Avenue 5’s Lenora Crichlow and Zach Woods on Rage, Catharsis, and How COVID Affected the Vibe of Season 2
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The post Avenue 5’s Lenora Crichlow and Zach Woods on Rage, Catharsis, and How COVID Affected the Vibe of Season 2 appeared first on Consequence.
The HBO sci-fi comedy Avenue 5 has a premise that would also work quite well as a drama — though there are plenty of laughs on set, and stars Lenora Crichlow and Zach Woods confirm that co-star Josh Gad is a major source of them. This is to say, Gad breaks the most, and according to Crichlow, “he makes others break. He’s the breaker and the instigator.”
Right now, of course, a few extra laughs sound good. The second season of Armando Iannucci’s follow-up to the Emmy-winning masterpiece Veep continues exploring what happens when a futuristic interstellar pleasure cruise goes horribly wrong, due to technical mishaps and a whole heap of human error.
As the crew and passengers face the grim reality of dwindling resources as they remain stranded years away from Earth, there’s a lot of yelling and crying, as Captain Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie), billionaire owner Herman Judd (Gad), engineer Billie McEvoy (Crichlow), Avenue 5 executive Matt Spencer (Woods) and others attempt to find a way home.
Avenue 5 definitely pushes into the darker shades of dark comedy (no spoilers, but characters can and will die in space). But as Crichlow and Woods tell Consequence, coming back for Season 2 just as film and TV production around the world was starting up again post-lockdown had a lot of positive moments, largely due to their collaborators. Below, they dig into why the show might feel cathartic (at least for this humble interviewer), and how the energy of the real world affected the not-too-distant future we see on screen.
To start things off — coming into Season 2, was there a different vibe from Season 1?
Zach Woods: Yeah, there was fear for me — because COVID was going on, especially when we started it was scary. We were on set and it was a real culture shock. The COVID protocols in England were really different from the ones in the United States, so I was nervous making it, to be totally honest. Also, there’s the kind of softening and bewildering effect of the pandemic. It felt a little bit like emerging like a mole into the sunshine and feeling a little bit blinded by your surroundings.
Lenora Crichlow: I felt like a mole for sure, but wanting to know how everyone had coped and how everyone was doing. So there was a lot of caution and apprehension and fear, but also a lot of urgency to get back to the work and each other. So it was different. I mean, everything felt different. Going to the supermarket felt different after COVID.
Do you feel like that energy bled into the actual show at all?
Crichlow: Maybe in some way. I’m not sure consciously how, but I think that Armando writes from a place of social awareness and relevancy and thinking ahead, even. So I’m sure that affected storylines. And for me, watching Season 1 during the pandemic and after the pandemic, it just took on a whole new layer of how much it hit me as a viewer. So I’m sure it’s all throughout all of us in different ways in Season 2, in our experience having been through something like a lockdown in a pandemic.
Woods: I think one thing that as an actor early on, when I felt especially racked by imposter syndrome and terror, was that I felt that I had to control everything. I would try to prep and prepare myself emotionally to be this clean slate where I would go in and be perfectly prepared and all I was focused on was my job.
I think something that I’ve learned over time is to just take whatever the world is sending you and allow it to bleed into what you’re doing creatively. I think allowing the kind of detritus and glory and mess of your own life or the world’s life to seep into the work is only going to make it feel more urgent, immediate, and alive. And so I think what you were saying Lenora, about not even necessarily being aware of the ways in which it was flooding in, but feeling in some intuitive way that it was… that resonates with me.
No, it makes sense for you Zach, especially, I feel like you have some moments this season where your character just gets to be completely unhinged in a way that feels cathartic to watch.
Woods: That’s nice.
Maybe it’s just because we’re living in this time where sometimes yeah, you just want to scream at the top of your lungs about what’s going on.
Woods: I think that’s something that’s really interesting. I think the relationship between rage and heartbreak and terror and all that stuff… Matt, I think, is still basically a character who wants the best for people, but there is this sort of odd added note of fury, a kind of broiling strange fury.
I was talking to a friend about this recently, and I’m speaking in like huge generalizations here, but I think boys are often raised or have been raised that when they’re sad, it presents as anger a lot of times. And so people will mistake what is actual just vulnerability, or sadness, as rage. And women are raised so that when they’re angry it presents as sadness — I’ve heard so many female friends of mine say, “I cry when I get angry. And it’s so annoying because people are like, ‘Oh, are you sad?’ They’re like, ‘No, I’m furious.'” You know?
So I think to play a character who can be just unabashedly… I sometimes feel more like the female archetype in that binary — I feel like I’ll be scared to let stuff out sometimes. So to be able to play a character who is just this open aperture for feeling rage or whatever, and just let it come out, it feels good in a weird sick way.
Avenue 5 (HBO)
Along those lines, Lenora, I feel like the vibe of Avenue 5, especially this season, has almost a nihilistic angry streak to it — for you on set, what is that experience like?
Crichlow: I think what’s sort of been beautifully illustrated by Zach is that the actors that play these characters are all really interesting people; and the way that they see the world and think about their own emotions and their relationship to wider society. I really enjoy seeing their interpretations of all these narratives that run through Avenue 5 and their take on it.
So the frustration and anger that I felt was mounting all around me — not just through the pandemic, but the last few years — I became very sensitive to it. I’m sure not the only one, and having somewhere to go with that and seeing the different ways you can channel that anger and that frustration and then what happens when it’s sort of confined and stifled….
There was a time in the pandemic where I really felt why sports were so important. Just that having that outlet, I was like, “Oh my gosh, suddenly there isn’t even that outlet for people who just have that place to let out some of that tribalism and aggression and competitiveness.” So again, just as an experience on set, it’s such a lovely place to kind of look at all these themes that are happening on a bigger scale in the safety of our little production.
Woods: But you know, it’s funny. I’m glad you said it was cathartic because what would be a shame is if it felt like this show was just adding another toxic voice to a choir of toxic voices. If it feels cathartic, that’s good.
I also think, what you were saying Lenora, about being together with the cast, it’s such a sweet tender group of people. And so while my experience socially has been kind of like when you’re driving and there’s road rage or when you’re in an airport and everyone’s all keyed up — interestingly, it was almost like a counterpoint to that. The experience of making the show, with such warm, soft, complicated people, was affirming in a way. Because it was like, it’s not all just poison, it’s not all just invective, there’s a real tender heart in many, if not, most people’s chests. And I hope some of that leeched into the show too.
Season 2 of Avenue 5 premieres Monday, October 10th at 10:00 p.m. ET on HBO.
Avenue 5’s Lenora Crichlow and Zach Woods on Rage, Catharsis, and How COVID Affected the Vibe of Season 2
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