The second season of Falling Water kicks off tonight on USA, and there are some big changes ahead. There’s a new creative team at the helm with showrunner Remi Aubuchon and showrunner/producing director Tim Andrew (who playfully refer to themselves as “Team Falling Water”). Now that the world and these characters have been established, more action is being incorporated. And finally, filming moved from New York City to Toronto, which is where I took part in a set visit to chat with the cast and crew.
Here’s what you need to know going into Falling Water Season 2, straight from Remi Aubuchon and Tim Andrew.
Things are going from existential to exhilarating.
“[Tim and I] were brought in to take what was wonderfully done in the first season and try to spin it a little, give it a bit of adrenaline,” said Aubuchon. “If the first season was all about our characters trying to figure out what they have, who they are, how they fit in, what the big scheme is, our second season is about taking those skills that they’ve learned and finding out what [they’re] supposed to do with them. We keep calling this an exciting and odd existential drama. It’s really about people trying to figure out who they are and where they belong in the world.”
The scope and the world of Falling Water is getting bigger.
“What’s fun about genre and why I love doing it so much is that you can talk about real human issues and real human problems,” Aubuchon explained. “This season, we’ve got a fun adventure worked out for the three heroes — Tess, Burton and Taka — and a few additional people who we’re bringing into the mix.” Aubuchon continued, “It was a somewhat intellectualized drama in the first season, and we wanted to just take that and just push some adrenaline into it. Since they set up the world so well, we wanted to take full advantage of that and have a fun ride [while opening] it up a little more. Not all dreamers live in New York City. They live all over the world.”
The identity of James’ father will be revealed.
Aubuchon shared, “That will become an important thing down the line of the season. There’s a lot of secrets that are going to be revealed. If Tess’ journey last season was about finding her son, this season is actually about finding herself, finding out who she is. There are more unanswered questions than just, ‘Did I have a child?’ It turns out she did. [It’s now about] who is this child, where did he come from, why did they hide him from me, and if and if they’re lying to me about that, what else are they lying to me about?”
Burton is trying to reconcile what he was a part of in the first season.
“Burton, on the other hand, has gone through a true existential crisis where he thought he didn’t care about anything. He thought he was just there to be a fixer, but suddenly when he finally realized the implications of what he was involved in, felt that he had to do something. This season will be about him trying to figure out, ‘How do I rectify the horror that I was partially responsible for in the first season.'”
When the story resumes, Taka is still struggling with his abilities.
Aubuchon told us, “Taka [went] through some of the hardest stuff in the first season, and never completely [reconciled] his relationship with his mother. He probably, more than any of our three characters, has resisted the gift that has been given to him. When we meet everybody [in Season 2], it’ll be six months after the end of the first season. When we see Taka, he is more than determined not to ever dream again. But fate has a funny way of tapping you on the shoulder and saying, ‘Guess what? You can’t ignore what’s been given to you.'”
Every dream has a purpose.
“It’s not just random dreams,” said Andrew. “It is story driven and the [characters] get useful information out of these dreams even if they don’t quite understand what information they’re getting in that moment.” Aubuchon added, “Our specific heroes have special abilities, and we’re trying to explore those more, like what is it that Tess or Taka or Burton can do that other people can’t within a dream sequence. It’s going to be fun for them to say, ‘Hey, I wonder if I actually can go through a wall,’ or ‘Everybody keeps saying I have the capacity to find people, but what if I need to find someone on the other side of the world? How do I do that?’ Those are the fun things to play with.
The dream world will bleed into the real world.
“We’ve been successful in making sure that things that are happening in the dream world have consequences in the real world and vice versa,” said Aubuchon. “There are bad things happening in the real world with real world consequences, but are being facilitated in the dream world. It’s serious stuff that can only be solved in the dream world, but has real world implications. The consequence is that there’s lots of jeopardy not only in the dreamscape, but also in the real world. People are dying. People are being murdered in the real world, not just in the dream world. It was very important for us to be able to weave those two worlds together as much as possible.”
Catch Falling Water tonight at 10/9c on USA. It will return to Bravo in Canada this spring.
