'Tyrant' Preview: Will Jamal Really Execute Brother Barry?

When last we left the brothers Al-Fayeed — Abbudin president Jamal and pediatrician Barry — Jamal had jailed Barry and sentenced him to death after discovering his younger brother conspired to overthrow Jamal’s dictatorial leadership.

But in this exclusive Season 2 preview clip, Barry (Adam Rayner) is far from the only problem on unstable Jamal’s (Ashraf Barhom) plate, as his daughter-in-law, Nusrat, confronts him about raping her (at her wedding to his son, Ahmed) and killing her father when he tried to defend her honor.

Nusrat (Sibylla Deen) tells Jamal she’s keeping up her end of the “deal” he put in place with his actions; she won’t say a word about what he did, now that she’s pregnant with his grandchild and Al-Fayeed heir. But Jamal being Jamal, he demands something extra in return: her help in keeping Ahmed (Cameron Gharaee) in the country and mixed up in the brutal family business.

The series, from 24 and Homeland executive producer Howard Gordon, jumps right back into the action in the Season 2 premiere, and by the end of the opener, Barry’s immediate fate is shown.

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And that’s good news for viewers who thought the first season moved a bit too slowly. The four Season 2 episodes FX provided for review reveal a much quicker pace for the new season, with more focus on how Jamal and Barry’s battle affects the rest of the family. Season 1 may have taken its leisurely time setting up the conflict, but there are some soapier elements and more storytelling twists in Season 2, especially with Al-Fayeed family matters, and that’s a welcome change-up for the summer drama.

“It’s a family drama, in fact, more than ever. We’ve separated Barry from the palace, and he has his own parallel story that, of course, winds up converging with the palace once again,” Gordon tells Yahoo TV. “So we’ve gotten the opportunity to really expand the palace. Ahmed, Jamal’s wife, Leila (Moran Atias), Amira (Alice Krige), Barry and Jamal’s mother… life inside the palace, the palace intrigue, is much more defined. Last year I think that was very under-defined and in many places inconsistent, and this year we’ve really deepened all those characters.

“I think the people who stuck with it will be rewarded. We are exploding the story this season… last year was under the constraint of the palace and this year we get a much better sense of Abbudin and its problems and its challenges. And really, of the idea that ‘it sucks to be king.’”

Gordon, an executive produce on TNT’s Legends and Fox’s upcoming drama The Frankenstein Code, too, also says he took very seriously the complaints the show was culturally insensitive in Season 1. He solicited notes on the Season 2 scripts from the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Hollywood, and has a consultant on set who is an observant Muslim.

“We’ve assembled an ad hoc group of advisors who are, themselves, dissidents or academics from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq,” he says. “Some are actually political dissidents who fled their respective countries. They’ve vetted the stories and the scripts and [we have] an ongoing dialogue with them.

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“Anyway, I know you don’t get points for trying, but in terms of Season 2, we have continued to build those bridges and enlist those experts. At the end of the day you just have to tell the best story you can tell.”

Ultimately, as Gordon hints about the characters’ lives converging again at the Al-Fayeed palace in Abbudin, the storyline will continue to revolve around Barry and Jamal’s relationship, rivalry, and their Godfather-esque journey to answer which of them should, and will, lead their home country.

“There’s a fundamental instability to [Jamal], which is going to have consequences,” Adam Rayner says. “This is not to say that Barry is entirely stable… they’re both men who are driven by light and dark in equal measure, but Barry has an amount of control that Jamal lacks. They will always come into conflict trying to share powers and responsibilities, because they’re going to have a different approach, and they’re going to have different levels of control over themselves. That’s not to paint either one of them as good or bad. It’s just that level of self-control and that level of self-knowledge is always going to make difficult for them.”

Tyrant Season 2 premieres June 16 at 10 p.m. on FX.