The FIRE COUNTRY Cast Previews the Season 2 Troubles: ‘It’s Going to be a Trial Through Fire’

When FIRE COUNTRY returns on Friday, February 16, it’s six months later, and things have changed a lot since viewers last saw the residents of Edgewater.

“Everyone’s in different positions,” Jules Latimer, who plays Eve, tells Give Me My Remote. “Everyone is in different positions of responsibility. Everybody’s in these moments of redemption. As much as Bode is the focal point of trying to find redemption and getting out of prison, everybody has a storyline or an arc throughout the season where something from our past comes into play and we have to deal with it. So [season 2 is] a lot about community. It’s a lot about how we need each other in order to move through hardship in our lives.”

And things get off to a shaky start in the season 2 premiere, “Something’s Coming”—literally and figuratively. “I mean, if we’re in California and dealing with the land of shake and bake, it’s probably gonna be a big shaking, a little rumble,” Jordan Calloway, who plays Jake, says with a laugh.

As for how the natural disaster impacts the characters, “That’s when we get into the fun, juicy stuff, right?” Calloway says. “But it is a huge shock in the town of Edgewater, and it ends up unearthing quite a bit of things that will catapult into our season 2.”

Most urgently for the characters, Bode (Max Thieriot) is back in prison after taking the fall to protect a friend in the season 1 finale…and his loved ones are increasingly desperate to get through to him.

“Manny can’t piece it together; he thought he knew Bode so well,” Kevin Alejandro, who plays Manny, acknowledges. “They’re so similar to each other in the way they decide to do things and how their choices aren’t always the right choice…when we pick up he’s still like, ‘What are you thinking man?’”

“But I think the moment that Manny understands his reasoning, he gets it, he’s from the same world, he probably would have done the same thing himself,” he continues. “There is truth behind loyalty and respect, and making those choices for those reasons has a real power to it. And Manny relates to that.”



Bode’s parents, Vince (Billy Burke) and Sharon (Diane Farr), are struggling with guilt over the quasi-loss of their son in very different ways.

“I think Sharon has just been mourning the loss of time that she spent sort of enabling her kid; I think that’s the way she looks at it,” Burke says. “And Vince is now looking at all the time that he lost neglecting that relationship…[he’s] throwing himself fully into seeing what he can do to paint over the cracks and make any reparations that he possibly can.”

“And so I think she’s off making up for lost time in one way,” he continues. “And he’s now diving back [in], making up for lost time, in his way.”

One person is still reeling from Bode’s decision to sacrifice himself: His off-on love Gabriela (Stephanie Arcila), who thought they were on the verge of finally having a chance to be together before he stunned the parole board with his confession.

“It was really tough for Gabriella, obviously,” Arcila says. “And it came out of left field—she was completely and utterly in love and had these expectations. You know how sometimes people create these worlds of the future: what it’s going to look like? And [reality] ends up being even more heartbreaking because you’ve already kind of lived those moments in your mind in the future.”

“So for her this season, she’s really just trying to focus on her career,” she continues. “She is a person who has always wanted family, who has always wanted that deep-rooted connection, which is one of the reasons she moved to Edgewater—to have more of a community, to have more of all of that. So I think this season, it’s forced her to mature in a different way; I don’t know if she fully is aware of it. She is a go-getter and does her stuff.”



However, there is one wild card in play that very few people know about: Bode’s ex-girlfriend Cara (Sabina Gadecki)—who is now dating Jake—had a daughter…and the kid might be Bode’s. (Complicating matters, Cara’s mother raised the young girl as her own daughter, so everyone thinks Genevieve is Cara’s sister.)

“Working with Sabina is phenomenal; [she’s] an absolute gem,” Calloway says. “Where we find these characters now in season 2, you’re seeing Jake has matured drastically from where he was before. He’s found his confidant, he’s found a woman that he actually is in love with who has had his heart since high school, even though he was a great friend to Bode and just stepped back [during that time]. And Cara, she’s coming into a place of motherhood; she’s trying to deal with a 12-year-old preteen daughter who has viewed her as a sister her whole life….you’re gonna see a lot of growth in a lot of different characters. You’re going to see everybody misplaced, it would seem, but also disheveled. It’s going to be a trial through fire. That’s the best way I can put it.”

FIRE COUNTRY, Season Premiere, Friday, February 16, 9/8c, CBS

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