With Upload Season 2 arriving on Prime Video March 11, I recently spoke to creator Greg Daniels about what fans can expect on the new season of the satirical sci-fi comedy series. If you haven’t seen the fantastic show, Upload takes place in a world where humans can upload themselves into a digital afterlife when they die and the show follows the afterlife of a young computer programmer named Nathan, played by Robbie Amell. Andy Allo, Allegra Edwards, Zainab Johnson, Kevin Bigley, and Josh Banday also star.

During the interview, Daniels talked about why it’s taken a long time for the new season to arrive, what the season is about, how Upload was originally going to be a book, and its journey to landing at Amazon, why VFX take so long to get right, and what they learned from shooting the Upload pilot.

However, as a big fan of the series, my favorite part of the interview was Daniels revealing Prime Video is “super happy” with the audience for Upload and that they’re writing Season 3 right now. He said:

“I'm in the middle of writing season three with the room. We're halfway through. So, I have strong hopes that that one is just going to keep rolling forwards. I mean they're (Prime Video) very excited about the second season episodes, and that's one of the reasons why we're deep in the writing of it is just to try to... It's a very visual effects heavy show, and so even though we shot it before Space Force, it's coming out the month after Space Force because so much visual effects work makes the post process very long. So they really want to get on it so season three can happen as quickly as we can make it happen.”

Check out what Daniels had to say below and look for more Upload interviews soon.

COLLIDER: I loved the first season of Upload, and I've been waiting for news for season two and what better person to than you. So what can you tell people?

GREG DANIELS: Well, it's coming out in March, and it's very exciting. It's another seven episode deal. I shot it actually right before Space Force in Vancouver with a lot of the same crew, which is basically the Upload crew so I just kind of borrowed that for Space Force. I think it came out great, and I can't wait for people to see it.

Upload Greg Daniels Robbie Amell
Image via Prime Video

RELATED: ‘Upload’ Season 1 Recap Video Released Ahead of Season 2 Premiere

What can you tease people because season one ended with him in that room with ...

DANIELS: Ingrid, yeah. So in season one, he's been down downgraded to the two gig status, which means he's only sort of alive for two gigs worth of data then they freeze him until next month. So it's kind of like having a monthly phone plan that runs out of prepaid minutes. He really has to exert himself to save Nora's life. And then she calls and is giving him this very sort of tortured, romantic phone call decision about how she feels, and he freezes in the middle of it. He runs out of data and can't answer her, and she doesn't know that this is happening on the other end of the line and she just thinks that he doesn't want to tell her that he feels the same way about her that she's just confessed to him.

She leaves to go upstate to hang out with sort of the underground that are off the grid in the woods. Season two picks up, and she's off the grid when he finally gets his data back. So they're kind of on separate trajectories, and season two is kind of about how they end up finding each other again.

Was that a show that when Amazon bought it, Prime Video, did they ask you, "Do you have a plan for five years?"

DANIELS: That show has long history. I did the work to come up with that and everything many, many years ago because it was going to be a book. I was going to write it as a book during the writer's strike of 2008. Then after The Office wrapped, I turned it into a TV show, and I sold it to HBO in early 2015 and did a bunch of rewrites for them. Then the executive who bought it left HBO and they gave it back to me and then I sold it to Amazon.

But at that point I had... And actually because I had pitched it to Amazon, I pitched it all over town in 2015, and when I pitched it, I pitched it with two seasons worked out of stories because I had had it as a book, so I had put a lot of forethought in it. I think we pretty much chewed up a lot of the story in the first season, but a lot of the elements are still what I originally pitched. They've just been kind of added to and expanded upon. Some of the side characters I didn't count on them popping the way they did, so as you do on, in a TV show, you go, "Oh, that guy Luke is really funny or Alicia's really funny. Let's put more into them." So I mean that one, I really knew what was happening to start with, but that's not always the case, right? Space Force was a much more like hit the ground with the idea, run with it, hurry up and get it on the air in May, let's do it as quickly as we can while the notion is still people's top of mind consciousness and everything, so that wasn't worked out in advance.

Upload Greg Daniels Robbie Amell image
Image via Prime Video
 

RELATED: 'Upload' Season 2 Release Date Revealed for Prime Video Series

I'm just curious because I don't really know, none of the streamers really share real data. But were they super happy with the results of Upload on Prime Video?

