Melora Hardin to Return as Maggie’s Mother Patricia in ‘A Million Little Things’ Season 2

A Million Little Things - Melora Hardin as Patricia
Preview
ABC/David Bukach

Families are complicated, especially on ABC’s drama A Million Little Things. And that’s certainly true of the Blooms.

Take, for instance, the fact that Patricia (Melora Hardin) basically blew up her relationships with her husband and her daughter, Maggie (Allison Miller), after meeting Eric (Jason Ritter), the man who said he has her son Chad’s heart. However, as the winter premiere revealed, Eric doesn’t have a scar on his chest, suggesting that he’s been lying this entire time — but why? We don’t know (yet), but will we see Patricia find out?

It’s possible, since Hardin did tell TV Insider that she’ll be back for at least one more Season 2 episode. “There’s been talk about me potentially doing [a second episode] before the season is over,” she added. 

What she couldn’t share was how Patricia will react to the latest revelation about Eric or even how she imagines her character would feel. “[Creator] DJ Nash keeps everything very close to his chest,” she said.

A Million Little Things Maggie Mother

(ABC/David Bukach)

Still, she knows that her character has to be involved in the Eric storyline somehow. “I can’t really see it not being resolved, especially because she and Maggie left with such a fissure in their relationship over that,” she pointed out. 

That mother-daughter relationship is one that Hardin loves playing, in part because she enjoys working with Miller. (The two were in 2009’s 17 Again together.) “It was really fun to get back into each other’s physical sphere and creative sphere working together,” she said. “It’s complicated, and the most fun characters are always the most complicated [ones] to play as an actor.” 

“The way that they’ve laid out the relationship between Maggie and Patricia is a very complex [one]. It’s full of real-life dimension, which is how all family relationships are,” she continued. “I can really feel the history with them, and the wounds and the joy and there’s going to be a lot of fun stuff to play as time goes on.”

A Million Little Things, Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC