The first season of Apple TV+'s acclaimed original series For All Mankind put its core couple of Ed and Karen Baldwin through the emotional wringer. While balancing the familial demands of having Ed be a prominent figure in the Space Race, the astronaut's family lost their young son Shane in a tragic accident while Ed was stationed on the moon. Picking up nine years after Ed's return to Earth, For All Mankind Season 2 shows the couple still together but not without their marital challenges in the face of their unresolved grief as the shadow of Cold War looms even more heavily over the American space program.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Shantel VanSanten discussed where the nine-year time jump picks back up with Karen, spoke about working with Joel Kinnaman as her on-screen husband and how the time jump won't easily resolve the couple's hardships.
In the first half of Season 1, Karen puts on a brave face and unified front for the astronaut wives before that facade starts to crack. How is it finding that progressing emotional depth going into the time jump for Season 2?
Shantel VanSanten: Yeah, I was lucky that in Season 1 we had that 4-5 year time jump to prep a little for the nine-year time jump ahead. It's so interesting jumping into new seasons because there is gaps to fill and obviously we saw Karen have this grand arc that was exactly what you said: Everything she held onto that was so dear and so tight completely fall apart in her hands, and no matter how much control she tried to have, she lost it. And so starting Season 2, I remembered thinking, "Where do we go? It's nine years later, where will she be and what will be happening?" And it shocked me. It was very surprising, and I can't wait to hear everyone's reactions to it.
But I don't think that we ever lose the history of the nine years in between and it slowly unfolds and we get pieces of what transpired in between. There was a small part of me that was upset that nobody got to see the small things that were in my mind, and I remember spending three weeks before we started -- I have a notebook and I just wrote memories for Karen. And I can't give too much away, but tying in where we last left her to where we find her for me was such a fun creative process to get to share them with some of the writers, the things that she went through and things that the audience missed, were little Easter eggs I put in.
Your character starts to push back a lot towards her husband Ed at the end of Season 1 and that definitely continues in Season 2. How is it working with Joel Kinnaman as a scene partner?
VanSanten: It was so funny to be married in Season 1 and never see your husband, but that was their life! In Season 2, we get to explore a lot more of their marriage and see us together a lot more; Season 1 was basically modern-day FaceTime while [Ed] was on the lunar surface and the constraints of NASA and [space] program on their relationship; Season 2 is really different. I love Joel, we play together really well and come to the table with ideas. I feel fortunate to have more in-person scenes with him in Season 2.
In Season 1, Karen and Ed endure a great tragedy at home and there's still a lot of unresolved grief. How is it exploring that in Season 2?
VanSanten: I was really worried that we'd lose seeing the grieving process but what's really interesting is that grieving never ends. I've lost a crazy amount of people in my life and grief comes in waves. It changes and it morphs. And just because we pick up nine years later doesn't mean they've fully processed, and there's things that they still have to discover and go through together. There was a part of me that was scared that we were going to miss that chapter, and we don't; we actually explore it in a really beautiful way. We think that nine years have passed, [and] they're over it, but [they're] not.
There's a beautiful line they have where they say "There's B.C. and there's A.D. and the dividing line is Shane's death," and that's their life now: There was before with Shane and there's now. And that's something interesting to explore, this big sever in their heart and their relationship. I feel really grateful because we don't normally see stories that explore something after so much time has passed.
Created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, For All Mankind stars Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten, Wrenn Schmidt, Jodi Balfour, Krys Marshall, Sonya Walger, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña and Casey W. Johnson. Season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ on Feb. 19.
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