Counterpart season two premiered last night and it was no short of suspense. J.K. Simmons stars as Howard Silk, an agent for the United Nations spy agency based in Berlin, who discovers a device created by the agency that allows for him to enter a parallel universe where he meets his counterpart, Prime. After raving reviews for season one, the show had quickly become a hit.
Peter Quayle (Harry Lloyd) is friend of Howard’s and also the director in the Strategy Department. With a parallel universe out there, Lloyd shared whether his character will explore that. “I will say that we were all told before we started shooting season one that every character has another. [Whether] the audience meet them or we’ll meet them is up for grabs,” he revealed.
Lloyd gave fans the behind the scenes process of how season two came together. He said, “it’s about the fact that, whether we like it or not, this is a war between these two sides and these two versions of a single person cannot coexist. And as soon as you accept that, you might get ahead.”
When you trust the people you work with to deliver on some pretty amazing writing, you are more than likely to bring your 100 percent to work. Simmons was shown that he was working with some of the best that brought out his best. “When I first met Justin, (executive producer) Jordan Horowitz and (pilot director) Morten Tyldum, and we first talked about attaching to this project, I had confidence in all three of them, and in Justin, as a storyteller,” Simmons said. “Even though long-form storytelling was somewhat new to him, he was just a smart guy and had such a good, wide variety of ideas about where to go with Howard and the other Howard, and all of these characters and plots, and two versions of this whole world. There’s a lot of creative freedom there.”
Watch Counterpart on Sundays at 9/8 c on Starz.