PRODIGAL SON Post-Mortem: Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver Break Down the Spring Premiere, Tease ‘Explosive’ Season 2 Finale

April 13, 2021 by Marisa Roffman

[Warning: This post contains spoilers from the Tuesday, April 13 episode of PRODIGAL SON.]

“To getting away with murder.”

“How about: To keeping it in the family.”

After spending all season covering up Nicholas Endicott’s (Dermot Mulroney) death, criminal profiler Simon Hoxley (Alan Cumming) came to New York on the PRODIGAL SON spring premiere, determined to get to the bottom of the murder. But luckily for Bright (Tom Payne)—and the Whitly family—a link in the chain of people he used to dispose the body ended up being their possible salvation: after one of his connections snapped and killed the other people who transported the corpse, Bright was able to spin a theory that she killed Endicott, too.

With that wrapped up, Hoxley also left—after Bright convinced Ainsley (Halston Sage) to sit down with the Mind Sleuth for a one-on-one interview—and the Whitly family celebrated their narrowest escape yet.

But…are they really in the clear?

PRODIGAL SON co-creators Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver tease what’s to come…

They got away with it! In your mind, is the Endicott case closed or are you leaving that door open for the future?
Sam Sklaver: Bright has done a very nice job of [tying things up]. But when we were, early in the season, talking to our one of our advisors who specializes in serial killers, and we said, “What’s the best way to get away with a murder?” And he told us no body, no murder. And the problem is there is an Endicott body.

So I’d like to think that Bright and the Whitlys have gotten away with it…but history always has a way of catching up with the Whitly family. So I think it might just be one more thing to haunt them in the future. I can’t say that anything in the past will ever just stay in the past.

Is this something you’re looking to play with later in the season, or is that more something that might get explored in later seasons?
Chris Fedak: We’re going another direction for this season. We have a couple of really exciting things coming up. For Endicott this year, we always like to have twists and turns—[Joking] and you should never trust us, let’s be honest, Sam and I are terrible, terrible liars—but we’re about to depart on a new journey of suspense…we have some new stuff coming up.

At the end of the episode, Martin (Michael Sheen) and Vivian (Catherine Zeta-Jones) kiss—which certainly does not seem like it’s destined to go well, frankly, for either of them. What’s in store for that dynamic going forward?
Sklaver: You hit the nail on the head. I think most people who enter The Surgeon’s life, it usually makes their life not better, but worse. Vivian Capshaw is finding herself within The Surgeon’s gaze. So, I am nervous for her. I’m 100% nervous for her. I’m also nervous for her just because we’ve really grown to love Catherine; she’s so amazing on set. And just as a person and with the actors and with our crew—I’m terrified for her; I’m with you 100%. [Laughs.]

Should we be a little bit worried for him, as well? We know he’s dangerous, but she, in theory, does have the bulk of the power in this situation. She seems to be calling a lot of his BS and has been manipulating him, as well…
Fedak: I think that’s a really smart perspective on it—she’s no wilting violet. She’s a strong, smart, very sophisticated woman who has a taste for the bad boys—and by which I mean serial killers. So it’s definitely a place where she knows how to to use her authority within Claremont to protect herself and to also keep things from coming out. That’s something that Martin has to be careful of, because he is a patient at Claremont, he is under her thumb, in a way.

Earlier in the season, we got to see Dani (Aurora Perrineau) and Bright coupled up, albeit in his twisted dream state. How much will we be seeing him examine his feelings for her in the rest of season 2?
Fedak: We’re exploring the Dani-Bright relationship. [Episode] 6 was a great opportunity for us to remind the audience of it to kind of launch the second half of our season, with an idea of exploring who they are and can these two ships ever come together, or are they doomed? As we head into this side of the season, you’re definitely going to be getting more of Dani and Bright. And, also, like everybody in our show, he needs somebody to talk to. And I think that so often he hasn’t been able to talk to anybody this season because 1) Nicolas Endicott, and then 2) we’ve got something that’s going to kind of bind the whole team together. It’s coming up and it’s going to be huge. The enormity of this event is going to cause everybody to seek refuge and to seek help. And for Bright, that’s going to require him to talk to Dani.
Sklaver: The events of episode 6 definitely left a mark in Bright’s mind. And so he is seeing Dani in a different way, which is very exciting for us. You just hope that life doesn’t get in the way, as it often does of his family.

What can you share about this very big event?
Fedak: It has something to do with The Surgeon and his plans.

Is this something where fans will retroactively realize the seeds you planted for this story, will it come out of nowhere, or a mixture of the two?
Fedak: I think that it is something that we’ve been laying the seeds for for quite some time.
Sklaver: And I think it will shock everyone. I think we’ve been laying the seeds for it and it will shock everyone.
Fedak: It’s also the second book of the Old Testament. [Laughs.]

Which is Exodus…Should we be expecting to see Martin, potentially, in a different situation than we’ve seen him the first year and a half?
Fedak: Let me be even more cryptic: We’ve done a lot of testing hair color for Martin. We’re doing some interesting things.

Intriguing. On another note, how much will JT’s struggles with the force play into what’s ahead?
Fedak: I don’t think it’s so much a matter of putting anything off. We brought some very important issues into episodes. And, for us, we ran into a couple of things having to do with production, that kind of changed our plans a little bit in regards to how we filmed the show. But none of those stories have been completed.

For us, our perspective is we want to tell a story that gets into the emotion and the reality of what our characters are going through, especially JT and Dani in regards to that story. We’re not playing out a story where we’re going to solve racism; that would be a not great [or realistic] story. But I think that what we’re going to show as we head toward our finale, and going forward in the show, is that these are a long tail, and that this story that we started here is something that we are going to be playing out in the future.

But it’s not the type of thing that can fit in 13 episodes of television. This story will work more like, this is a part of their lives, and it will come in and out. And it will affect them. And I think we’re going to come at that a little bit differently than we would, say, dealing with our Big Bad of a season or something along those lines.

Looking ahead to the finale, you had a very clear point set for season 1. With production so in flux this year, were you able to be as firm with where you end up at the end of season 2? Or did it have to be more flexible?
Sklaver: It’s a mixture of the two things. We’re always flexible, because we always need to be flexible. But we have a very explosive finale, that actually we’ve already shot—we shot it last week. So once again, because of our scheduling, we have a finale, hopefully in the can already. And now we just need to catch up with other episodes. It’s very much the story we did set out to tell that season. And similar to our last finale, it really just sets up an amazing season 3 storyline that we’re getting very excited to tell, fingers crossed.

Fantastic. Is there anything else you can tease about the rest of season 2?
Fedak: What happens is that when we get to this point in the season, we have episode 8, which is just amazing and fun, and then we just have a lineup of really crazy episodes. Each one that’s coming your way has just more outrageous stuff in it; it just doesn’t stop until we get to the end of the year. So it really is a ramp, starting with this episode, and it just launches into the second half of the season, and it drives right to the finale. It’s almost too much stuff. We’re really looking forward to the audience watching our madness brought to life.

PRODIGAL SON, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox

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PRODIGAL SON Post-Mortem: Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver Break Down the Spring Premiere, Tease ‘Explosive’ Season 2 Finale

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