TAGGED AS: adventure, Fantasy, NBC, television, TV
It’s time to go back to the sinkhole. La Brea season 2 is here, but a lot changed in the season finale. Gavin (Eoin Macken) and Izzy Harris (Zyra Gorecki) found a sinkhole to reunite them with Eve (Natalie Zea) and Josh (Jack Martin). But Josh and Riley (Veronica St. Clair) took their own trip through time to 1988. Ty (Chike Okonkwo), Sam (Jon Seda), Levi (Nicholas Gonzalez), and Paara (Tonantzin Carmelo) are still in 10,000 B.C. Los Angeles with some other human and mammal companions.
The cast of La Brea and creator David Appelbaum spoke with Rotten Tomatoes about the new season. Here are eight things to expect when you return to La Brea:
(Photo by Sarah Enticknap/NBC)
You didn’t think it would be so easy, did you? Izzy, Gavin, and Ella (Michelle Vergara Moore) found a sinkhole to 10,000 B.C. But their sinkhole was in Seattle. That’s a long way from Los Angeles.
“We’ve got to figure out how to get to L.A. and we don’t know where we are,” Macken said, adding that the journey involves “various animals, trek through mountains, and then various obstacles and high octane weather reports.”
Izzy is doing that whole journey on a prosthetic foot. Although the terrain causes issues for Izzy, Gorecki said her actual prosthetic can handle the stunts.
“I have a really good foot,” Gorecki said. “Because I have such a good flexible foot, there’s nothing that I can’t do. I can be running from all sorts of animals and it’s all good.”
(Photo by NBC)
The gang in 10,000 B.C. encountered prehistoric creatures like dire wolves and wooly mammoths. La Brea has some new creatures in store for season 2.
“Definitely we’re going to see more of the mega fauna that we saw last year,” Carmelo said. “We have a wooly rhino that’s coming and definitely the dire wolves will be coming back as well.”
(Photo by Sarah Enticknap/NBC)
Martin and St. Clair are both fans of the ’80s, and were both born in the ’90s. So they enjoy visiting 1988, but the best part of their story is that Josh and Riley are finally away from their parents.
“Season 1 took place over a really compressed timeline so it’s only 10 days,” Martin said. “The fact that Josh and Riley even got that far, I think, speaks to how much is there between the two characters. Now they’re separate from their families, and they’re in the same time period, and they really gotta rely on each other to make things happen. I think it’s only natural that things would develop from there. That doesn’t necessarily mean positive or negative.”
Martin hinted at some of the growing pains their relationship may face.
“If you ever traveled with a friend or someone you’re interested in, you can see who someone really is,” Martin said.
(Photo by Sarah Enticknap/NBC)
As much as they enjoy returning to civilization and watching Alf on TV, their parents are still stuck in prehistoric times. That separation will start to wear on the teenagers.
“It’s all about trying to find our way back to our families so now this has posed an even larger problem,” St. Clair said. “We were already away from our homes in modern day Los Angeles, and now we’re in 1988 away from the people that we went into the sinkhole with.”
The separation was real. The 1988 scenes filmed in a completely separate unit from the 10,000 B.C. scenes.
“We don’t really get to see each other very much,” St. Clair said. “We know how much those characters are being affected by our characters’ disappearance. Also it’s important for us as actors to focus on what we’re doing despite what’s happening in the sinkhole because the characters also are focusing on what they need to be doing just by what’s happening in the sinkhole.”
(Photo by Sarah Enticknap/NBC)
Even when Izzy and Gavin find L.A., they’re going to be the newcomers to a group of survivors. Seda said Sam may be a bit suspicious of Gavin at first.
“I think Dr. Sam kind of sizes him up a bit, him and the second part of his family that’s coming down there,” Seda said. “You realize it’s actually not that long that we’re actually down there so it’s still accepting everybody as just we’re all here, we don’t really know what’s going on. It’s like 50-50 saying ‘Hi’ and welcoming, but also sizing him up. What does he really know?”
(Photo by NBC)
Season 2 definitely expands the world of La Brea. There have been more sinkholes opening in different times so the characters are spread out even further. Appelbaum assured fans that it wouldn’t be necessary to take notes.
“You want the rules to be consistent and to be clear and to not overwhelm the story,” Appelbaum said. “You don’t want the audience to be confused as they go along, but I think creating a simple story is actually much harder than creating a complicated story. So it is a challenge but it’s that right balance of how much of these rules do you really want the audience to be thinking about? I think the answer is you just want it to be simple, and they’re not really thinking about it, just feels like second nature.”
(Photo by Sarah Enticknap/NBC)
The survivors in the sinkhole eventually met other modern day people who had been there even longer, living as cavemen. The returning stars said they haven’t met everyone in 10,000 B.C. yet in season 1.
“There are definitely new and more interesting characters to be met in the season 2 as well,” Okonkwo said. “There are challenges from all sides. Not just the environment, not just the creatures, but also we’ll find some new challenges and some new people with new ideas about what it means to live down here.”
While Eve has her husband and daughter back, there are other new characters with whom she’s not quite so comfortable.
“It is sort of a trial by fire,” Zea said. “The stakes are so life and death all the time that everyone’s the enemy until they’re not. So yeah, just once we gather a little bit of intel about who somebody is, then a whole other faction is introduced and we have to work on our feet to figure out friend or foe.”
Appelbaum said there are entire new worlds yet to be discovered.
“As we go through the season, there’s going to be whole other worlds that are going to open up that we’ll meet new people,” Appelbaum said. “These sinkholes are opening up in multiple time periods and bringing things back to this place. So there’s a whole world of opportunities for people and things we could meet from really any time period.”
(Photo by Sarah Enticknap/NBC)
NBC renewed La Brea for a second season pretty quickly. The way Appelbaum planned season 2 leaves room for a third.
“We’re thinking about season 3 and what we want to set up for season 3,” Appelbaum said. “I’ve also had ideas before that are just benchmarks and places I’d like to bring the show that I know we would do in season 3. Hopefully, that happens and we’ll get more opportunities to tell more exciting stories in this world.”
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La Brea: Season 2
(2022)
premieres 9/8C on Tuesday, Sept. 27 on NBC.
