Developed by Miranda Kwok (The 100) and executive produced by showrunner Melissa Carter (Queen Sugar), the first season of the Fox drama series The Cleaning Lady followed lead character Thony (Élodie Yung), a Cambodian doctor who had given up the life she knew to bring her son to the U.S. for the medical treatment he needed to help save him. Leaving her husband behind and navigating life as an undocumented worker struggling to make ends meet led Thony to find herself tied up with the mob in Las Vegas, cleaning up their aftermath in the type of situations that you don’t want to ask questions about.

While preparing to head into production for Season 2, Carter spoke to Collider to shed light on their writers’ room process and to share hints about what’s to come. During this 1-on-1 interview, she talked about why now is the right time to tell this story, how there are always more layers under what someone presents on the surface, how they decided to end the first season where they did, how that will affect things going into the second season, the evolving dynamic between Thony and Arman (Adan Canto) and not wanting to string audiences along with the will-they-or-won’t-they of it all, the strength of their leading actress Yung, and the role the new characters will play in Season 2.

Collider: This was one of my surprises of the season. I had no idea what the show was, and I didn’t know what to expect, but I quickly got totally hooked, and I’m thrilled that there will be a second season.

MELISSA CARTER: That’s great. Well, I’m talking to you from our writers’ offices where we’re working out the season right now.

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Image via Fox

RELATED: 'The Cleaning Lady' Renewed for Season 2 on FOX

Congratulations on getting the pickup because that’s obviously a big deal these days. When you came on board for this show, what were you worried about in telling this story right now? Undocumented workers, and just undocumented people, in general, clearly have a spotlight on them these days. Were there things you were worried about with telling this story in this current moment, or did it feel like it was just really the right time to tell this story?

CARTER: Yeah, it really felt like the right time to tell the story. When (show creator) Miranda [Kwok] came up with this idea, to talk about undocumented workers and have the main characters be from the Philippines, at that time, we had people at the border putting kids in cages and talking about building the wall and the view of the Trump administration. The fact that the show is on the Fox network is exciting because, even though Fox News and Fox Entertainment are two separate entities with different politics and different leanings, it still felt like an opportunity to capture some of that audience and use our show as a Trojan horse, where we’re bringing in these topics, but from a different point of view. Usually, when we hear about border immigration and border disputes, and who gets the opportunity to work in the country, we’re mainly talking about people from Mexico. The fact that this was showing a different group of Southeast Asians, it just seemed like a really exciting opportunity to talk about all of these topics, so it wasn’t such a hot-button topic.

I love how, with her being a doctor who had to give that up to come to the States to do what she needs to do for her child, it really adds that layer of not knowing who somebody really is. You don’t know who they were before or what they’ve left behind, and you can’t tell just from the assumptions you make from looking at them.

CARTER: Yeah. Every time I’ve gone to New York City, and I’ve taken a cab ride, the cab driver always tells you they were an engineer in their home country, or they were a doctor, or they were an architect. What Miranda found out in her research is that, when you come to this country as a doctor, you have to redo all of medical school. People make the assumption that, if you’re an immigrant in this country and you’re working as a cleaning person or a waiter or a taxi driver, that you must not have an education and that you’re just trying to siphon off the system, and that’s not the case.

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Image via Fox

When you came to this, Miranda had developed the basic spine for what this story, this character, and this family would be. What did you see in that, that not only interested you in telling the story, but made you feel like there was a series there and something that could go on and that had legs?

CARTER: The crime element is really what makes it special, and it’s not the only thing, but it’s taking the crime element and combining it with undocumented workers and a mother who would do anything to save her child. It’s mixing messages and important ideas and things that you rarely get to explore in just a straight-up crime drama. I always say that the show is pushed plot, but grounded characters. You can have explosions and gun-running crime scenes and shootouts, but then you have these quiet, lovely moments where the family comes home, and they talk about all the dangers of being an undocumented worker, or how their child needs medical care, and they can’t afford it. It’s such an interesting hybrid. That’s what I was really attracted to

Talking about the final moments of the finale, what makes it so heartbreaking is that, after everything she’s gone through all season, Thony finally saves her son’s life, only to have him taken by husband. When did you know that that’s how this season would end? How do you decide what cliffhanger you want to leave things on?

CARTER: We actually came up with that pretty late in the season because Fox was really pushing us to have a penultimate episode and a finale, and they kept pushing us to make it more and more exciting, so we came up with that idea. It really came together when we wanted to bookend the origin story of her leaving with Luca in the middle of the night, with her coming home and Luca’s gone and Marco took him. It really wrapped up the whole season and her journey of why she came to the United States because all the reasons she came are now abruptly taken away from her. It seemed like the most exciting, and also just spoke to all the themes and tensions that she was gonna do anything to save her son.

