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No one knew the slap was going to occur.
This week’s episode of The Flight Attendant was all about darkish, startling surprises—and we’re not even speaking about when North Koreans present as much as chase the main woman via the woods.
(Warning: Spoilers lie forward for “Brothers & Sisters,” the sixth episode of The Flight Attendant Season 2, which hit HBO Max Thursday.)
Cassie (Kaley Cuoco) surprised her brother Davey (T.R. Knight) with the revelation that, after celebrating a 12 months of sobriety, she had relapsed the evening earlier than their journey again to their hometown. Once they arrive at their childhood home, Cassie’s eyes widen in shock when the door opens and her mom (Sharon Stone), with whom she has an estranged, acrimonious relationship, is standing there. Oh, after which there’s the slap.
“I’ll always remember when it occurred,” Kaley Cuoco tells The Day by day Beast. “You'd have thought the life obtained sucked out of that whole room. Nobody moved. Everybody had their fingers over their mouths. And so they simply saved rolling. I don’t know if I’ll ever expertise such a real second in capturing one thing ever once more.
This season of The Flight Attendantcontinues to be a powerful, fizzy cocktail mixing the thrills of Cassie’s globe-trotting espionage hijinks with the sardonic, quirky wit of its foremost characters. It’s additionally traveled deeper into the battle—and generally painful actuality—of a sobriety journey. Cassie begins the season decided to show over a brand new leaf. She’s going to AA, however is continually battling the temptation to drink—particularly as visions of her previously boozy self bait and taunt her.
Final week’s episode, “Drowning Ladies,” finds Cassie, who had simply acquired her one-year sober chip, occurring a violent bender, destroying her home and drunk-driving to the seashore, the place she has an emotional meltdown and calls her sponsor (Shoreh Aghdashloo) in disgrace. It results in a wrenching heart-to-heart, powerfully acted out by Cuoco and Aghdashloo.
“Brothers & Sisters” finds her grappling with the implications of her relapse, and the reality that it'd occur once more: “I believed that if I stop consuming all my issues would go away, however they’re all nonetheless right here.” When she and Davey go to their father’s grave, she breaks down whereas studying a “forgiveness letter,” explaining how a lot she resents that he launched her to consuming and is partly chargeable for her being an alcoholic grownup. Slipping “makes me hate myself,” she says.
The shock that her mom is on the home when she and Davey arrive to undergo their belongings sparks an explosive confrontation by which they excavate many years of previous trauma. Cassie apologizes for being a “shitty daughter,” however her mom counters: “No person is mad at anyone for what you do if you’re little. It’s what you do as an grownup that issues.” She begins itemizing all of the horrible issues that Cassie has carried out, each cracking Cassie increasingly more till she lastly shatters.
On her method out, she takes a quivering Cassie’s face in her fingers and says, “I like you, however I don’t such as you in any respect.” She provides her two love faucets on the cheek, after which slaps her, leaving Cassie shell-shocked.
“We knew we had a whole lot of comedy up till these episodes, so we knew we earned it,” Cuoco says. “This was an enormous deal for me this season. Each electronic mail, each name, each all the pieces, I saved saying, ‘Guys, go together with the comedy take. We want the comedy.’ I used to be actually pushing comedy as a result of that, on the finish of the day, is what we're. I used to be apprehensive it was beginning to get too darkish, however after watching the primary few episodes, the comedy actually was there. So we earned 5 and 6.”
Kaley Cuoco and T.R. Knight in The Flight Attendant Season 2 .
HBO Max
For the previous star of The Huge Bang Principle, it’s essentially the most dramatic work that she had ever carried out. Her pure kookiness and inclination for screwball comedy by no means vanished within the episodes—her wryness in scenes with Zosia Mamet’s Annie continues to be hysterical, and the bodily comedy of her and Knight operating from the North Koreans was excellent. However the rawness with which she mined the emotion in these two episodes, notably in that kitchen scene with Stone, is the efficiency of her profession.
As she tells The Day by day Beast, going via her current divorce throughout manufacturing, Stone’s intense curiosity in her life whereas on set—“I felt like I had carried out 18 hours of remedy”—and an performing tip from Stone that had the 2 of them on set screaming like goats earlier than a take all labored collectively to assist nail the efficiency. “It felt fully totally different,” she says. In flip, she and the collection are additionally depicting probably the most sensible and sincere depictions of alcoholism and sobriety there’s been in a TV present.
“I used to be purchasing the opposite day, and somebody got here as much as me and pulled me apart and mentioned, ‘I simply should inform you: I’ve been watching your present. I’ve been sober for 17 years, and you bought it proper,’” Cuoco says. “I simply obtained this chill down my physique. It was so good to listen to, and I mentioned which means a lot to me. I mentioned, hear, I'm not a sober individual. I mentioned I had to determine and be taught that everybody’s sober journey is totally different to them. And so I simply took that as, OK, what’s my concept for Cassie’s journey? Wanting again into her household and her trauma, what's she going via?”
