actually rolled from around June 1st<\/a>, with casting calls pointing to an October 11th finish. Counted from June 1st, Sunday was day 111 of the shoot \u2014 almost exactly 16 weeks in \u2014 which lines up with an October wrap rather than a December one. That keeps a second-half-of-2025 release the most realistic target.\u00a0<\/p>\nSeason 2 teases<\/p>\n
Asked directly what he could tell us about season 2, Frank went with a rather joking answer, \u201cNothing. It\u2019s shit.\u201d He later expanded on that, slightly: \u201cSeason two is going to be okay, fine. You\u2019ll enjoy it, you can fold your laundry while you\u2019re watching it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most substantial tease came from Goode, and it concerns Akram. \u201cThis is what\u2019s so interesting about season two \u2014 you suddenly start getting the scripts and you\u2019re like, oh my God. You start finding out about Akram and you\u2019re just like, awesome\u2026 those of you who like the show, you\u2019re going to [be in] for an absolute treat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manvelov, for his part, described the character as a man hiding in plain sight: \u201cIt has to be a contrast to Carl, who\u2019s insane. So Akram has to be secretly insane. But on the surface, he looks calm.\u201d He added that all of the team \u201cdeal with trauma\u2026 but they do it in different ways. And this is a facet of a person who already kind of thinks that he already dealt with that trauma. He\u2019s all cried out, he\u2019s all done. And now he\u2019s being the stable point of gravity for the rest of the group. But of course, inside, he is raging.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moira is getting out of the office, too. \u201cMoira didn\u2019t really leave the office much in season one,\u201d Dickie noted, before it was confirmed from the stage that we visit her flat this season. She also mentioned shooting \u201ca really exciting couple of hours where I sat in a helicopter.\u201d Dickie does tease we\u2019ll get to see Moira out of her natural habitat, saying, \u201cYou do go to her flat this season. Yes, you may see a little of my whole life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Kate](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns=\" "\\"Kate")
<\/p>\n
On locations, Frank confirmed the production has travelled: \u201cWe shot a little bit in Aberdeen this time up that way. We\u2019ve shot a lot out of Edinburgh this time, but a lot of the show\u2019s on sets.\u201d<\/p>\n
And on Kelly Macdonald, who played Carl\u2019s therapist Dr Rachel Irving, Frank was blunt: \u201cShe\u2019s making another show. She\u2019s doing Lanterns, so our show and their show couldn\u2019t make it work. But she may come back. We never know. Depends on how her career is going on the other show.\u201d<\/p>\n
One more for the worriers: Frank is still writing. Asked whether he\u2019s a plotter or a pantser, he said, \u201cseeing as you\u2019ve been waiting for the last episode for six months for me to finish writing it, and seeing as we started shooting last season with two episodes written and we were basically building the airplane while we were flying it, I am definitely a pantser.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cast on why the show connected<\/p>\n
Frank claims not to know, and says he doesn\u2019t try to know: \u201cI never think anything is going to cut through. I never think anything is going to work or be good. So I choose to be pleasantly surprised rather than violently disappointed.\u201d Pressed, he offered a theory: \u201cSometimes, when you\u2019re telling a story, the story is true to itself. And the story is told from the inside out. The story is told by characters and people get into the characters and they want what they want.\u201d The mystery, he said, is \u201cthe sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n
It lines up with his rule for the genre: \u201cthe whodunnit is not as important as the whydunnit.\u201d He also owns the pacing criticism. \u201cI get accused of taking too much time in pilots or first episodes. But I want you to know the characters, because if you know them, then you\u2019ll actually feel something at the end of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dickie credited the depth of even the smaller roles: \u201cWhen you\u2019ve got really great characters written as a main, but then you\u2019ve got the kind of surrounding stuff not as well written, it\u2019s really hard to get immersed\u2026 you\u2019re not just flat on a page. You get involved, you get immersed, you start to care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goode was sent the scripts by Joel, his agent of 20 years\u2019 standing, and the reaction was immediate. \u201cI read it and I was like, the dialogue is so good. And this Carl character is\u2026 it\u2019s outrageous. And like looking in the mirror.\u201d He normally holds off until the scripts are done, he said, but not this time: \u201cI try not to start doing the character before I read the scripts, but with Carl, I already started trying him on for size.\u201d The source material sealed it \u2014 \u201cit\u2019s not like I get offered these kinds of things all the time. So I was like, yeah, I\u2019m super interested. And 10 books as well. Super interested.\u201d That\u2019s referring to the fact that the series could go on for a long time, and he even later hinted that he\u2019s interested in doing season 3 later in the panel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Picture Courtesy of Bloody Scotland \/ Paul Reich<\/p>\n
Bullock backed it up with Netflix\u2019s own audience research, which he sat in on. \u201cThey were sort of saying, yeah, sure, I want to know why Merritt Lingard is being held in that chamber\u2026 But what I really want to know is, is Carl going to stop being such a dick to Akram? Is that relationship going to blossom? Is Rose going to find the courage to step up? How is Moira going to manage this bag of cats she\u2019s got to manage? People really loved the characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott Frank on working with Netflix<\/p>\n
Asked how he\u2019s managed to make two nuance-heavy shows at a streamer with a reputation for wanting the opposite, Frank first joked: \u201cThat\u2019s what I do in every part of my life. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve been married so happily for 38 years. I just say, honey, I\u2019m Scott Frank and I get what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he got serious, going back to Godless, Netflix\u2019s first in-house miniseries, and Cindy Holland\u2019s pitch to him at the time: \u201cWe\u2019re going to agree on all the parameters\u2026 but we trust you. We\u2019re hiring you and giving you all this money because we trust you.\u201d The same held on The Queen\u2019s Gambit, he said: \u201cthey never forced me to do anything as far as I can remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also took the opportunity to kill a very persistent theory on Netflix\u2019s overbearing practices of dictating things like lighting. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot written about Netflix, you know, they change the lighting, there\u2019s Netflix lighting, there\u2019s this \u2014 none of that\u2019s true. If a show\u2019s lit like crap, it\u2019s because the director and the cinematographer lit it like crap. No one upstairs is saying, you know, light it like crap.\u201d<\/p>\n
What actually makes it work, in his view, is agreement up front: \u201ceverybody agrees on the intention, and if everybody agrees on the intention, it\u2019s a much easier process. Then you\u2019re just fighting about budget and time and how long it takes to achieve that intention.\u201d Working on Dept. Q with Netflix UK, specifically now under Anne Mensah, he added, \u201chas been one of the best experiences I\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bullock followed it with a story from the season 2 pitch meeting. Before anyone could talk about the new season, Frank told the room he wanted to talk about the first one \u2014 \u201cI would love to hear from you what it was that you thought was really successful and what you really loved about season one.\u201d Netflix then spent 20 minutes praising the show back at him and then at the end, Frank said the equivalent of we\u2019re going to do all of that and more in season 2.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Picture Credit: Netflix<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picture Courtesy of Bloody Scotland \/ Paul Reich Scott Frank and the cast took a rare day off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-900693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Dept](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Dept-Q-cast-\u00a9-Paul-Reich.jpg\" "\\"Dept")
<\/p>\n![\"Kate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Kate-Dickie-Leah-Byrne-\u00a9-Paul-Reich.jpg\"\/ "\\"Kate")
<\/p>\n![\"Matthew](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Matthew-Goode-\u00a9-Paul-Reich.jpg\"\/ "\\"Matthew")
<\/p>\n![\"Dept](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/dept-q-season-2-start-of-production-image.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n