I was so upset that that’s where you left things, but it was also brilliant.

CARTER: We wanted to show that custody battles are very complicated. She did it for a good reason. She’s morally justified in everything she does, including getting into crime. It’s to save her son. So, we wanted to play with that. Most people don’t just suddenly become criminals. They have their own moral justifications as to why they commit a crime and why they cross that moral line of their own. We wanted every character to have their own moral compass, and what’s terrible for some people might be okay for other characters. It was fun to watch that anything for Luca, she could justify as saving her son and she could explain it away to herself. But as she gets more and more involved in the crime world, that’s when the show is really interesting.

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Image via Fox

What can you say about how that is going to play into things with Season 2? Is that going to run through the entire season? How big of a role will this battle between the family be?

CARTER: I can’t give away anything, but it won’t just be something that happens quickly. It is something that complicates all of their lives in surprising and shocking ways because we don’t wanna do the expected. We don’t wanna do the expected custody battle, which is what I think an audience would think is gonna happen. We always try to take what we think people assume will happen and subvert it to surprise people and turn it on its head, so that’s what we’re gonna do for Season 2.

How do you explore something like that without vilifying the father? Obviously, you want to show why he thinks what he’s doing is right, so how do you navigate that within the story to not make him just look like a villain?

CARTER: We try to dimensionalize all our characters and be mindful of what their distinct point of view is. If you just look at it from Marco’s point of view, he wanted Thony to wait until his VISA came through, so they could go together as a family. From Thony’s point of view, she knew the donor could back out, which is what happened. There was a ticking clock to save Luca’s life. That’s why she took their passports in the middle of the night and took off. From Marco’s perspective, he feels like his son was taken away from him and that he wasn’t part of that decision-making process. Even though he is an obstacle to Thony this season, we also want to show that they had a loving relationship at one time and that the pressures of having a sick son that could die really put a strain on their marriage. For that reason, even though he’s not always so nice about it, you can see how his point of view is justified. She did take their son. She did get involved with a criminal. She is running around with a gangster. All the things he’s accusing her of are true.

Was there always a plan to get Thony and Arman together, in some way, at least just for a moment? Is that something that evolved out of actor chemistry, or is that something that there was a plan for, from the beginning?

CARTER: There was always a plan for that, from the beginning. We know that’s what audiences crave. They wanna feel like these two people are meant to be together, but for all the reasons that are obvious, they can’t be. It’s that yearning that really gives you heat. They both start to feel it and are confused by it, but they can’t help it. But as soon as you have two characters ride off into the sunset, it becomes boring, so we’re always trying to keep reasons and obstacles for them not to just ride off into the sunset.

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Image via Fox

You can have a plan for that, but if the actors don’t have chemistry, that plan won’t always work. When did you see how that was really clicking between the actors?

CARTER: In the pilot, we could see it on screen, almost immediately. What was interesting was that Adan Canto and Élodie Yung both made really interesting choices of what that chemistry looked like. He’s trying to assert his dominance and when he towers over her, he gets really, really close to being intimidating, but she stands up against it. It becomes this hot, very kinetic chemistry that you see between them, and we could see that, right from the beginning. What’s funny about Adan and Élodie is that they actually make each other laugh. At three in the morning, they’ll start giggling, and you have to really reign them in and get them to behave.

They’re really like brother and sister. For the scene in episode six when they have to kiss, and it’s explosive, I was on set, and he wanted to be tender with her. Adan wanted to kiss her on the forehead. In between takes, I went up to him and was like, “This is the moment you’ve both been thinking about each other. It’s just gonna be a passionate explosion.” He goes, “No, I think I might just stroke her hair a little bit and just kiss her on the forehead.” I was like, “No, Adan, both of you are hot for each other.” Because they’ve been paling around and are so friendly, it felt very awkward to them, but when I said, “Please, you’re supposed to go there,” they did.

Do you think that, if you were to ask either of those characters, if they could even define what their relationship? Do they even really understand what’s happening between them?

CARTER: That’s such a great question because I think they’re both confused by it. For Arman, whether he would articulate this or not, Thony really brings out the good side of him. He grew up in a good family. His parents were very hardworking. He was supposed to go the moral route, and then he made this choice to pursue crime because it paid well, he was given respect, and he felt power. He has this wife that supports him and is his partner in crime. She’s the woman that backs his decisions and supports him. But this other woman holds up a mirror and says, “No, you’re better than that. There’s a good man in there, and I can see it.”

