LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Actor Idris Elba faces a new crisis in the second season of the thriller series “Hijack” when passengers are taken hostage on the Berlin subway during the morning rush hour.
Two years after Sam Nelson survives a plane hijacking in the first season of the Apple TV+ show, corporate negotiator Sam Nelson finds himself at the center of a new challenge.
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Like its predecessor, the eight-part season, which premieres on January 14, is set in real time.
In an interview with Reuters, British star Jim Field-Smith, the show’s co-creator and director, spoke about the season’s setting and new developments.
Below are excerpts edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was important in moving the story forward?
Elba: “There’s a certain amount of frustration[at the end of Season 1]of not knowing all the layers of how, why, what, when, who, who’s going to do it. And I think that was kind of the beginning of why for us, maybe coming back. Sam. About, about the hijacking…what’s going to happen next…because there’s a lot we don’t know…so if we’re going to come back, A, it was important for us to be able to widen the lens, so to speak. But secondly, to be smarter.”
Field-Smith: “The benefit of Season 2 is that a little bit of time has passed and the Sam Nelson we meet in frame one of Season 2 is not the Sam Nelson we left behind at the end of Season 1. And you can go, ‘What the hell happened to this guy?’ And we can take him to a much darker place that we weren’t able to do in Season 1.”
Q: What is Sam’s personal journey like?
Elba: “Sam has a lot of determination this season, and the viewer is asking themselves why… It’s kind of like trying to heal… It really explores the trauma. It explores what he would do for his family.”
Q: Given the plot twists in Season 1, what kind of pressure did you have in Season 2?
Field-Smith: “I wanted people to start watching this season and think, ‘Okay, okay, I feel like I know this show…Something bad is going to happen around him, and he’s going to be the key to it and save the day.’ And really, we took that as an inspiration and leaned into it, and I think the twists and takes on the character, to some extent, tap into the audience’s expectations of what we’re trying to do.”
Q: How did the train settings compare to the airplane settings?
Elba: “Comparatively…the constraints of claustrophobia are built into how we make the work, how we shoot…we don’t make the sets bigger, we scale them up…on the train…the claustrophobia was stronger for me, because you’re moving, you feel the movement, and you’re standing in the mass.”
Report by Marie-Louise Gamchian. Editing: Andrew Heavens
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