With Collider premiering the first trailer for Space Force Season 2 (you can watch it here), I was able to speak with co-creator Greg Daniels about what fans can expect in the new seven-episode season. If you’ve never seen Space Force, the Netflix series was created by Steve Carell and Daniels, and it follows General Mark R. Naird (Carell) and his underdog team at the newest branch of the military, Space Force. The show also stars John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Tawny Newsome, Diana Silvers, Jimmy O. Yang, Don Lake, Lisa Kudrow, and Tim Meadows.
While I enjoyed the first season, the second season is a lot stronger (and funnier), and that’s due to a number of behind-the-scenes changes that Daniels told me about. He explained how the first season’s cinematic style was something they felt didn’t work and why they changed it:
“Steve (Carell) and I were very much in the mind of not making it like The Office in the beginning, we were trying to make it very cinematic. And what happened when we stopped the first season was, we sat down and he was like, "Well, that wasn't that much fun to make it that cinematic," because when you're shooting something like a movie, especially when you're really caring about the look of it, there's a lot of downtime while they're lighting.
The thing that Steve is so brilliant at and was used to from The Office is the ability to kind of improvise with the other actors. Afterwards, we looked at what we had to work with, and we were like, "Well, the cast is amazing. The cast that we've assembled for Space Force, it's a shame to make them just shoot one side and then wait and relight," as opposed to like having a more flexible shooting pattern where they can play off each other and have fun with it and improvise.”
To achieve this goal, Daniels and Carell brought in Norm Hiscock (Parks and Recreation, King of the Hill) as co-showrunner alongside Daniels, and co-star Yang also joined the writers' room. But that’s not all they did. The biggest change was bringing in Ken Kwapis to direct all of Season 2. Daniels explains why:
“The other big creative change we did was we brought in the guy who directed the pilot of The Office and a lot of our biggest episodes, this guy Ken Kwapis, and he's so much about protecting the performance energy on the set for the cast so that they can relax and not worry about the mechanics of shooting it. He's also super good at shooting comedy, which is somewhat different than the sort of like Kubrick-y kind of thing we were going for season one, right? We saw what was working and we tried to fix it.”
Since the writers' room was going to have some new people, and they were going for a new direction in terms of the comedy, Daniels explains why Carell wrote the first episode of Season 2.
“There was a sort of a postmortem period where he and I sat down and we said what was working, how do we change things to improve the experience? I think we didn't have that many of the same writers. We had a few same writers, but we got a bunch of new writers, and I think he kind of wanted to show the writer's room what he was going for in terms of tone, so he took the first one.”
Another change with Season 2 is how it focuses more on the comedy between the cast and less on a serious storyline involving the Space Force. Daniels clarifies how the themes of Season 2 are different:
“Well, I think the big picture is that we are concentrating on the gags more. It is more about the comedy scenes between the cast. I think the stories are more personal and they're interesting, but I don't think the point of the show so much is like a highly arced thing, you know what I mean? It's kind of like each episode is a fun adventure with this cast and there's a loose structure to it. I guess the big structure this year is that with the new administration, the Space Force is much more underdogs because people are super skeptical of them in the new administration. We have a guest star, Tim Meadows, who's the new Secretary of Defense, and he's making it hard for the guys at Space Force. So that's the overall theme.”
Finally, another change you will notice in Season 2 is the episodes are shorter, and they feel different. Daniels reveals why:
“I'll say that one of the ways that we refocused the show on the cast was that we explored a lot of the ways that the main serious regular cast could interact with each other. I think that season one, which is appropriate because you're establishing who the cast are and they don't all know each other or like each other in season one, so you have a lot more stuff where characters are outward facing, if you know what I mean? Like Angela's story is going to the moon and she's with a whole bunch of astronauts, and her individual story is that, and someone else has a different individual story. Now I think more of the stories are the various cast members relating to other cast members, so you can kind of handle it in a shorter period of time.”
In addition to everything I’ve already mentioned, Daniels talked about where the idea to make Space Force came from, Lisa Kudrow’s role in the second season, if they’ve changed the reason she’s in prison, if COVID influenced the writing process in terms of what they thought they could pull off on set, and more.
Check out the full interview in the player above. Space Force Season 2 starts streaming on Netflix February 18.