‘Evil’ Cast & EPs Tease a Season 2 Exorcism, Silent Episode & More (VIDEO)
Comic-Con
Something wicked this way comes … silently?
The Evil cast — Katja Herbers (Kristen Bouchard), Mike Colter (David Acosta), Aasif Mandvi (Ben Shakir), Michael Emerson (Leland Townsend), Christine Lahti (Sheryl), and Kurt Fuller (Dr. Boggs) — and co-creators and executive producers Robert and Michelle King were on hand at New York Comic Con to not only preview what’s to come (a silent episode!) but also drop a Season 2 “trailer.”
While filming has yet to begin, the stars acted out some of the moments to come, offering a tease of what to expect, including Leland saying he needs an exorcism with his wedding to Kristen’s mother Sheryl coming up and Ben wondering about the blood on Kristen’s leg that suggested she killed murderer Orson LeRoux (Darren Pettie) in the Season 1 finale. (We’ll find out if she actually did in Season 2, Herbers says.) Plus, David’s worried about the vision he had of Kristen and the devil, and Leland seemingly admits he’d been using Sheryl to hurt her daughter and he’s done with her since he accomplished just that. It’s so much fun. Watch it below.
#Evil shows another face 👹 Season two coming soon. #NYCC @Evil @katjaherbers @realmikecolter @aasif @MichaelEmerson @ChristineALahti @NY_Comic_Con pic.twitter.com/9RThBSLRkk
— CBS Studios (@CBSTVStudios) October 10, 2020
Read on for scoop on Season 2.
Here Comes the … Not So Fast
After that trailer, chances are there won’t be wedding bells in Season 2, but don’t feel bad for Sheryl. “I don’t see [her] as being manipulated by this man. I think she knows exactly what she’s getting into,” Lahti says of her character. “He’s exciting. … Sheryl wants to really just have an incredible adventure and … I think she’s got a dark side as well.” But don’t worry, she thinks “there’s going to be a reckoning” in Season 2.
Is any of their relationship real? “It’s a lot of fun because he’s addicted to mischief and he’s profiled her well,” Emerson says. “He’s analyzed her, and for a spell, their needs dovetailed fairly neatly, but of course he’s not to be trusted.”
About That Exorcism…
As we learn, it’s up to Kristen and David to assess if Leland needs an exorcism in Season 2. Leland “is really about corrupting David and one of the ways to do it is pretending — or maybe even meaning, but let’s say pretending — he needs an exorcism because he sold his soul to the devil,” Robert King teases. “This is a guy who’s calling for help. Even if it’s sarcastic, do you reject it? That’s a very difficult subject.”
Colter, for his part, enjoys that the writers are taking the time to explore the dynamic between David and Leland, whose backstory was teased at the beginning of Season 1.
A Romance … of the Mind
That’s at least part of the relationship between Kristen and David, Robert King says, though part of is that potential romance that could develop between them, as fans saw in the first season. Their relationship will develop “with great complications,” he previews. “We’re moving David closer and closer to ordination. It’s a bit of a countdown this year,” and he likens it to movies where someone is about to marry someone else.
“We’ve been bitten a little bit by what we did with Good Wife with Josh Charles and Julianna Margulies’ characters,” he admits. “There was so much obsession with that relationship, it basically kept the audience from being able to see other things. We thought we were writing this relationship [between Kristen and David] as [one] of intellect, too. Part of it is romance but part of it is romance of the mind.”
(Elizabeth Fisher/CBS)
Plus, David is grappling with that vision he had of Kristen and the devil (without drugs) in Season 1. Colter does expect his character to “take [her] in a little differently” in Season 2 as a result,
New Characters
There’s a new avenging angel character popping up in the second season, but the Kings wouldn’t say in which episode. Another new character coming in is Abby, “a version of [demon] George.”
“We have, I would say, five or six new scary things this year,” Robert King adds. “We were more intent this year on having scares that were essential to the plotting of the show.”
The Puzzle Pieces
There were literal puzzle pieces hidden throughout 12 of the first season’s 13 episodes in the corner of frames. All were the same size and fit together into a 32-piece puzzle, and there are two such puzzles that “have to be overlapped.”
What’s Next for the Empiricists?
To Fuller, “Boggs is an empiricist. He wants to believe what can be proven and seen, but he’s also human and in Season 1, he witnessed some things that can sort of be explained.” Kristen is definitely going to need her therapist as she’s “getting worse and worse, and as Season 2 starts, she’s even worse and whatever I’ve been doing with her hasn’t been working,” he continues, adding he sees his character as the only one she’s ever “completely honest with.”
But for Mandvi, his character is the “true empiricist. Ben really is a person who is grounded in in what he can touch, taste, what he can quantify, and that is going to be in challenged in some way for Ben next season. There’s going to be a little bit of him struggling with things he maybe can’t explain. One thing Ben really needs to do is explain this stuff, and sometimes he can’t. He’s going to be challenged a bit more in terms of that certainty.”
The Kings say we’ll see Ben’s girlfriend with the ghost sister, Vanessa (Nicole Shalhoub), again, as well as his sister, Karima (Sohina Sidhu). “It’s really about Ben and why he became a contractor. There’s a strong need to understand why Ben has ended up where he has ended up,” Robert previews. “That takes us to the family, to his background, both his family’s religion and his cultural background and his affection for Vanessa.”
(Elizabeth Fisher/CBS)
A Silent Episode
Finally, while Michelle King may not be getting her musical episode,
Robert is getting the silent episode he’s wanted “where you use only visuals to tell the story. …. This season what we have is our three main characters go to a silent retreat because of a possible sainthood of a monk that died there.” There’s a legend that, “if a single word is spoken,” as hasn’t been done in many years, “a demon [that] has been held in a cabinet … will be let out.”
Now while you wait for Season 2, why not go stream Season 1, now on Netflix?
Evil, Season 2, TBA, CBS
