'Blindspotting' Season 2 Interview: Helen Hunt

Moviefone speaks with Helen Hunt about 'Blindspotting' Season 2. "The show manages to be about this exquisitely painful topic while still being funny."

Premiering on Starz beginning April 14th is the second season of the TV series ‘Blindspotting,’ which is a spin-off/sequel of the popular movie of the same name from actors, writers and executive producers Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs.

Blindspotting

"Change the way you see."

R1 hr 35 minJan 18th, 2018

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What is the premise of the show ‘Blindspotting?’

Six months after the events in the movie, Miles (Rafael Casal), Ashley's (Jasmine Cephas Jones) partner of 12 years and father of their son, is suddenly incarcerated, and the situation leaves her to navigate a chaotic and humorous existential crisis when she and her son Sean (Atticus Woodward) are forced to move in with Miles' mother (Candace Nicholas-Lippman) and half-sister (Jaylen Barron).

Who is in the cast of ‘Blindspotting?’

'Blindspotting' stars Jasmine Cephas Jones ('Hamilton') as Ashley Rose, Jaylen Barron ('Shameless') as Trish, Candace Nicholas-Lippman ('Grey's Anatomy') as Janelle, Benjamin Earl Turner ('Snowfall') as Earl, Atticus Woodward ('MO') as Sean, Leland Orser ('Taken') as Carl, Anthony Ramos ('A Star is Born') as Yorkie, Oscar-winner Helen Hunt ('Twister') as Rainey, and Rafael Casal reprising his role from the film as Miles.

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Helen Hunt about her work on ‘Blindspotting’ Season 2, what fans can expect from the new season, her character, balancing comedy and drama, receiving the show’s scripts, and working with series creators Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs.

Helen Hunt in Starz's 'Blindspotting' season 2.

You can read our full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Hunt, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Jaylen Barron, Candace Nicholas-Lippman, Benjamin Earl Turner, Rafael Casal, and Daveed Diggs about ‘Blindspotting’ Season 2.

Moviefone: To begin with, what can you tell us about the plot of ‘Blindspotting’ Season 2?

Helen Hunt: We pick up with Jasmine's character, who's at the center of the show, right on the edge. My character is pretty much on the edge, although she puts a happier, funnier wrapping around it and through the course of these episodes, everybody expresses the best and the worst of themselves. Nobody does well in a family when one of their members is put in a cage.

MF: Can you talk about the challenges of balancing the show’s comedy and drama?

HH: Somehow this show manages to be about this devastating, exquisitely painful topic while being sitcom level funny and there's dance and there's poetry. So I just feel like it's just this offering of art, beauty and humor that I hope people, those who didn't watch last year, catch up quick and jump in because I'm really proud to be part of it.

(L to R) Margo Hall, Helen Hunt, and Jasmine Cephas Jones star in Starz's 'Blindspotting' Season 2.

Related Article: A Sequel to 1996’s ‘Twister’ is Spinning Up at Universal, and Helen Hunt Could Return

MF: In the new season we discover that Rainey no longer believes in God. Is that because of what happened to Miles?

HH: That's a good question. I think what I played is that that was never a really strong lane for her but that she is in such despair, she actually has to go, "I don't know if you're up there, but help." So she is on her knees because she's on her knees.

MF: What’s the status of Rainey and Ashley’s relationship in Season 2?

HH: You've got to watch all the way to the end to find out. I mean, again, having the person in the center of your family airlifted out and locked away is going to make everyone pray and grab at their chance to spend time with him. The best of people come out in this show and the worst of people, and that's sort of what the season is. I think it's like my character does a lot of trying to keep the spirit of the family up and the spirit of the grandson up, and while that doesn't go away in season two, there's some big angry cracks in it.

(L to R) Daveed Diggs, Jasmine Cephas Jones, and Rafael Casal on the set of Starz's 'Blindspotting.'

MF: What’s it like working with series creators Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, who also wrote the film that the show is based on?

HH: I mean, it's everything. This show is literally born out of their friendship, their home, their love of Oakland and their love of family, so the show lives in the space between them and inside them. So I've just tried my best to soak that up and express it on film.

MF: Finally, how much were you told about your character’s full arc for this season before you began shooting? Were you given all the scripts at once, or did you only receive them before shooting the next episode?

HH: Somewhere in between. You don't have all of them, for sure. Every show starts off wanting to do that and no show can do that. It's just too hard because every script goes through ideas, then outlines, then first drafts, then they're rewritten, then the showrunners look at them and then the actors look. So there's no way to get them all. But showrunning is a really tricky job. You have to be the creative force and the administrator who makes sure things are happening on time and talks to the network, and they just did that flawlessly and I've seen it done by a lot of people, but never better than by the two of them. We talked through where she's headed. I knew where it was going. I had a meeting with the writers at the beginning of the season where they asked questions and I talked about the things that I'm interested in seeing in her. So by the time we started, I knew what I needed to know about where it was going. it's been very collaborative from the beginning. I just wanted to be sure that I could step out of my own Birkenstocks and into her Birkenstocks and believe 100% what I was doing. So they were willing to and wanting to be super collaborative about it.