Flight Attendant Season 2: EPs Warn Of Turbulence Ahead For Recovering Cassie, Talk Casting Fan Sharon Stone

The Flight Attendant's titular Cassie Bowden will experience all kinds of turbulence as she closes in on one year of sobriety.

Season 2 of HBO Max's Emmy-nominated dark comedic thriller finds Kaley Cuoco's title character in happy enough of a place, having moved to sunnier Los Angeles, found something resembling love with a new man (Salvation's Santiago Cabrera), and somewhat ably juggling her Imperial Atlantic gig with her side hustle as a civilian CIA asset.

But when Cassie's latest CIA assignment — to simply get eyes on a POI in Berlin — spectacularly and very literally blows up, her life again begins to spiral. And her fought-for sobriety becomes a potential casualty.

"The first thing that we thought about for Season 2 is: What's Cassie's emotional journey? And it was pretty clearly going to be about recovery [from alcoholism]," says showrunner Steve Yockey. "At the end of Season 1, she's got her white chip, she's been sober for a day, and aren't we all excited for her? But it's a lot more work than that, and it takes a long time. As thoughtfully as we could within our show, we wanted to lean into the process of recovery. So, if Season 1 was a journey to recovery, Season 2 is navigating that recovery."

In Season 1, hapless Cassie's implication in a Bangkok murder led to her visiting a "mind palace" retreat, where she compared notes with slain hook-up Alex (Michiel Huisman). "That was such a big part of the show, and something that people really responded to," notes Yockey. "So the question was: how do we reinvent that so we can surprise people and keep them entertained?"

Enter Gold Dress Cassie (aka who she was before Alex's murder)... and Future Perfect Cassie (suggesting the queen of bad choices' ideal potential)... and Black Hole of Joy Cassie... and others. (It's a "mind palace" meetup of multiples that TVLine dubbed "Cassie and the Cassettes.")

Says co-showrunner Natalie Chaidez, "Thematically, I thought about: what do you do with this dark side of yourself that you finally admit exists? That means there's two of you, and that led me to this theme of doubles, which is a very Hitchcockian theme. And then Steve kind of took that big idea and came up with 'the Cassettes.'"

Adds Yockey, "We were excited about this idea of, 'If Season 1 was about honesty about finally admitting that dark part of yourself is there and not going away, then Season 2 has to be about accepting these parts of yourself.' Cassie starts the season by being, like, 'Those things are all dead. I'm a new person and everything's great,' but that's not how recovery works. So we get to watch her across the course of eight episodes figure out how to accept all these pieces of herself and bring them together into one whole identity."

Asking an admittedly-surprised Cuoco (who was Emmy-nominated for Season 1) to take on multiple roles was in part a case of going with what works. As Chaidez explains, "It was a priority for us to try to give Kaley more to do, because I think Season 1 so surprised people with what they thought of as a very comedic actress could do. We felt that there was further to go. Sure enough, there is, and it's really exciting to watch."

As Cassie grapples with an actual doppelganger of sorts who is out in the real world making mayhem for her, she gets much-needed support — but always a smidgen of judgment! — from visiting BFF Annie (played by Zosia Mamet) and her hacker beau Max (Deniz Akdeniz); she toes a fine line between looping in fellow flight attendant/CIA operative Shane (Griffin Matthews) and keeping huge secrets; and she even finds time to help MIA colleague Megan (Rosie Perez) navigate the bit of deadly espionage she got herself roped into in Season 1.

Having already established Annie, Max, Shane and Megan during the thriller's freshman run, "this season, we started from a place of, 'Everybody now knows what's going on with these characters, so we can open up the storylines more," affirms Yockey. "We made the choice to have more things running."

Also as in Season 1, there is some very messy family stuff to deal with, when Davey (T.R. Knight) sets in motion a reunion for his "black sheep" sis and their mother, Lisa, played by Academy Award nominee and Emmy winner Sharon Stone.

The motherly casting is not just uncanny, it was a bit serendipitous.

