WARNING: The following contains minor spoilers for the second season of NOS4A2.
NOS4A2 showrunner Jami O'Brien has had an eclectic career in which she's helped usher everything from Flesh and Bone to Hell on Wheels to Fear the Walking Dead to the small screen. But she's never done anything quite like NOS4A2. Now entering its second season, the series is a supernatural horror story and a domestic drama rolled into one; even as protagonist Vic McQueen faces off against the immortal predator Charlie Manx, she struggles with her family life. As a result, O'Brien has created a layered series that is as much about cycles of family trauma as it is about the trauma of confronting a terrifying vampiric creature. And in Season 2, those two threads are even more intertwined.
O'Brien spoke to CBR about why she wanted to adapt the story of NOS4A2 for television, what to expect from Season 2 and taking the show beyond Joe Hill's novel.
CBR: Let’s start at the beginning. What was it about Joe Hill's novel NOS4A2 that inspired you to create the series?
Jami O’Brien: Vic McQueen. She's one of my favorite characters in any book that I've ever read, actually. I think she's pretty incredible. And I remember, I hadn't come across the novel. I had been working with AMC and one of the executives brought the novel to me. They had the rights to it and they asked me if I had ever read it. I had not, but I had read Locke & Key and was a big fan of that, so I knew that I liked Joe [Hill]'s writing. So I said, "Well let me check it out and I'll let you know what I think of it."
And so I read it basically in a weekend. Met Vic and Charlie. Discovered very quickly that the novel is set in a town called Haverhill, Massachusetts, which is right down the street from where I grew up, and the McQueens are just such a meticulously drawn, flawed, but nuanced working-class family. And I related to it right away and thought that it would be something really cool to see on TV. So yeah my in really was Vic.
The book covers a lot of time, but obviously for a television series, you have to compress that a little bit. What decisions did you have to make to ensure the story could work for TV?
A couple of things. One was, as you just mentioned, the book jumps around a lot in time. For instance, when we meet Vic McQueen, she's a little girl in the book, and she doesn't first encounter Charlie Manx until she's 17, and it's about a third of the way through the book. Now that third of the book is really kind of a coming of age story for Vic, and also that first showdown with Manx is really compelling, and her coming of age, I thought, was really compelling. I loved that first third of the book, and I didn't want to throw it out and start with an adult Vic, nor did I want to water it down in a way by showing it as a flashback.
And so I thought the best way to honor that part of the story and to make sure that we tell it is to age Vic up just a little bit… Again in the book, when she first meets Charlie, she's 17, so I just made her 18 from the start of the book, and we tell the same story but with Vic aged up a little bit.
And that enabled us to have the same actress -- the phenomenal Ashleigh Cummings who plays Vic as an adult -- take us through the entire story, rather than having two different actors play Vic, telling some of it in flashback. I just thought that it would be a better way for the audience to connect with the character and to go on the journey. So that was kind of the first thing.
And then, fundamentally, in order to have a television show you need people to talk to each other. Again in the book, a lot of the main characters don't meet each other right away, they meet later in the story. And in order to be able to have scenes, I moved them all a little bit closer together and they meet a little bit sooner.
So Vic meets Maggie in the second episode of [the first season], whereas in the book it's a little further in. She meets Manx much sooner in the television series than she does in the book. And I also brought Bing Partridge, who in the book is hanging out in Pennsylvania, I moved him into Vic’s hometown so that they could have scenes together. And again… those were functional choices of wanting to have the characters in scenes together. Even though I think that we kept, or we tried to keep, very close to the spirit of the book, and really just kind of make geographical changes.
In Season 2, of course, Vic’s son Wayne has been added to the cast of characters, which makes the story even more personal for her. Can you speak to the way that addition has allowed the series to evolve beyond the first season?
As you said, it makes the stakes of the season much more personal for Vic and also just much higher. It's funny, Season 1 in a way, there's a lot of mystery in Season 1 where we're unraveling Vic's knowledge of herself, Vic’s knowledge of her gift, her introduction to Charlie Manx, his introduction to her. We're getting to know their powers, we're getting to know who they are and what their mission statements are as characters.
And where we come in on Season 2, Vic has a child that is about the age of the kids… that Charlie Manx likes to kidnap. So that already is higher stakes. And in addition, we already know the characters, we already know what their powers are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, so we start with a lot more gas in the tank.
The premiere also shows how Vic can't escape her past, which includes the trauma of what happened with Manx but also involves her repeating a lot of her father's patterns. Why was it important for you to show some of the more mundane aspects of Vic's life along with those supernatural ones?
