BEING HUMAN: Anna Fricke and Jeremy Carver Discuss Season 2

I am among the many of you who are anxiously awaiting Season 2 of Being Human on Syfy. So
I was very excited that Anna Fricke and Jeremy Carver, the Executive producers/writers of Being Human, participated in a press conference call to discuss our favorite ghost, vampire, werewolf and what to look forward to in Season 2.

Moderator: Last season many of the plots were similar to the U.K. show, can we expect that the U.S. show will branch off on its own this season?

Anna Fricke: Yes, all the story lines – we made a decision this year to do completely original story lines.

Jeremy Carver: Yes, there was a great effort to make the series as original as possible this year given that its roots are still in the BBC version.

Moderator: Can you talk about how the season goes through changes here? I know the actors have said “It’s going to be a lot darker this year.”

Jeremy Carver: Yes. Well I think the underlying theme of the season as you’ve seen in some of the press materials, is each of our characters is being tempted by something that is leading them down a darker path. And I think that one of the things that we’re playing with is that in trying to become more and more human they are in actuality being forced to confront their monstrosities more than ever.

And so I think whereas last year you maybe had a few of the characters going down darker paths and being able to rely on the other characters, this year each of our three main characters are being so enmeshed in sort of a darker path that there’s a little bit less of a safety net this year in each other.

Moderator: Can you talk about the relationships we’re going to see this year?

Jeremy Carver: Yes. Aidan is basically confronted with the fallout from the death of Bishop, who he killed at the end of last year. And he – we are introduced to another sort of aspect of the vampire hierarchy in current day America, which involves this overall leader known as Mother.

And Mother basically is going to essentially offer Aidan his freedom if he agrees to train her disgraced vampire daughter to be the leader of Boston.

So that opens up a whole can of worms in terms of Aidan having to deal with this pretty unpredictable daughter who he has known frankly, for close to 100 years.

Along with that we’ll be introduced to Aidan’s vampire protégé, who is basically the last vampire Aidan ever turned, and that was back in the early 20th Century.

That’s the character of Henry, played by Kyle Schmid, while the vampire daughter is played by Dichen Lachman from Dollhouse. Both of these people will greatly, complicate Aidan’s life and will play a major part in leading him down this dark hole that he may end up going down this season.

Josh of course is dealing with the fallout, or at least is totally unaware that at the end last season, that he scratched Nora when he turned into a werewolf. In the new season we find Josh and Nora both anxiously awaiting the rapidly approaching full moon, neither knowing what’s going to happen.

The results of which have an explosive effect on their relationship, plus we’ll see some more people from Josh’s past re-enter the picture in a surprising way.

As for Sally, we’ve got a ghost who considerably missed her door last season, she chose to save Aidan instead, and she deals heavily with that fallout. And she will be introduced to lots of new ghost characters this year who will be tempting her with new, sort of spectral temptation that will also lead her down a much darker path.

Moderator: Are there any other guest stars you can speak of besides Kyle Schmid and Dichen Lachman?

Anna Fricke: Those are our big guest stars.

Jeremy Carver: Yes, those are the two that we’re prepared to announce at this point. We can also expect to see a return from the great Mark Pellegrino in the character of Bishop in some form this year.

Anna Fricke: Who knows what form?
Moderator: What has been the most challenging story line to create so far?

Anna Fricke: I think that for us this season, but I’m glad that we did it because I think it’s a necessary aspect of Aidan’s background to tell, it’s been a little tricky to figure out the realm of vampire politics. Because vampires are obviously by nature so old, and things go so far back, we just wanted to make sure that we got things right, and I think we did.

That was a lot to take on and it was an exciting challenge, but you know, when you’re talking about people who are thousands of years old it gets a little complicated. So that was a challenge for us this year I would say.

Jeremy Carver: I agree.

Moderator: Has there been a story line that you have wanted to tackle, but for some reason or other, have not been able to yet?

Jeremy Carver: Yes. There is an existing Aidan story line actually, which…

Anna Fricke: Well there are many, yes. I don’t think you have to give away the story, but I mean we really keep on wanting to get back into what exactly happened with Aidan’s family, with his wife.

Jeremy Carver: The original, back in Revolutionary times.

Anna Fricke: Yes, his original life and child. So we won’t say what we’re thinking about for that, but that is a story that we actually wanted to get into, we did not have time for this year.

