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Sugar EPs on Season 2 Transition, New Ensemble Cast, Farrell & More

Sugar EPs Sam Catlin and Audrey Chon discussed the series's transition from Seasons 1 to 2, Colin Farrell, the new ensemble cast, and more.

As Sugar unravels its extraterrestrial nature throughout season one, the next step in John Sugar's (Colin Farrell) journey is his next case in Los Angeles, from searching for the granddaughter of a Hollywood producer to going to Koreatown to find a missing brother of a rising local boxer. Executive producers (and showrunner) Sam Catlin (Breaking Bad) and Audrey Chon (The Running Man) spoke with Bleeding Cool about the character's transition with a new ensemble cast, including Laura Donnelly (Werewolf By Night), Tony Dalton (Daredevil: Born Again), and Sasha Calle (The Rip), and if creator Mark Protosevich has long-term plans beyond season two.

Sugar EPs on Planning Season 2, Colin Farrell, Ensemble Cast & More

Bleeding Cool: What went into planning the second season, and how do you want to distinguish it narrative-wise from the previous one in terms of tone and themes?

Catlin: Well, it was bound to be different, just based on the end of season one and the audience understanding [Sugar's] big secret, so we were in a way, already tied to the hip to him. We knew his secret and why he was experiencing the world in a sort of unique way. We knew that he was going to have to rebuild, recreate a support system of friends or professional colleagues. We knew that there was sort of an ominous thing that Henry Thorpe (Jason Butler Harner) said at the end of season one, when he said, "The longer we stay here, the more we become like them," so we knew that process was going to be continuing. We knew he was going to have a new case. We wanted to do a different kind of case, something that took us out of the more familiar Beverly Hills case into a different kind of neighborhood, a different locale, a different part of LA, an immigrant part, an immigrant community in LA. Then we were going to have a noir case where it started as something small and grew bigger and bigger and sort of implicated in an entire, more than just people, but a sort of system. That was in our minds how we were going to differentiate it or expand upon it, season one.

What went into the process of selecting this new ensemble cast, and as far as just, were there any ones you particularly targeted from the get-go, or was it something that fell into place, or were there chemistry reads with Colin involved?

Chon: Yeah, it was interesting. It was different. The approach was different across the board. With Tony [Dalton], I know that Sam Catlin loved Tony for the role of [Ray] Vega, and that was almost like sight unseen, "Can we get him?"

Catlin: Yeah.

Chon: When we went to cast the Moon Brothers, that was a pretty extensive search. It's very hard to find Asian actors in general, and we wanted them to be Korean, and so…

Both: And to look like brothers.

Catlin: They both are fighters. Usually, this happens, but we totally lucked out and found the two right actors that were just great, but it took a while.

Chon: I think Sasha [Calle] was more of a discovery. She read alongside other women and she really stood out to us…

Catlin: Laura [Donnelly].

Chon: Laura was someone you saw.

Catlin: I had seen Laura in a play in New York in the previous month before that and was just blown away. She'd certainly done a lot of TV work. She's a fantastic performance, so yeah, it was a little bit of like: a little of this, a bit of that.

Does Mark have a three-to-five-season arc as far as plans to take Colin's character, or do you take it by each season and then plan when things are official?

Catlin: I think it's what you just said there at the end, which is there are always ideas that can come up for future seasons, but with very few exceptions, nobody really knows if there's going to be a next season until after the season's aired or begun to air and stuff like that. That's how it usually operates, so we definitely have ideas, but right now we're just excited to share season two.

New episodes of Sugar, which also stars Jin Ha and Raymond Lee, stream Fridays on Apple TV through August 7th.

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