As Yockey explains, "Lisa was a very minor part of Season 1 flashbacks (played by Morgan Hallett), so we were like, 'OK, who's going to play this in the present?' We need somebody that can go toe-to-toe with Kaley, tackle some heavy stuff and, quite frankly, be a version of a mom that isn't the mom we usually see on TV.

"And then we found out that Sharon Stone was a fan of the show. And then they were like, 'Sharon Stone's not only a fan of the show, she's interested in being on the show,'" says Yockey. "So, it worked out really well, and she delivered in spades."

Sharon Stone, though, is not the only one who is new for Season 2. Scroll down for our guide to some of the other characters about to rock Cassie's world....

CIA officer Benjamin Berry is "hyper-focused, in love with his job, obsessive, and a man of many layers," says portrayer Mo McRae, whose previous TV credits include Pitch (Blip!) and Empire. And yet despite her handler's aptitude, Cassie proves to be "a handful!" — though often in the best ways. "Kaley [Cuoco] is incredible in terms of like bringing her natural sensibility as a person into the work and into the character, because she has this energy where you just can't not like her," says Mcrae. "And Cassie I think is the same way. No matter how disgruntled Benjamin wants to be, it's like he can never fully get there because she has a charisma about her that's pretty hard to turn your back on."

Benjamin's boss at the CIA has some appreciation for what Cassie brings to the table, yet never rushes to save the civilian asset's ass when the going gets tough. In part because of that, Mo McRae says that Benjamin's dynamic with Dot "is very much like the employee with the overbearing boss that he hates, but on some level he has to kind of love and respect that she's gotten to the position that he thinks he should have. It's kind of twisted! He loves her and hates her."

Cassie's new coworker at Imperial Atlantic lives life hard (and with a variety of lovers), but she does her best to appreciate Cassie's ambition to become a better person. But just as the two start to bond, questions about Grace's off-hours activities threaten to snuff the budding friendship.

Finding a scene stealer in Martin, a stand-up comic from Canada, was "one of those instances like in Season 1 when we cast Zosia [Mamet] as Annie," says showrunner Steve Yockey. "I had a very different idea in my head of who Annie was, but when I saw Zosia's audition, I was like, 'Oh, that's Annie,' and we got to rewriting.

"For Grace, I think [co-showrunner] Natalie [Chaidez] and I had a very different picture in our head of who that character was, and then when it became apparent that we could get Mae, it started to shift — in a really good and fun way. We were really happy with what Mae brought to the season."

(Series lead and exec producer Kaley Cuoco talks more about casting Martin in the video embedded above, at the 3:20 mark.)

This duplicitous duo is spied early on, cloning an oblivious Cassie's phone. But when it comes to pulling off bigger jobs, they can prove just a bit — and comically so — inept, á la Bill Pullman's bleached-blonde henchman in Ruthless People, or taken to the extreme, Home Alone's Wet Bandits.

"We have some very serious villains in our season," says showrunner Steve Yockey, "so it was fun to also have that form of comic relief where they could be a threat but also just deeply entertaining."

Adds co-showrunner Natalie Chaidez, "[Esteban] is obviously a bit whipped by [Gabrielle], and she's obviously wearing the leather pants in that relationship, and JJ Soria (Gentefied) and Callie Hernandez (Soundtrack) brought this sense of playfulness.... They really became favorites of us to write for, because they were so much fun."

Speaking of fun, here's a fun fact about Esteban and Gabrielle: "The Diazes actually started at an even a darker place, as an incestuous brother and sister," Chaidez shares. "That quickly fell by the wayside!"

As you may have heard, Stone surprised TV daughter Kaley Cuoco with an unscripted slap during one of their first scenes together, in Episode 6. So, suffice to say, things aren't warm and fuzzy between Cassie and her mother.

Lisa isn't "the mom we usually see on TV, that's like, 'Come give me a hug, it's all OK,'" says showrunner Steve Yockey. Rather, she still holds Cassie responsible for not just her actions years ago as an alcoholic teen, but for what she has done (or not done) since then.

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