There are traces within the two current episodes which might be remarkably frank about what sobriety means for an individual like Cassie. In a single scene, Cassie is speaking to Annie and says she needs to drink. Annie recoils and begs her to not say issues like that, however Cassie pushes again, saying it’s true and it'll all the time be true. In one other, Davey asks Cassie if she’s OK after her relapse and bender. “No,” she says. “However I’m not going to drink once more. Not less than I’m not going to drink proper now.”
“That is going to be a relentless battle for her and he or she’s lastly not initially,” Cuoco says. “She’s lastly being sincere about, no, I’m fucked and that is how I really feel and that is going to all the time be my problem in my life.”
Essentially the most brutal—and due to this fact most revelatory—change comes within the scene with Stone within the kitchen.
Cuoco says it was Stone who truly reached out to manufacturing and expressed curiosity in being on the present. “She has a whole lot of members of the family and tales in her life that revolve round sobriety and household that has struggled with this. She actually linked to this mom and to our story.”
She remembers the primary day Stone arrived on set. She and Knight had been filming a scene in a automobile once they heard over the radio, “Ms. Stone has landed.” They'd a mini freakout and puzzled how Stone could be once they met, as everybody has totally different consolation ranges with touching and interplay throughout COVID. She noticed them within the automobile when she arrived, ran over, and flung her whole physique via the open window, wrapping her arms across the two of them and squeezing their faces collectively. “My kids!” she mentioned.
Cuoco is a producer along with starring in The Flight Attendant, and usually even her capturing days require her to be on her cellphone placing out fires or within the edit bay dailies. However she wasn’t going to do this on a day when she had a scene that was so massive and emotional—and was with Sharon Stone.
They spent their downtime not simply discussing the scene, however speaking intimately about one another’s lives. “Actually intense conversations,” Cuoco says.
“She was like a therapist. I used to be on the peak of my divorce throughout these scenes, and he or she was actually asking me a whole lot of questions on honesty and being sincere about myself. She requested if I used to be sincere within the relationship and what occurred. I imply, digging deeper than even my actual therapist had carried out at that time. All my feelings had been popping out. They had been about what I used to be going via, however they had been so actual.”
Which all results in the slap.
Because the scene was scripted, Stone was meant to say the road, “I like you, however I don’t such as you in any respect,” after which depart the kitchen. After a handful of takes, “one thing came visiting” Stone, Cuoco says, “and he or she whacked me. It was so surprising. I’ve by no means been hit within the face. I cried so onerous after. It was so good for the scene.”
Even to a viewer, the second is a jolt. It appears to be a young interplay, with a mom caressing her crying daughter’s face. Then comes the slap.
The Flight Attendant isn't about tying issues up in a bow. It turned out that improvised smack was precisely what the scene wanted to telegraph that household dynamic in a extra genuine method, Cuoco says. “It reveals all of the trauma and all of the fucked-up issues that hasn’t been handled.”
Equally, it was vital that the slap not be the top of the storyline. You see Cassie staring out the window at her mom after she leaves, who's sitting in her automobile sobbing.
“It’s genuine,” Cuoco says. “It makes you consider your personal households. Particularly throughout my divorce, I really feel such as you simply don’t know what individuals are going via. I actually realized that over the previous 12 months or two. Each individual you are available in contact with, whether or not they have a sure angle or perhaps they’re having a foul day. My eyes have simply been open to that. You simply don’t know what somebody goes via. These characters, they’re going via a lot shit on a regular basis.”
Sharon Stone in The Flight Attendant Season 2.
HBO Max
All of this shouldn’t obscure the truth that, even with the burden of those points and storylines, The Flight Attendant remains to be a really humorous present. You’ll cry—rather a lot—in these current episodes. However you’ll nonetheless giggle rather a lot, too.
It’s a difficult stability to strike. “I by no means heard the phrase ‘tone’ greater than I had throughout Season 1,” Cuoco laughs.
She remembers that, for each scene, they might do dozens of wildly totally different takes, each which method she may consider. “I'd do a comedic take the place I used to be actually Lucille Ball after which I'd do the subsequent take the place I used to be crying. After which I do the subsequent take the place I used to be silent as a result of I had no concept how we had been going to puzzle items collectively.”
The top puzzle, it seems, labored. And that’s why this season was capable of push so far as it does within the depth and the pathos of Cassie’s sobriety, darkish as that is likely to be, after which pivot instantly again to the sensationalism and thrills of the CIA storyline.
“We felt a lot extra free this 12 months to even push it farther and be weirder,” Cuoco says. “Our present was bizarre. That’s what I like about it. It’s completely bizarre. It’s humorous. You'll cry. You'll giggle. Nevertheless it’s fucking bizarre.”