You know, I think, for me, one of the things that's so beautiful about the novel is that the supernatural is tied in with the personal for Vic always, right from the very beginning. The emotional charge that allows her to first discover her gift is her running from her family, literally running away from the truth of what's happening in her own house. And that is what allowed her to open her inscape for the first time, in addition to her being a Strong Creative, but that's kind of the spark that starts it all off.
So for me, I think that the story works best when the supernatural and the real-world stories are connected thematically, but they're also connected in terms of character drive. I think that in Season 1, as Vic gains strength fighting Charlie Manx, it also gives her the strength to confront her family and the problems that are happening in her family's home, and vice versa. As she gets the strength to confront her father, that fuels her to be able to take on Charlie Manx. So the two stories are always in conversation with one another. And we carry that forward in Season 2.
There's a moment in Season 1 when, like I said, Vic has found the strength to confront her father, and part of that is fighting Charlie Manx and part of it is actually because she's got a little liquid courage, she's had a couple of beers. So she confronts her dad about his drinking and his violence, and her dad says to her…, "You know, I hope you never have to feel what it's like to disappoint the people who you love. If you keep drinking like your old man" -- meaning himself -- "I guarantee you'll find out." And that is a warning to Vic and it's also a kind of prophecy.
And when we meet her in Season 2, we discover that, yes, she has been traumatized by Charlie Manx, but she also still carries the demons of her family of origin. So one of the themes in Season 2 continues to be intergenerational trauma, and how our characters… have carried that forward now with their own families. And… one of the questions that the season is asking is: can Vic stop the cycle with her own son, can Vic grow to be the mother that she wishes that she had, can Vic grow beyond the problems that she's inherited from her father?
We also see Manx's origin story for the first time. Will we be getting more of his background and the Christmasland area in Season 2 as it progresses?
Yeah. I’ll tease this: there are two episodes this season that are focused solely on Charlie Manx and both of them really dig into his backstory, and I'm excited about both episodes. I won't say too much. Tune in… you’ll see more of it.
Will the show finish the novel’s story this season?
…I don't want to spoil it. I will say this, Season 2 is heading towards a dramatic showdown between Vic and Manx.
How much longer can the show go on? Does it end where the book does, or do you have stories you can imagine telling way beyond that?
You know one of the wonderful things about what Joe set up in the novel is that, there are a lot of Strong Creatives in the world, and some of them are good like, Maggie Leigh, and some of them aren't so good, like Charlie Manx. And so I think that, were we lucky enough to have multiple seasons and overrun the book, I think that there's a lot implied within the novel for future seasons.
That's good news.
Yeah, it's a big world.
It seems like this season Manx is staying a little bit in his younger form. Was there something behind that decision?
I think that Season 2, largely is about, for Manx anyway, it is about revenge. And so I think it was important to see him in his power, as much as we can. It's also kind of a truncated timeline in comparison to Season 1. So in Season 1 we're, again, unspooling the mystery of who he is. And so it was important to see what happens to him when he doesn't have a child for a long time. Whereas in Season 2, it’s important that he gets a kid in that Wraith pretty quickly and then after that, I think he wants to get on the move as fast as possible in order to remain in his full powers.
But there are, at the beginning of the season, some really horrific special effects when Manx revives. How did those come to be?
Well, there are two kinds of effects on our show. There are practical effects and there’s special effects makeup I would put in that category. We have a phenomenal craftsman in Joel Harlow who does all of Manx’s special effects makeup, all the beautiful prosthetic work. He also does the demon kids. And anytime that there is something of the horror variety that needs some kind of special zhuzh, Joel is in charge of that. He does all of the special effects makeup for the show.
They're also practical effects. We have a lot of explosions, we have fire and we have a physical effects team headed up by Chris Walsh this season, who's really, really good at his job and has a fantastic team. And then whatever we're not able to do practically, we lean on our VFX team for, and there's a lot of incredible VFX work this season too. We spend a lot more time in Christmasland, which is a combination of practical sets and practical effects and also VFX.
Is there anything else you can tease about what's to come in Season 2?
I guess I will say, hold on to your hats. Everybody is really invested. We get the whole gang working all on the same plotline this season. So, whereas last season I felt like Vic was kind of living in two stories that were thematically related and emotionally related, this season… it’s all hands on deck. Everyone's pulling in the same direction.
Airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and BBC America, NOS4A2 Season 2 stars Zachary Quinto, Ashleigh Cummings, Jonathan Langdon, Jason David, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Virginia Kull, Jahkara Smith and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.