With For All Mankind Season 2 now streaming on Apple TV+, I recently spoke with creators and executive producers Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert about making the fantastic series. During the interview, they talked about how each season gets bigger and bigger, how the show can take ideas from real life that never happened and bring them into this alt timeline (like the NASA Sea Dragon), how far ahead they’ve figured out the story, deleted scenes, if they’ve thought about what season would introduce a starship, where they are in the writing process for Season 3, and a lot more.
If you aren’t familiar with For All Mankind, it takes place in an alternate history where the global space race of the 1960’s never ended. In this alt timeline, the Soviet Union landed on the Moon first, and we follow NASA astronauts, engineers and their families as they try and catch up with the Russians while also dealing with the changing times. Loaded with fantastic performances, incredible production design, and a detailed depiction of the space race, For All Mankind is one of my favorite series and I absolutely recommend checking it out.
In For All Mankind Season 2, it’s now a decade later and we’re in the middle of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. Tensions are high between both countries as each side tries to gain a foothold on the moon and control the areas rich in resources. At the same time, the Department of Defense has militarized parts of NASA and become central to several characters' stories.
For All Mankind was created by Ronald D. Moore and Nedivi & Wolpert and stars Joel Kinnaman, Shantel Vansanten, Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Wrenn Schmidt, Jodi Balfour, Krys Marshall, and Sonya Walger. New cast members this season include Cynthy Wu as an astronaut’s daughter; Coral Peña as adult Aleida Rosales (who we met in Season 1) and Casey W. Johnson as Danny Stevens, the older son of astronauts Gordo (Dorman) and Tracy (Jones).
Check out what he had to say in the player above and below is an exact list of what we talked about. The ten episode second season is now streaming on Apple TV+ with a new episode every Friday.
Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert:
- Does Tim Cook watch For All Mankind?
- How far ahead have they figured out the story?
- If the show continues for awhile could the series feature all new characters?
- Have they thought about what season would introduce a starship?
- How the show can take ideas from real life that never happened and bring them into this alt timeline like the sea dragon.
- How do they figure out what characters and storylines they want to explore during the season?
- Where are they in the writing process for Season 3?
- How many scripts are ready to go before filming begins?
- Do they end up with a lot of deleted scenes?
- Did they come up with anything during the writing of Season 2 that they’re going to use in Season 3?
- Have they thought about what new set they’re going to build in Season 3?