Cassie Bowden can’t trust her own memories, so why would she trust anyone else?
The heroine of “The Flight Attendant,” returning to HBO Max Thursday for its second season, sees spies everywhere. She sees dead one night stands who talk to her, body doubles who frame her for murder and three versions of herself in her mind. Her work friend turned out to be a CIA agent and another was spying for North Korea. It’s hard to blame Cassie (Kaley Cuoco) for being hesitant about everyone in her life.
“Everyone has a secret. You have a secret, they have a secret, everyone has a secret. But I don’t think we’re really playing our secrets; we’re playing our angle on the world,” Griffin Matthews, who plays undercover agent Shane Evans, told the Daily News.
“All of our worlds start to collide and that’s the drama and that’s the comedy and that’s the roller coaster.”
The trick, the cast says, is playing their character’s truth. If the character can justify an action or defend it, that’s their truth. Sometimes that’s new flight attendant Grace St. James, who described themselves as a “question mark in Cassie’s life.” Sometimes that’s fellow sorbet addict Jenny (Jessie Ennis) who’s just a little too interested in Cassie and brother Davey (T.R. Knight). Sometimes that’s Gabrielle (Callie Hernandez) and Esteban Diaz (JJ Soria), who seem like pretty clear-cut bad guys.
“When it’s so heightened and can be so wacky and macabre almost, we are playing human beings,” Hernandez told The News. “Especially in the case of the Diazes, to see someone capable of the depth of love and commitment between them and the honesty and the loyalty, and then see them completely not really fit in another societal realm, so this is what they’ve created for themselves. It’s a jarring dichotomy of a full-fledged human being.”
Even Max (Deniz Akdeniz), the hacker who found himself on Cassie’s team in the first season and is now dating her best friend, Annie (Zosia Mamet), can explain away his illegal activity when he’s playing for the right side.
“I see Max as a Robin Hood-esque figure as in he does bad things with good intentions. It’s that area of gray. Annie’s the same, more so now. As long as they’re doing it with the right intention, you can’t help but root for them,” he told The News.
“If those skills are what it takes to get out the other side, they’re going to do it.”
Mo McRae, who joins the cast this year as Cassie’s CIA handler, took the justifications even farther, not just to a valid explanation but to a time and place.
“Whose moral compass are we using? What’s the barometer for what’s OK or not?” he questioned.
“The stakes in this world are always so heightened. Most people can agree that in peril or chaos, most things that are usually not OK are OK, because of what’s hanging in the balance. As an actor, you have to commit to the belief system of the character. He believes that he would be on the right side of history in certain moments.”
The “Flight Attendant” creative team knows how annoying that can be, to constantly be on edge. But that’s the whole point.
“We want to keep the ability to pull the rug out from under you,” showrunner Natalie Chaidez told The News.
“You don’t know who to trust and that’s exactly where we want you.”
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