‘Nancy Drew’ EPs & the Case of Season 2 (Video)

Nancy Drew Season 2 premiere Kennedy McMann
Preview
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The Drew Crew is back on Nancy Drew, and even though it’s been what seems like forever, Nancy (Kennedy McMann) and her Horseshoe Bay buds have not lost a bit of what made us love them. They’re still bickering but lovable, prone to keeping a few too many secrets and, above all else, unafraid to freak the bejeebies out of us with their mix of Scooby-Doo’ism and straight-up Blumhouse scares.

Oh, and their lives are still in jeopardy, thanks to the Aglaeca’s curse. Throw in a new “What the hell is that thing?!” specter, the Bobbsey Twins (Aadila Dosani, Prantee Akilla) and the fact that Nancy has yet to process that Ryan Hudson (Riley Smith) is her dad, not the beloved Carson Drew (Scott Wolf) and, well, we just had to hit up series creator Noga Landau and showrunner Melinda Hsu Taylor for a chat.

Below,  just some of what they offered up, so look for more next week about Ace (Alex Saxon), George (Leah Lewis), Nick (Tunji Kasim), and Tess (Maddison Jaizani).

Did the COVID-related delays allow you more opportunities to map out where things go?

Melinda Hsu Taylor: It was helpful. It was kind of an unexpected silver lining of the pandemic, as much as it was trying in other departments and for our crew.

Noga Landau: Every frame that we captured is a triumph. And they do it with grace, good humor, and total efficiency. And utter safety, it is just so laudable. Lily Hui is our line producer and we’ve been name-checking her at every interview, because we really want to make her name appear in the press. She’s so fantastic.

Nancy Drew Kennedy McMann Maddison Jaizani Alex Saxon

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Hsu Taylor: And with the extra time. we were able to plan ahead for episodes. We were able to drop little Easter eggs that will pay off later in the season. We were able to strengthen arcs. Well, there was footage of the newspaper didn’t quite make it in. Originally, in the longer version of that teaser opening, you see the park rangers in the car and they’re talking and suddenly this girl comes out of nowhere. There’s a newspaper that we probably don’t feature as much because we trimmed up that sequence, but it has an advertisement for “The Beak” on the back.

Landau: The Beak is the competitor to The Claw. They’re a hipster chicken restaurant, and they produce a clam chowder that George is enraged by because it’s been winning the chowder competition for the last several years. And in episode 12,  there’s a chowder showdown at the Taste of Horseshoe Bay.

That is perfect.

Hsu Taylor: [Laughs] Chowder plays a big part in episode 212. And we were able to plant the restaurant ad for the competing restaurant in episode 201. That kind of thing we were able to do, and it was so fun.

You also introduce the Bobbsey twins, or your take on the Bobbsey twins. What should expect from them?

Hsu Taylor: You might have noted in the premiere that there were some sparky looks between Nancy and Gil Bobbsey [Akilla]?

I did!

Hsu Taylor: So that’s something that’s fun that will come back. In later episodes, we actually get to learn about Amanda Bobbsey [Dosani] — who we named after Amanda Palley, one of our executives at CBS — a little bit more as a character, rather than just a nice looking girl in a hospital bed. And we’re going to learn that the Bobbsey twins have a kind of sad and mysterious backstory and that they themselves have to solve in a mystery. The Drew Crew has to come in and help them with that.

Ok, so the thing that really left us shook last season was the Ryan Hudson twist.

Landau: Yeah. You know, in his own way, he’s trying to learn to be a grownup and how to be a parent. He doesn’t have any kind of examples in either department from his own life’s journey, and so he really looks to Carson in a very endearing way. Kind of buddy cops, well, not cops, but you know, an odd couple. They find that there is a weird underlying friendship developing over the course of the season.

That was what I was hoping, because Carson has no friends.

Hsu Taylor: [Laughs] That’s the thing! Carson has no friends and Ryan has no friends, but Carson is the nicest guy in town and Ryan’s the worst. So putting those two together is perfect.

Since the season ended sooner than expected, how much of the first episode back is leftover from that?

Landau: So episode 118, which was our finale last season, was not supposed to be the finale. That was another in the string of episodes that were leading to the end of the season. The challenge that we had to do at the top of Season 2 was that we had to create a new premiere. And because we operate on such a condensed timeline on the show … we realized that the only amount of time we had in between episode 118 and what used to be episode 119, but became episode 202, was literally six hours. So we had to very quickly come up with a story that would fit in with everything that is happening in between these episodes.

I want to talk about the Wraith because it’s scary as hell.

Landau: I think because we made Season 1 during the time when the Me Too movement was really taking off, most of our ghosts and entities in that show were distinctly female. So one of our really fun goals of Season 2 was that we explore new types of entities that felt either kind of gender neutral or more on the masculine side of life…or death or the great beyond.

What you left us with, the threats to the whole crew, is the plan to resolve them and then ramp up the Wraith stuff?

Landau: The short answer is yes.

When do you start to lay the groundwork for the potential Tom Swift spinoff?

Hsu Taylor: Episode 215.  It’s going to be so fun. He’s got to team up with Nancy and the crew and humble himself a little bit, learn from them and they get quite a bit out of their experience with him, as well.

Nancy Drew, Season 2 premiere, Wednesday, 9/8c, The CW.