That appeals to his good side and also brings out his protective side. When he’s around her, you can see h that he wants to take care of her. He wants to be the savior. He likes that. She looks at him like he’s a hero. So, it brings up all these really confusing feelings and an identity crisis that he didn’t even know he had. Thony has been doing everything right. She’s been taking care of her son. She’s been working. And then, here’s this dark knight in shining armor, who comes along and doesn’t swoop in and save her. She saves herself. But he’s this more brutal, less intellectual presence that awakens something in her that she doesn’t get in her marriage. It’s confusing for both of them, which is fun. You can see them both grapple with the fact that they weren’t expecting this.

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Image via Fox

Does it feel like, as storytellers, there are only so many times you can poke the will-they-or-won’t-they bear before you have to do something, one way or the other?

CARTER: Yeah, that is a challenge. We’ve talked about it a lot. Most of the writers’ room is like, “They shouldn’t have sex this season. We should keep them apart.” It’s a debate. I think there’s always a way that you can buy it back. There’s always some new bit of conflict. We’re talking about how far we should go with them, so that it doesn’t feel like you’re disappointing the audience, but you also don’t feel like you’re repeating what you already did in the first season.

Does it ever feel funny when you’re sitting around, talking about characters that aren’t actually real people, but that you’re making decisions for while they have no say in the matter?

CARTER: It’s a weird God complex, where you feel like you’ve created this whole world, and you get to decide what happens, so have to be careful.

I love the strength of Thony, as a character. There’s something so interesting about watching her. How much of that was on the page and how much of that has evolved with Élodie Yung in the role?

CARTER: Élodie is such a strong actress. She makes really interesting choices, and she also tries new things, in any given scene. She doesn’t like to repeat herself. She always likes to go to the brink of being vulnerable, being exposed, being strong, and showing all those different colors. All the actors have brought even more than what we put on the page, which is really fascinating and a gift. You know that you can really write a scene where she breaks down, or where she wants to break down, but she remains strong, because she will bring those colors, and so does the rest of the cast. It’s been really exciting. We’ve not had to write around any weak acting. We’ve just been able to give them more and more to do.

Because of the situation that she’ll obviously be in, in Season 2, with her husband taking their son, will we see more cracks in her? Is that something that has to happen because she doesn’t have that thing that she’s pushing for, as far as saving her son’s life?

CARTER: Season 1 was Thony doing anything to save her son. Season 2 will be Thony doing anything to save her family and keep her family together. That’s her real draw and her core drive of Season 2. We want to present that in a surprising way that isn’t expected. Even though she’s doing criminal things and we wanna start grading her darker, she also has a moral center. Her moral compass is strong. If she’s gonna do bad, she likes to offset it with having Robin Hood moments and doing something good. Her instincts are always to take a dark situation and try to improve it, or leave something good behind.

What’s it like to go through the process of having to go into the network to pitch a second season, and then wait to find out if you actually get to do a second season? What reaction did you get from that pitch, and how did you find out that you were actually picked up?

CARTER: Luckily, we have a lot of friends at Fox, and they basically kept saying to us, “We think you’re okay. You’re gonna get a pickup. You’re doing really well. Your Hulu numbers are excellent. Hang in there. We don’t know when, but you’re probably gonna get a pickup.” So, we felt pretty confident. The Season 2 pitch is always really important, but they also know that you’re gonna get into a writers’ room with eight other bright people and you’ll keep some of it, but you’ll also improve it and make it better. We had the pitch, it went over really well, they really liked it, and they were surprised, and they gasped at the right moments. The network or studio is your first audience, so you really want them to love the show as much as you do. You really wanna impress them and get them to fall in love with it, all over again. That was the challenge we had, and from their reaction, we knew we had a good Season 2. We had so much plot, they were like, “We love it, but can you slow it down a little bit?” We’re just hoping that attitude remains.

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Image via Fox

At that moment, how much of Season 2 do you feel like you have planned out?

CARTER: In the first two weeks of the room, you roughly have what they call the tent poles for the whole season, where you have the major events and roughly where they fall, in episodes one through 12, because we’re pretty sure we’re getting 12 episodes. You know where you’re gonna end up, like the last scene, and you know your first scene, and then you know the general character arcs for each of the characters. You meter out where you’re starting them out, which is basically a direct pickup from Marco having taken Luca, to how it’s gonna end. And then, you get into a room, and you start talking it out, and other good ideas come up, and it evolves. You also learn, as you go along. I think we did a pretty good job, in Season 1, of establishing a tone and a feel. You felt the grit of Vegas, even though we only shot four days in Vegas and the rest of it was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It has a rhythm and a feel, and it’s become its own monster. It becomes the show that it wants to be.

