Last week, WGN America's Manhattan returned strong with an excellent Season 2 premiere that saw the ever-shifting alliances of the Los Alamos residents in complete revolution as they deal with the fallout of the shocking Season 1 finale. Perhaps no two characters have made such a drastic change as those played Rachel Brosnahan and Ashley Zukerman. The duo plays Abbey and Charlie Issacs, a couple desperately trying to rebuild their marriage after the pressures and temptations of their environment robbed their relationship of honesty and sent them into extra-marital affairs.

Set during the nuclear arms race, Manhattan follows the group of brilliant minds behind the Manhattan Project, who were responsible for developing the atomic bomb. Isolated together on "the hill" under extreme lock and key, the scientists and their loved ones find their lives in disarray as they sacrifice their freedom, compromise their ethics, and risk their sanity in the race to design the ultimate weapon. While the second season was filming, I visited the set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I had a chance to speak with Zukerman and Brosnahan. We talked about what excited them about the Season 2 scripts, who they hope to have more scenes with in the future, what they "borrowed" from the set, and their favorite memories from filming Season 2. Watch the full interview below.


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Rachel Brosnahan and Ashley Zukerman:

  • If they had to be stuck on a desert island with one character, who would it be?
  • What most excited them about the scripts for Season 2?
  • Have they "borrowed" anything from set?
  • Is there anybody in the ensemble they haven't worked with yet that they'd like to?
  • Memorable moments from the filming of Season 2.

Manhattan airs Tuesday nights on WGNA. Here's the official Season 2 synopsis.

Created by Sam Shaw (“Masters of Sex”) and directed by Emmy Award-winning director Thomas Schlamme (“The West Wing”), the all-new season of “Manhattan” will take viewers inside the world of Los Alamos, where locked away from everyone else, scientists and their families surrender their freedoms, compromise their marriages, and even sacrifice their sanity to end one bloody war and usher in another — the Cold War waiting just over the atomic horizon — all while foreign spies and a climate of paranoia threaten to destroy the project from within.

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