‘Ray Donovan’ Season 5 Preview: Liev Schreiber Teases a ‘Shocking’ Family Secret

We already knew a few important things about where Season 5 will find Ray Donovan and his family: a year ahead of where we left them in the Season 4 finale; Bunchy and Daryll both employed by Ray; papa Mickey trying his hand at Hollywood screenplay writing; Terry feeling quite a bit healthier after brain surgery; and Ray utilizing his many fixer skills in the employ of Hollywood studio honcho Samantha Winslow (Susan Sarandon).

But in the new season preview video above, the Ray Donovan cast shares a few more tidbits that promise one of the Showtime drama’s best seasons yet.

“Find the thing you love the most, and let it kill you,” Winslow tells Liev Schreiber’s Ray, after hiring him to protect a major secret that could bring a halt to her power-player status.

But Schreiber suggests there could be another twist — one involving Ray and his family — that will trump anything Winslow’s got going.

“There is one big, massive secret…” says Eddie Marsan, who portrays Terry.

“Something I think is going to really shock a lot of people,” adds Schreiber.

Meanwhile, though the Donovans seem to be closer after the events of Season 4, we already know there’s probably not much chance of a peaceful family gathering ever happening. Like, say, when — also in the clip above — Ray clocks Mickey with a bottle of liquor.

Showrunner David Hollander told Yahoo TV earlier this summer that Season 5 will also find Ray’s daughter Bridget in New York, attending college and in love with a new boyfriend (Quantico star Graham Rogers) who “works in a bar in Brooklyn and has a very complicated situation. But it’s a very sweet and very complicated love story that breaks out.”

Hollander said we can expect some lighter moments in Season 5, too — great moments of levity like Ray’s karaoke performance or the Donovan family’s video game dance off — but stressed that Season 5 is going to focus on bigger moments of great emotional impact, for the Donovans and for viewers. And those moments may have fans feeling a different kind of vibe from the family.

“I think the audience knows the Donovans. Our audience who watches and cares about these characters not only knows them, but owns them,” Hollander said. “It’s just that the audience doesn’t know what’s about to happen.

“Everything’s handmade here, and we make it up from whole cloth. We love this show, and we love our audience, and we always know that in order to keep our audience invested in our show, we have to evolve and take risks and present variations on stuff that may be really exciting to them or may be really shocking to them or may be really strange. It’s definitely not your typical season of Ray Donovan, so I’ll be curious to see if people are with us.”

Ray Donovan Season 5 premieres Aug. 6 at 9 p.m. on Showtime.