You always have that north star of what you want, and you know the stories you wanna tell, but then other things evolve, and actors bring you gifts and talents that they have, and you start to wanna use them. For instance, in episode seven, when Thony sings, and it’s the karaoke episode, I asked Élodie if she could sing, and she said, “Yeah, I can sing.” So, we knew we wanted a karaoke episode because, in the Philippines, everybody does karaoke. Apparently, it’s family entertainment. I have a trainer friend who’s Filipino, and he was like, “Have you done the karaoke episode yet?” So, that became something that we knew we were going to do, but it evolved with Marco coming to visit. He’d missed all these holidays with his son, so we opened it up with a party that celebrated all the holidays that they’ve missed together.

We’ve all felt that way during COVID, having missed all of these important moments with our family. People were having Christmas parties in July, or Thanksgiving in April, so it had that feeling of, “Let’s pull a little bit of what people are experiencing at home with what this family is experiencing because of Luca’s illness,” which had a lot of similarities to COVID, in the extreme, not being able to be around germs, wearing a mask, and being enclosed in a safe space and not interacting with other people. So, it always evolves.

How confident are you that what you think will be the end of the season will actually end up being the end of the season, once you get there?

CARTER: I’m pretty confident. When we pitched it, we went a little bit beyond it and the top executive that we deal with at Fox said, “No, I think it should end with that scene. That scene is exciting. That would be a great ending.” And we agreed. Sometimes when you pitch to a network to get a second season, you give them everything but the kitchen sink. You give them explosions and sex and love, and the things that they loved and even. You promise, “You can have my firstborn child.” You literally will just promise them anything. Luckily, they were like, “We love what you did in the first season, and this feels very much that you don’t have to give us everything. We really love it, but you can dial it down a little bit.” They’re creative partners and we feel like they know the show that we’re trying to make.

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Image via Fox

Without specifics, since you don’t want to spoil things, are there new characters that you’re adding for Season 2, that will be exciting for audiences to get to meet?

CARTER: Yes. Part of what’s exciting about the show is that the criminal world always has good villains. You want formidable villains for Thony and new nemeses that she has to face off with. We do have a new character that will be introduced, that will be someone that’s been in Arman’s past and Nadia’s past, but will be introduced to Thony in a fresh, new way. There are new people swirling and coming in and out of our world, so Thony will make new enemies and new allies, and come up against new foes. There are some new characters coming your way.

Being a showrunner is almost an undefinable job. It’s hard to explain to people because you have to do a little bit of everything. What do you love most about what you do? Is it the storytelling aspect? Is it working with all of the different departments? Is it working with the actors? Is it everything?

CARTER: I went to film school and got my MFA at Florida State, where I directed and got into the business through a short film of mine was that I wrote and directed and that was a student Academy Award finalist. That was my entry into the business. I feel like showrunning is as close to directing as anything I’ve done in the industry because you oversee everything. The whole product is something that you’re responsible for. If anything goes right or wrong, you get that call, and it’s everything from somebody not being happy with the way they’re being treated on set, or an executive has a note, or an actor has a question. For the first season, I wanted to be in the room, but I also wanted to be on set, so Zoom really helped me out with that. I spent a lot of time in Albuquerque because I wanted the actors to know, that if they needed anything or if they had a question, I was there, keeping the continuity from director to director. You wanna make sure that whoever you hire understands what the show is.

A showrunner is responsible for making sure that the vision is pulled through it. I’m carrying the vision that the creator, Miranda [Kwok], brought to it, and we’re creating something that feels consistent. I want every episode to feel like our show, not like an episode that feels differently directed. I want everything to feel like you’re watching The Cleaning Lady, but that it has its own feel and music, and it feels special and like our show. You have to make a lot of decisions. It’s like having a tuning fork where you’re like, “That’s our show. Nope, that’s not our show.” It’s everything from the tone and the wardrobe, to being involved in all the decisions, so that the show has a consistency. That’s basically what a showrunner is. It’s very rewarding too. Part of my job is to foster new talent. We have a lot of young writers in the room, and sometimes it’s about just taking a moment to impart any wisdom or ideas you have, or to kindly critique their work, so that you’re teaching everybody and bringing everybody up.

The Cleaning Lady will return for Season 2 on Fox, and the first season is available to stream at Fox Now.