But the accumulation of the first season is that this stuff is terrible and if you get into it for any other than the most serious of reasons, the ramifications of these choices are so immense. It isn't light, easy or all that much fun and you have to be prepared for everything that comes afterward. Hagai Levi had a beautiful quote when he said he intended the second season of the show to be the moment after the end of "The Graduate." That great shot where they're sitting at the back of the bus and can you just sit with that shot. It just gets more awkward as it goes on. Finally you see these two people grappling with this and wondering what do we do now? That's what our second season is.
What makes you glad you did the work in your own relationship?
We been together for nine years and life happens in nine years. Also, nine years is about 250 Hollywood years, but we met each other when we were old enough to understand that if you put in the work the rewards are so much more than the labor. When you're young it's all, "This is hard, I don't like your shoes I'm out of here." It's a bit like "Hot Wet American Summer" - you smell like a hamburger I like you anymore. But then things change. If you're willing to commit to each other and put in the time, it's one of those few times in life that the reward multiplies. That's the labor of love I think.
Now viewers are seeing everything from two points of view. Is there a worry it may slow things down?
Certainly, but oddly there is a corollary here for 'Fringe', when you split into the two universes and split perspectives, that was always the conceit of our show, then you split it again. If this was a plot driven show that would be a big problem. I think that because the lives of these characters, the plotting is less important. So the opportunity the two perspectives allows us, outside the people that are in the affair and now trying to figure out what this relationship is to see the effect it has outside of them. So you get into the Helen character and are eager to see how this thing ripples out and has multiple effects and how that perception is different.
What about the others?
Well for Noah it's how he sees his ex-wife and the combativeness of their relationship moving forward is very different to the way she feels on the inside. Now we get a chance to go and see what that day is like in her life. And for Cole the same way, suddenly everything in his life is ripped away from him including his wife, who he has been married to for 16 years. His entire adult self is built around this relationship and now we see this guy suddenly starting at zero.
Your perspective on this is the only one that's actually correct?
Of course (laughs).
As a TV watcher you always want a point of view, now it's like 'What am I supposed to read into when you see something from another point of view'?
I guess the answer for our show, and this is only specific to our show, is we want you to feel that uncomfortable. We're not making that choice for you, who is right, who is good, who is bad, or what the right choice is, even what's true. That puts you as an audience member in the position of having to choose for yourself, which is uncomfortable. I think that's the chord the show strikes that we all live in our internal lives and all have those beautiful moments we want to share with those that are most important to us. Often you'll find yourself telling a story of going somewhere and how beautiful it is while your partner has no idea what you're talking about. In the most banal sense, I can't tell you how often I'll be talking to my wife Diane about something and she'll say, "Remember, I was wearing that beautiful dress?" I'm like, "No, no idea," it didn't even register.
Is Cole fighting to get Alison back this season?
I think he's fighting to get a sense of life back. There's a scene at the end of episode two, which is probably the first second of his new life. He's in the stasis where his family has been ripped away, the patrimony of the Lockhart family has been ripped away, the central relationship in his life has been ripped away. Everything that was a part of his self-conception has been wiped out. He doesn't know what to do, and there's a scene that shows things from the two different perspectives because through his perspective he's a wounded animal and from hers he's just an animal. There's a moment where she finally comes to him and essentially lets him go, it's beautiful and heartbreaking, but that's the first moment he's able to step out into his own life, whatever it's going to be. Ultimately, I think he's the most out of all of them, Noah and Allison have to grapple with each other and their lives, Helen has to grapple with the children, Cole is just empty, there's nothing left. The end of that second episode is the moment he comes back to life.
Does it make you uncomfortable when you're interpreting the script?
Of course, when you're dealing with the most difficult circumstances that can be experienced by a human, we have the loss of a child, the dissolution of a marriage, the crackup of the family dynamic, it's the way we check in with ourselves and who am I? However, you build your sense of self, and our scenes constantly are driving into the cracks and fissures of that with a wedge, so yes it is uncomfortable. You read the scenes sometimes and you're like "Oh God..."
Can you talk about the crime element being added?
I don't want to speak for Ruth (Wilson), but Alison's journey is the desire to break out of this life that she feels like she's been shackled to, then realizing in season two when she gets to a new place that 'Holy crap', I'm still here and I'm bringing all that with me. I think that's ultimately the point of the crime, as much as it seems simple or easy to step out of your life, you go wherever you are. But you can't help it be tied to all of the things in your life.
You've been on three shows now that have widely diverse storylines that attract dedicated audiences, what does it a mean to have that kind of career diversity?
The simplest answer is that I'm just still kicking. Twenty-six years in to still be going, that's pretty good. The hope in an actor's life is that you get to keep on doing things that are interesting to you and that people respond to. Things that are provocative in their own way, no matter what it is. I've had the good fortune to work on three different shows now that have struck a chord and found an audience that really indulges in them in the best possible way. Things they really want to get into and chew on then think about them after we've gone off the air and become a topic of conversation. That's a not so minor miracle in the TV world. Just to have had the ability to survive this long.
Did you feel you still had more 'Fringe' stories to tell?
I do, but who knows what the life of that story would be because there is still such a dedicated audience for that show, who knows where it would go?
Do you see a season 3 of 'The Affair' happening?
We're not green lit for one but the story does lend itself to another chapter. As actors we can put ourselves through an infinite amount of suffering (laughs). But there is a place that the story can go where the suffering isn't the central focus, since were playing these things out in kind of real-time for these characters. The suffering is real because you don't just get to pivot from a bad situation to a happy one. But there is a place where these people come to a sense of resolution and I think if we got a third season that's what the third chapter would be about.
