Heading into the second season of “Accused,” series developer Howard Gordon and showrunner Daniel Pearle didn’t have a clear overarching theme in mind. What they had instead was a goal.
“Honestly, we just wanted to be better,” Gordon told TheWrap. “We’re testing the limits.”
That’s a tall order considering the fact that “Accused” is already a difficult feat of television. Each episode of the anthology series plays out like its own little mystery, following someone else who’s on trial. Through a series of flashbacks that play out over the course of the episode, the audience slowly learns why they’re in the courtroom before the series ultimately reveals their crimes and sentencing. According to Pearle, one of the main questions they faced during the Fox drama’s first season was how do you make a series of completely different standalone stories feel connected. But as the show has settled in with its eight-episode second season, the team is confident to let the format, writing and performances speak for themselves.
“One of the most fun aspects of the show is how different it can be episode to episode in terms of style and the visual world,” Pearle said. “We were bolder this year in terms of pushing genre of different episodes.”
That means an episode starring Taylor Schilling that leans on action, an uncharacteristically dramatic installment for Ken Jeong and even a more light-hearted episode. It also resulted in the most ambitious episode the series has attempted so far in Season 2’s upcoming finale.
“It’s set in the near, kind of parallel future, five seconds in the future, and deals with AI and our reliance on machines,” Gordon said. “We think this is a really flexible, appropriate form to explore everything from AI to bioengineering to all the technological frontiers we’re making without catching up to the morality and the law of it all.”
This ambition can be seen in the premiere episode of “Accused.” Titled “Lorraine’s Story,” the episode revolves around a woman who claims to be psychic (Felicity Huffman) who embeds herself in the home of a family looking for their missing son. But rather than treat Lorraine as the grifter the prosecution claims she is, the delicate episode explores the tug-of-war Lorraine feels between knowing she should leave this grieving family alone and the hope she can find their son.
“It was a bold experiment. We’re super proud of that episode on so many levels,” Gordon said, noting that Lorraine wouldn’t feel out of place in an episode of “The X-Files.” “I hate to use the word theme, but there are these themes of loss, of hope. And purely at the observational level, it’s a character who really interested us and that, as a writer, is just catnip.”
Pearle noted that the episode wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t for Huffman’s performance. “The story really is about her inner life,” Pearle said. “It’s such a tour de force performance, and the direction of everything supported that. We basically got lucky that she read it and responded to it.”
The episode came about largely due to writer Mike Skerrett, who is “for lack of a better word, a protege of Amy Lippman,” Gordon said. Lippman introduced Gordon and Pearle to Skerrett, who came up with the idea for the episode. When they though Huffman would be right for the role, Lippman put them in contact with Huffman, whom she worked with “about 20 years ago.”
“She was literally the only person we thought of,” Gordon said. “When she said yes, we said, ‘Hey, how about asking your husband to do it?’ just kind of joking. She said yes.” That’s how William H. Macy joined the cast to play Ray, Lorraine’s ex-husband who still loves her even though the two are no longer romantically involved.
Huffman, Macy, Schilling and Jeong aren’t the only big names who will be in this season. Cobie Smulders, Vella Lovell, Dina Shihabi, Isabel Arraiza, Patrick J. Adams, Justin Chambers, Danny Pino, Nick Cannon andMichael Chiklis are all set to appear in Season 2. Unlike last season when Gordon and his team had to sell the idea of the show to people, this time around the series had several “incoming calls from some wonderful actors.” Gordon also heard through the Hollywood grapevine that several stars told their agents that they had a “great experience” on the show.
“Many of them we couldn’t even find the stories because it was a limited order,” Gordon said.
Pearle thinks it’s the format of the show that makes “Accused” so appealing to actors. “It is like making a long short film. You really get to have a lot of creative ownership,” Pearle said. “For a lot of these actors, it’s a chance to do something that they haven’t done before.”
The same element that makes “Accused” such a dream for actors makes it an incredible challenge for writers. When asked how long it takes to write one episode, Gordon laughed before saying “a year.”
“Honestly, it is hard,” Pearle said. “It could be bad, really easily. There’s no buy-in going in because they’re brand new characters. You can’t rest on an audience that is already invested in this story.”
Due to delays caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last year, Season 2 was unintentionally given what Gordon called “more incubation time.” That paired with Fox cutting its episode order from 12 to eight changed the focus of the season. “We were actually very grateful, at the end of the day that Fox, which originally ordered 12, ordered only eight. We’d rather make a great episode,” Gordon said. “Otherwise it doesn’t work.”
As for how long they see their courtroom drama going, that question is truly up to Fox. “If this is what I do for the rest of my career — and it’s a lot shorter than the rest of Daniel’s — I’d be thrilled. This is something that can only keep pushing more boundaries,” Gordon said. “It has been very, very fruitful. I’ve been in shows that don’t work, and you feel like you’re dressing the corpse, I call it, or shows that are so limited. This is actually unlimited.”
Gordon went on to praise Pearle as well as Season 2’s writers, Mike Skerrett and Maile Meloy. “It’s a group effort, and that team is strong. I’d sign them up for the next five years if I could,” Gordon said. “I hope it does well for Fox so that we can keep going.”
New episodes of “Accused” premiere on Fox Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
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