Love Life has gone through a few twists and turns in its short, one-season life on HBO Max, but this latest development is clearly the most delightful. Variety is reporting that The Good Place star William Jackson Harper has been cast as the show's new protagonist in season 2. Peeps chili all around!
Created by Sam Boyd, Love Life debuted with an intriguing concept: Each episode would cover one full relationship, beginning to end, in the life of New Yorker Darby (Anna Kendrick), with the finale revealing which person was the actual love of her life. It's always been known that season 2 would follow a new character—Kendrick is still set to pop up from time to time—but Harper, a charmer tailor-made for the anxious delights of a rom-com, is an inspired choice.
Back when the show was renewed, HBO Max noted that season 2 “will remain set in New York City but will focus on a new character’s journey – one which explores what happens when you’ve lived your whole life knowing who your soulmate is, only to find out years into a marriage that it’s not the right fit at all.”
When we spoke to EP Paul Feig back in May, he explained how the show's unique hook sets it apart:
“Yeah that was the hook that Sam originally brought to us when he pitched it to us, and I thought it was great. What’s great about television versus movies is TV gives you the time to really explore depth in a way that you can kind of do puzzle pieces and leave breadcrumbs in one place and bring them forward to another thing, and that’s what I liked about this because that to me is so much about what makes all of us the people that we are. Unless you’re a lucky one who meets your sweetheart in high school and you marry them and you die 80 years later, most of us it’s this slow attrition of ‘Oh I think I like this’ and ‘Oh actually I don’t’, and something happens and how it affects you and how it makes you cautious or what makes you reckless. All of those things add up, and so I thought, ‘This is such a great way to tell a love story about one person’.”
For more on Love Life, here's our full review of season 1.