The historical drama series Gentleman Jack, a BBC One/HBO co-production created and written by Sally Wainwright, is rooted in the words of a real-life figure — literally. The show is based on the writings of Anne Lister, an English diarist and landowner who lived freely and somewhat openly as a lesbian, and penned her truths over the course of many collected diaries via a secret code. In the show, Suranne Jones stars as Anne Lister, the titular "Gentleman Jack," who has returned to her family's estate known as Shibden Hall in Halifax with the intention of building up her own inheritance to its most prosperous possibilities. After reuniting with her family, including her sister Marian (Gemma Whelan), her aunt Anne (Gemma Jones), and her father Jeremy (Timothy West), Anne has to not only navigate the problems of neighbors encroaching on her family's coal mine, but also oversee any dilemmas facing the tenants who live on the estate. Ultimately, her path crosses with that of Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle), a young, wealthy, unmarried heiress — and the two embark on a passionate romance that is as exciting as it could potentially breed scandal for them both.

Ahead of Season 2's premiere on HBO this April 25, Collider had the opportunity to speak with Jones, Rundle, and Wainwright about filming the long-awaited return of the series. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the Gentleman Jack co-stars and creator spoke about what it was like to return to these characters and this world, how the relationship between Anne and Ann is faring since their wedding at the end of Season 1, and how their own lives changed while they were filming Season 2. Wainwright also revealed what inspires her to add in those fourth-wall breaks, and Rundle and Jones shared which scenes between Anne and Ann they enjoy playing the most.

Collider: I know there was a bit of a pause in between the show returning just from a production standpoint. For Suranne and Sophie, what was it like for you two to come back and finally return to those locations again? Was it easy to just jump right back into the story and these characters?

SURANNE JONES: I think you're so right. It was so wanted by... We had a great conversation with our fans. We've been receiving all these letters and these wonderful stories of the Gentleman Jack community forming and people meeting each other and going to Halifax. We met two wonderful women who married the other night, so we knew how wanted it was and people were starting to read the diaries.

There was an excitement about it, but of course, then the pandemic hit, so then we were filming in a pandemic, and Sophie was pregnant. I lost my father. Then Sophie returned with her little boy. There were so many things thrown at us, but it's a testament to this story and these people and the team that what is produced is so beautiful. And I couldn't have been more... I'm so happy with what we've achieved. To come back knowing the characters as we do and knowing that there was a love for it was just amazing. We spoke about that a lot, Sophie, didn't we? That really kept us going.

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Image via HBO

SOPHIE RUNDLE: Yeah, definitely. I think it's... You can't help but be affected by what's happening around you when you're making something. I think on some level it feeds in, but I feel like I was a completely different person to the one who started shooting Season 1. We went through so much to get back there, as Suranne was saying. We were all sort of ready to go for Season 2 and then the world changed, and then my world changed again because I had a baby. By the time we finished, by the time we wrapped, it had been a year of shooting, stop-start, and we were really clawing towards the finish line, but there was this sense of... I think it made the whole process deeper.

We really wanted to do it, no one threw the towel, and everyone just... We really wanted to tell this story. It's some of that experience I think it made... I feel like it makes the show deeper and more profound and there's so much heart and blood and sweat and tears in it. We really wanted to tell this story because, as Suranne says, we have seen how much it has meant to people. That is really empowering and emboldening when you're making something like this.

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Image via HBO

RELATED: 'Gentleman Jack' Season 1 Recap: Everything You Need to Know Ahead of Season 2

Sally, one of my favorite elements of this show is when it breaks the fourth wall. I was really excited to see that reintroduced early in Season 2 when we get Anne basically welcoming us back very intimately, like an old friend returning. From a writing standpoint, when does it feel to you like the right time to add those little fourth-wall moments in? Because some of them are very humorous, but then some of them are very emotionally vulnerable too.

SALLY WAINWRIGHT: For me, it's about the diary and us feeling... It's a reminder that this is from a diary. It's a reminder that this is from a document that any of us can read. However private it is, however intimate the details within it. If they can transcribe her writing, then anybody can choose to go and read these journals and have that intimate knowledge and that intimate contact with it. When she turns [to camera] to address it, it's like trying to create a private relationship between her and the audience. That's what I really wanted to try and do, was for the audience to feel what it's like to read the journals and to have that one-to-one time with Anne Lister, which transcends time. I do feel like that when I'm heavily immersed in the writing process, and I'm reading those journals day after day after day.

You do feel like you get to know her very, very intimately, and it was about allowing the audience to feel that as they watch the show. For them to feel that she's our guide through this TV series, she's our friend, because she's going to turn and tell us something that we didn't know in a second, that nobody else in her world knows is going on, which, of course, they didn't. People in our world, they didn't know that she was writing the journal, or they certainly didn't know what was in it. So it's like our little secret with Anne Lister that reflects our little secret with her when we can read the journals.

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Image via HBO

In Season 2, we see the relationship between the Ann(e)s has definitely shifted from Season 1. Season 1 had the journey to them choosing each other. Season 2, they're in a committed relationship, but things are definitely not smooth sailing. For Suranne and Sophie specifically, what were the two of you most excited to explore with the dynamic between your characters this season?

RUNDLE: I think we really enjoyed... we liked it when they bickered, didn't we? I don't know why it's just quite fun to play that, and it is really because Sally's writing is so specific in... What I love about Sally's writing is when you get a scene, you go, "Yeah, people really do say that," or "I've thought that before, and that's a really great articulating [of] it." So it's so much fun when you get to then come and act opposite someone as brilliant as Suranne, and you get to bring that to life.

I loved all those moments when they were going at each other a bit because that's real life and that's what happens. It doesn't mean that, oh, well it's all for naught then, and this relationship doesn't work, and we don't love each other. Real life is complicated and complex. Working on a show like this with the team that we get to work with, it's such a privilege because everyone's working at the top of their game. So it's really fun when you get those scenes when you get to sort of really put their marriage under the microscope and see how people really do talk to each other.

JONES: And I love all of that. I love that Anne Lister has, in Season 1, created a version of herself that she wanted to present to Ann Walker. Now that they're married, and they're having to live together, and Ann Walker has seen the post that's coming in and hearing the conversations. If Marian is off with Anne Lister, she might say something that Walker shouldn't hear, and so all those barriers are now being kind of taken away. She's having to say, "Oh, I did have a life. These are the people that have shaped me. Okay, I didn't quite tell you this." Every moment of that is frightening, fragile, delicate closure. The Marianna stuff is... and we get to spend a whole episode with them. Is it Episode 4, Sal?

WAINWRIGHT: When you go to Marianna's?

JONES: Yeah, and Sally used the whole episode to talk to the history and the relationship of Anne and Marianna, because we needed that. We didn't get to do it in Season 1, and I think that it really gives us context as to what that is and what the pull is. If we hadn't spent time with them in this season, I don't think we'd feel it as much, and Lydia is brilliant. All of that was just exciting on the page, and then to explore it and take the time to explore it was just great.

Season 2 of Gentleman Jack premieres March 25 on HBO.