Season 2 of The Kominsky Method has the reunion Michael Douglas fans have been waiting for. Kathleen Turner guest stars as Sandy Kominsky’s (Douglas) ex-wife. The actors co-starred in Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, and The War of the Roses.
Unfortunately, their Kominsky Method scene occurs over the phone. They do not share screen time.
“I’m hoping, if we go to a third year, that we will see more of her,” Douglas said. “That was so much fun, because obviously, the phone conversation, you both are entirely separate. So I did my whole thing without her being there. But then, because we worked together so much, when she heard my end of the conversation, she just settled right in and did a great job.”
Jane Seymour joins the cast of season 2 as Madelyn, a former love interest of Norman (Alan Arkin) who rekindles their relationship. Kominsky Method creator Chuck Lorre initially thought Seymour still looked too young for his senior citizen comedy.
“I said, ‘Trust me, I can show you a picture of me with a gray wig,’” Seymour said. “Since I haven’t done any facial surgeries or anything like that, I am a 68-year-old, almost 69-year-old woman. I’m not that far off. I think I can age up. So that’s when he decided to let me play Alan’s love interest.”
Arkin invited Seymour to brunch before they filmed love scenes together. He wanted to clear it with his wife first.
“He took me to some old Hollywood place somewhere in Burbank which I’ve never been to which is obviously his favorite place where he knows exactly what he orders,” Seymour said. “He just wanted to make sure that his wife was okay with this. It was so cute. She and I became great pals.”
Meanwhile, Lisa (Nancy Travis) wants to scale back her relationship with Sandy. She suggests they take sex off the table, and Sandy isn’t comfortable just being friends with a woman.
“Well, they had not been platonic friends,” Douglas said. “Once you’re intimate and then say, ‘Let’s just be platonic,’ that sounds like that relationship is definitely going in a different direction. I guess, for a man, it’s his ego. He’s offended, and somehow he’d like to imagine that she can’t be without me.”
Seymour agrees that because Sandy and Lisa have been intimate before, they can’t go back.
“I think it’s very difficult when you’ve had a sexual relationship with someone to suddenly call it platonic,” Seymour said. “If you have those kind of feelings, you’re trying to stop them. I don’t think it works very well.”
There’s more drama in Sandy’s acting class too. Darshani (Jenna Lyng Adams) finally lets her wall down and reveals the trauma she’s been burying.
“Those actors were very patient, my students, for the first season, not having a whole lot to do,” Douglas said. “I’ve always wondered, as I was watching them both as the acting teacher that I’m playing but also just as an actor, wondering how good they really were. [Adams] was really impressive to watch her in a powerful role.”
Sandy ends up performing a scene from Doubt with Darshani. Sandy reads the role of Father Brendan Flynn, a priest accused of molesting a boy, while Darshani plays Sister Aloysius.
“I thought about it as an audition in which the actress was auditioning,” Douglas said. “I was supporting her and trying to create both how it was staged and otherwise, to accentuate her and give her the best ability. I love the whole circle of her having to actually work with me and being intimidated and overcoming that, and actually just kicking ass.”
Health issues continue to face Sandy in the second season, too. While Douglas relates, he hopes a possible third season can find Sandy with a clean bill of health.
“Health issues become an integral part of your life and you deal with them accordingly,” Douglas said. “I’m hoping if we go to a third season that I will have passed through the mustard. I’m off to a new cycle of 10 years of good health. We’ll see.”
After season 2 of The Kominsky Method, young Netflix binge watchers will hear Douglas’s voice in Green Eggs and Ham. Douglas plays the voice of Guy Am I, whom Sam I Am (Adam Devine) keeps trying to convince to try to the titular food.
“You just have to be much larger than life than you imagine yourself,” Douglas said. “You really have to be almost cartoonish-like in your voiceover for it to match with the characters. Although I like Guy because he’s such a nasty guy; he’s so pessimistic about everything, so that part is sort of fun.”
Douglas had not heard of Marvel’s plans for the animated What If…? series, in which a few MCU stars will provide the voices of their live-action characters in one-off stories speculating on alternate histories of their adventures. Douglas wants in.
“I don’t even know the What If series,” Douglas said. “Let me call my agent when we get out of here.”
The Kominsky Method season 2 premieres Friday, October 25 on Netflix.