DANIELS: Super, super happy. Super happy. Yeah.

Is it one of those things where you get the gut feeling that they might want another season beyond two?

DANIELS: I'm in the middle of writing season three with the room. We're halfway through. So I have strong hopes that that one is just going to keep rolling forwards.

I mean I really dug season one, I would be shocked if Amazon was like, "Yeah, we don't want to continue." Also, they've seen the episodes, so they know if the second season is any good.

DANIELS: Yeah, totally. I mean they're very excited about the second season episodes, and that's one of the reasons why we're deep in the writing of it is just to try to... It's a very visual effects heavy show, and so even though we shot it before Space Force, it's coming out the month after Space Force because so much visual effects work makes the post process very long. So they really want to get on it so season three can happen as quickly as we can make it happen.

I've spoken to a lot of VFX people and they've all told me there is more demand than ever on VFX houses to deliver because there's more shows and movies than ever before. How does that filter down to you, or does it filter down to you?

DANIELS: Well, I think how it filters down to an average TV producer is that there's more demand for talented VFX people. So the VFX houses are trying to keep the best artists and the best supervisors, but in a very competitive marketplace, they don't always have the very best crews I guess. I don't know. But I think that when there's a lot of production and the talent's spread a little more thin, what ends up happening is you have to give more rounds of notes, you know what I mean? So you say like, "Here's what I want to happen. I want this guy's head to explode and it has to look kind of realistic and sci-fi in a horror way, but it also has to be funny." And the rules of funny are different than the rules of realism a lot of times.

So you can kind of talk and talk about it, and then it'll come back and it'll be like, "Eh," and you'll be like, "Okay, but I need more slap," whatever it is. So I think sometimes the reason it takes so long is because you have to give a lot of rounds of notes, and it occurs to me that may be connected to how much production's happening. Because just if they're crazy over at the VFX house, then there's going to be a little less love lavished on everything. Then it's going to come back and it won't be exactly what you want and you got to try again. So that's my experience, I give love lot of notes and a lot of rounds of revisions.

upload series image robbie amell
Image via Prime Video
 

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What did you learn making the first season of Upload that you said, "Oh, we need to lean into this or we need to push away from this for season two."?

DANIELS: Well, it's interesting. Upload is a different show. And I had a pilot for Upload, so actually all the learning happened on the pilot more so than in between season one and two. So we did a pilot, and I directed the pilot, and it was my first time directing a lot of things like that. I had directed for The Office, I directed the pilot of Parks and Rec, so I had experience as a director. But I didn't have a lot of VFX experience, and I hadn't directed any nudity or sex scenes, which was pretty hard and embarrassing.

But I feel like I learned a lot from the pilot and we were able to see which of the side characters were the most compelling and then write towards them in season one. So I think we did our learning after the pilot for that show, whereas Space Force, it was 10 episodes all at once so we didn't really have a pilot and then a process of looking and thinking and then the rest of the show. It was just like boom, which is how Parks and Rec was too. It was like no separate pilot, but just go right into production.

What else are you working on? What's bubbling up? Because you're involved in so many things.

DANIELS: Well, I have to say that there were pluses and minuses to the pandemic for me personally. Obviously majority minuses, obviously for everybody terrible thing. But because everything's on Zoom now, like the writing room for Upload season three is all Zoom. You don't have to drive anywhere. You turn on the Zoom, and if you want to flip to another project as soon as it's over, you just turn on a different Zoom. So, it is a little easier to juggle multiple things. I think I'm going to try to keep a lot of Zoom. It's easy to pitch things too with Zoom, right? Like when you're trying to get a project off the ground, it can be weeks of driving out to where Netflix is, parking, going into the lobby, getting your ID, going up, waiting, you know what I mean?

I know exactly what you mean. Not the pitching, but the traveling.

DANIELS: So for every hour that you're pitching, it's like a four hour procedure. It kills the whole day. So you can be a little bit more efficient this way. Also, it looks like I'm crazy, crazy busy, and I am pretty busy. But these shows premiered May of 2020, Upload and Space Force, so I've been working away trying to get the second seasons ready and they're premiering a pretty long time afterwards. So, there is a lot of time that went into them.

Upload Season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video and Season 2 arrives March 11th.