EXCLUSIVE: Joel Kinnaman Talks the Second Season of For All Mankind
The second season of For All Mankind was released on AppleTV+ today, February 19, and we got the chance to sit down with one of the stars of the show, Joel Kinnaman.
During our chat with Kinnaman, we talked about jumping forward a decade, what’s to come for Ed this season, his new role at NASA and so much more. Check out the interview below.
On what it was like to jump forward a decade for the second season? “It’s one of the interesting aspects of shooting this show is that we get to do these time jumps and all of a sudden we have to fill in the blanks of what happens during these 10 years. And of course, we leave Ed and Karen Baldwin at the end of the first season, post the ultimate tragedy that a family can go through. And as an actor, portraying someone that’s gone through that kind of a tragedy, that is sort of the challenge, you’re looking forward to. You’re looking forward to sinking your teeth into that, but the sophistication of our writers, they take it one step further. When 10 years have passed, those wounds aren’t right out on the surface anymore. They’ve had time to subside.
On how the tragedy from the first season affects Ed in the second season: “You don’t move on from something like that, you’ll always be the person before and after that happens. And so it’s going to show itself in a different way. I think it’s going to show itself in a way that you didn’t expect.”
You can read the rest of the interview under the jump! Make sure to check out the new season on AppleTV+ now!
Source: AppleTV+
On how he thought the writers did displaying Ed’s feelings towards the tragedy: “I thought they did a fantastic job of portraying that. At first I was almost shocked reading the first scripts where we find Ed. He’s on the ground, he seems to be at peace in a way that we haven’t seen him before. We don’t see much of his anger outbursts and he almost seems to be happy. I found it almost provocative at first, but then as we moved along in the season, I thought it was just brilliant to portray him in that way.”
On what caused Edward to decide to stay on Earth rather than go back to Space: “At the end of the first season, the Baldwin family goes through this ultimate tragedy and Ed is not there for Karen when they’re going through it. He’s isolated up on the moon and he can’t even be there for her when she’s going through this whole ordeal. What we’re playing is that Ed has made a sacrifice. He’s sacrificed his passion of reaching further into space and to explore space. He’s sacrificed that to be present with his family. And if anything was ever to happen to his family, he knows that for damn sure he is going to be there when it happens.”
On if Ed made the right decision to stay on Earth: “At first, at least, it seems like he might even be happier or at peace. But I think there’s always a trade off of giving up your dream and your passion and being able to provide that security. And that’s sort of the story of Ed over the second season, is that push and pull between his passion and his family.”
On how Ed’s new leadership position affects his relationship with his friends/fellow astronauts: “I think he’s a friend first and a flight director second, and I think you see that in some of his choices. He will definitely use his position to try to help the lives of his friends. So there’s definitely some nepotism going on.
On if he helped create the backstory for Ed between Season 1 and 2: “Being a part of this project, the relationship with the writers has been very good. Of course I’ll find some things that I want to improve or something that we could go a little deeper in, but I’ve been very, very impressed over the whole journey of this show with the writing. I find that they often have thought things through even further than I would have, even though I’m only focused on one character and they have 20 characters to focus on. It’s a very impressive writer’s room.”
On if he provided input to the writers on his character’s direction this Season: “I come to them and I’m just waiting to hear what they come up with. I’ve stopped to try to be an originator of ideas when it comes to this. Sure, I’ll bounce some ideas back and forth, but they’re on such a high level here that I couldn’t pretend to be of service in that way. The stuff that they come up with is just brilliant and so well thought through. It’s always so layered, and they keep surprising us. They keep surprising me when they just take a path that I would have never seen coming. And if I don’t see it coming and I’m in the show and I’m playing the character, I definitely don’t think the audience is going to see it coming either. To answer your question, no, I listen to what they come up with.”
On if he thinks Ed’s relationship with Mikael on the moon is an advantage for him and dealing with the Russians, or a disadvantage from his position: “I don’t know if it’s an advantage or disadvantage, but he [Ed] definitely sees the Russians as complete adversaries and he has his mind made up of what the Soviets are. He’s definitely a little hawkish when it comes to the Soviet Union. And, I think that comes from his experiences in the Korean War and moving forward. In the season with the militarization of space and also a militarization of NASA, Ed is really standing with one foot in both camps here because he came from the military, he’s a veteran, but he’s also head of the space program, the head of the astronauts program. But I think that the military really will find sort of an ally in Ed there and he definitely has some hawkish tendencies.
On what it was like creating a piece of entertainment that asks big questions and is really aspirational: “It feels really good. I think that the space exploration in reality and as fiction is something that is aspirational and positive. I think it can give us inspiration to look further and to look deeper into space. I wish that we would focus more of our attention to space exploration and give more funding to science to do these things. During the Cold War when the race to the moon was so prevalent, we were putting almost 10% of the yearly budget into NASA. There was a lot of pushback then, there were so many issues that we needed to deal with on Earth, but that money isn’t wasted. We have GPS, cell phones, all this is results of innovation that came during the space race.
On the United States turning more of its focus to Space: “I think that we should strive to be a multi-planetary species. I think the more time, and effort, and money we spend into reaching deeper into space, we’ll also develop technologies and innovate things that will help us back here. I think it’s just the process that should be accelerated.”
On what was one of his biggest obstacles in playing the character: “I think if I phrase it like this, one of the biggest challenges was definitely to be able to portray the sort of chasm of emotion that Ed had to go through. To somewhat believably portray that kind of loss and emotional devastation. Of course, we come in 10 years later, but those wounds are still there. I’ve never been asked to portray something that demands that kind of emotional depth, in a way. And, I’m super grateful to have had Shantel [VanSanten] as a scene partner in these scenes, because she has such immense capability. She’s just such a powerful actor.
On how he accessed those emotions to portray the more trying scenes in Season 2: “There’s a certain kind of vibration that needs to happen. You have to lose control, in some sense, to be able to sort of access those kinds of emotions. You have to lose yourself in it. And it’s really hard to do alone. You can do it alone, but it’s so much easier when you have a scene partner that really is right there with you and pushes you as well. We had a few experiences this season that I think were some of my highlights of my career. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward and that’s how I felt personally about the challenge that I faced.”
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity*