While in Park City, Utah, to promote his new film The Incomer, Domhnall Gleeson (About Time, Peter Rabbit) shared that his focus is already shifting toward Ohio for the second season of Peacock’s The Paper. The Golden Globe nominee told Deadline that he has officially begun preparations to reprise his role as Ned Sampson, the embattled editor-in-chief of the Toledo Truth Teller.
“I’ve got the haircut, so I’m getting back into [Ned mode],” he said at our Sundance Studio. “I had a perm in our film. So, I had a real-life perm, and the perm has now been cut out so I can go back and play Ned. We’re reading scripts, and they’re really exciting. And I’m incredibly excited to get dubbed back in. It’s really nice to do something silly about journalism, which is a very serious thing.”
Gleeson, “I think if we were doing a big paper, you would be getting into all sorts of stuff that would be difficult to talk about in any way that was funny. The fact that it’s a really local place, you can find the small things that mean bigger things. And in a way, that’s always the news that really matters, is the one that’s just on your street. So yeah, we’re loving it. I’m very lucky to be a part of it.”
Demosntrating immense confidence in the project, Peacock granted the Greg Daniels and Michael Koman-created mockumentary an early Season Two renewal just one day before its September debut. Following its successful launch, the series further expanded its reach by securing a supplemental broadcast run on NBC, according to Deadline.
Deadline says that the show is set within the same universe as the original Office (2005-2013), The Paper features the return of the iconic documentary crew as they turn their lenses on the struggling Toledo Truth Teller. The series centers on Ned Sampson, who steps in to lead the failing publication and attempts to mold its eccentric group of volunteer reporters into a legitimate, high-impact local news team.