If you’ve been tuning in to the sophomore season of ‘The Afterparty‘, you’ve started to uncover different pieces of this season’s mystery—which involves a murdered groom, some tense family dynamics and even a wedding guest arriving by horseback.
For those who haven’t yet had the chance to check out the popular Apple TV+ series, the premise of the second season follows the first but on a bigger scale. In Season 1, the show surrounded the murder of a colorful and confident rock star (played by Dave Franco) and when a detective arrives on the scene (Tiffany Haddish), she tries to recall the night through a series of interviews with each character to figure out just what happened.
And it’s through those conversations that the plot really takes off with each person remembering their version of events differently, and through different genres. There’s Aniq (Sam Richardson) whose evening plays out as a rom-com with Zoe (Zoë Chao), while Zoe’s version is an animated recollection. And through other characters, we see the evening unfold through the lens of a suspenseful thriller, a high-speed action plot, a musical recollection, and even a police academy-esque storyline.
In Season 2, we as the audience continue to follow Aniq and Zoe as they head to Zoe’s sister’s (Poppy Liu, aka Grace) wedding to her soon-to-be doomed husband (Zach Woods, aka Edgar.) After the deadly events are discovered the morning after the wedding’s afterparty, Tiffany Haddish’s Detective Danner is once again called to the scene to conduct interviews, each with its own genre lens.
So far in the season, viewers have seen the story told first, as a continuation of Aniq’s rom-com (this time as a sequel surrounded by the plot that he’s meeting Zoe’s family for the first time), a grand Jane Austen love story from the POV of Grace, and a film noir styled episode from the viewpoint of Grace’s ex-boyfriend, Travis (Paul Walter Hauser.)
The latest episode surrounds Edgar’s sister, Hannah, played by Anna Konkle, and it’s in the style of a charming indie story—but a lot gets revealed.
“What I loved about Hannah, she’s very odd. She’s very funny. She’s clearly sort of the alien in the room, but she also has a lot of depth. There’s also a deep human heartfelt story and there’s also trauma with her mom,” explains Konkle. “She’s a very layered character and just her essence is funny. And that combination doesn’t happen a lot, I think.”
The layers were certainly unfolded in this recent episode, where we learn that not only are Hannah and Grace close….they are romantically close. So much so, that Hannah at one point even wanted to intervene in the wedding.
You find out early on in the show that Edgar’s family dynamics are not quite as grand as their house and estate are—it’s all strained actually. Edgar’s mother, Isabelle, played by Elizabeth Perkins is seemingly off-put by the idea of him marrying Grace, and she doesn’t seem to take kindly to all of Hannah’s needs as well. But as we see later in the season (in episode 9), there’s a lot more to Isabelle than what meets the eye.
“For me, it was the opportunity to play a character who’s perceived one way, but her inner life is like a complete 180,” says Perkins. “With my episode, which is told in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock, she’s not sure what’s real and what’s fake… And then being able to play that within the context of the rest of the story where she just comes off as this horrible evil human being when in reality she’s really suffering…That duality was challenging and really interesting to me.”
In this season of ‘The Afterparty’ which takes place over the course of a whole wedding weekend versus just a night, audiences also meet Zoe’s father, Feng (Ken Jeong) mother, Vivian (Vivian Wu) ambitiously mysterious uncle Ulysses (John Cho), plus Edgar’s seemingly suave business partner Sebastian (Jack Whitehall.)
Genres span from a spy thriller, to a social media-focused take, an epic world-traveling romance and even a 90s-styled detective scenario. And every episode also drops different hints and clues that even kept Konkle and Perkins guessing as to who the murderer really was while they were filming.
“I don’t think there was a time when I was correct about my guess of who was the murderer,” says Konkle. “I was never right,” agrees Perkins. And we won’t know that answer until episode 10 comes out, but fans are certainly trying.
Filming other episodes besides their own was also a fun but interesting addition to the filming process for the actresses.
“I love the film noir, the black and white. That was just so funny,” remembers Perkins. “It was just nice to be able to transport completely to a different thing every week. The last time I got to do stuff like that, it was drama school. It was a magical experience.”
But, it could also be slightly challenging as well.
“I think some days were really challenging in terms of the block shooting and going between different genres. Just like Jane Austen in the morning and film noir in the afternoon—that was hard for me because it was already trying to find the same world,” remembers Konkle. “Everybody was doing something different and you’re figuring [it] out on the day. But it was also freeing for that reason and a little bit where it was like, all right, we’re jumping in together. It was challenging, but fun.”
And even though we see all of the characters interact together, Perkins and Konkle agreed that they particularly enjoyed their own dynamic both on and off the screen. “And I actually wish that we’d had more to do [with each other], because I think this feels like a spinoff,” Perkins finishes.
Catch new episodes of ‘The Afterparty’ every Wednesday on Apple TV+