Moderator: With the vampire politics kind of overtaking that story line, will there be some similar organization of ghosts and/or werewolves?

Anna Fricke: Yes, I mean I think it’s safe to say that this season we sort of see a new form of every monster. So we have the new form of vampires and we will also see different kinds of ghosts and a different ghost society that we had touched into before, and also a different kind of werewolf.

Jeremy Carver: Yes, I’ll go in further to say for example, in the werewolf world, I think last year, we had Josh introduced to just one other wolf, isn’t that right?

Anna Fricke: Well and the professor.

Jeremy Carver: And the professor, correct. Sorry I forgot that. And this year we are basically starting to expand the types of werewolves that we’re seeing, and there will be a particular type that Josh comes across that will greatly alter his world. We’ll be seeing that there is basically more than one kind of species of werewolf in our world, and we’re really excited about that.

Likewise with Sally, she’s not just making friends with ghosts, as a result of turning down her door, we’re also going to be introduced to a different, I’ll call it, species of ghost, that she may have unwittingly caused to come into her world by virtue of essentially screwing with the heavens as it were and passing up her door.

It’s tremendously fun, it’s really scary and it we couldn’t be more excited about how we have expanded the reach sort of like world monster goes vampire this season. It’s pretty ambitious what we set out to do and we’re really excited to share it with everybody.

Moderator: Sally finds out a new power that ghosts have in the first couple of episodes, is that something that is going to come back up and that she’ll be using throughout the season? Or has that been pretty much resolved in the first few episodes?

Anna Fricke: Yes. Her new knowledge is something that she will continue to struggle with and come up against.

Jeremy Carver: Sally has been desperate to move on from her existence as a ghost, right? That’s basically what all of last season was, “How do I move on from this place?” So when she’s presented with new ways of, “being human,” she leaps at it and she does so knowing that it could lead her down a darker path.

Moderator: How much are we going to see Terry Kenny as Heggeman as well as more information about the Dutch?

Jeremy Carver: Well the second question, I think the Dutch plays a pretty big role, we’ll be introducing new Dutch characters this season. And as for Terry Kenny, you’ll definitely be seeing Terry Kenny involved in a very explosive story line kicking off our season.

Moderator: You mentioned the vampire politics that we’ve seen so far, and we’re going to see more of that. What efforts are you guys making to differentiate your supernatural creatures from all of the other versions that are out there?

Anna Fricke: I think what we try to do most and what we always try to focus on is the core of the show, which is being human. Which is sort of keeping everything grounded on an emotional level for these characters, and keeping them in touch with their humanity and trying not to get too caught up in fantastical or arch storytelling, right?

I mean even in terms of the Mother character we have, who is sort of like a Queen Elizabeth character in this vampire society, she and her daughter are actually a biological mother and daughter meaning that she turned her own daughter into a vampire. And so with something that I think has the show apart a little bit, in that you know, there are actual blood ties there.

Jeremy Carver: Yes, I think Anna’s hitting on it nice. To it’s not necessarily a question of, how do our politics differ, it’s how do our characters differ? And when we introduced this sort of new line on the vampire hierarchy, we do so by focusing very heavily on the characters themselves.

Anna Fricke: I think what sets this show apart from some of these other genre shows, of which I’m a big fan, is that our monsters are trying their best not to get enmeshed with their other monsters. All they want is to be human. And so they’re always trying to do that, trying to have human relationships, trying to have normal lives, I think that ultimately is what differentiates it.

Moderator: Earlier last season we met Josh’s sister and she was the only gay character on the show. So what I was wondering is, this season are we going to see more diversity in terms of race and sexuality?

Anna Fricke: Yes actually. We are trying to make a point of that, and one thing, and this is a small thing, we wanted to make a point that even in the vampire feeding world that men aren’t always feeding off of women and women feeding off of men, we wanted to mix that up a little bit more and show that it’s a free-for-all. There definitely is more diversity.

Jeremy Carver: And we can look forward to Emily making a return. But in terms of additional gay or lesbian characters I don’t think we specifically identify anyone new as gay or lesbian this season.

Moderator: Lastly, who comes up with the episode titles? I really like them.

Jeremy Carver: We all do.

Anna Fricke: Yes, all the writers do. It’s a pretty equal opportunity. We vote. So I’m glad you like them.

Season 2 of Being Human premieres Monday, January 16 at 9:00 pm on Syfy.