In For All Mankind Sarah Jones and Michael Dorman play Tracy and Gordon Stevens – whose position at the start of the second season is very different. During the press launch for the series, Paul Simpson chatted with the pair about the challenges they faced…

 

I hope today doesn’t end up being loads of you being asked the same question again and again.

Michael Dorman: (laughs) It’s inevitable.

Sarah Jones: So far there’s been some fantastic questions, it’s been quite lovely actually.

Nothing like setting the bar high?

Dorman: (Laughs) No pressure.

This is an unusual show, in that you’ve got a big time jump between seasons and you’re picking up your characters, without us and you having seen what’s gone on during that period. Has that been the biggest challenge of season 2 or have there been other elements that you found more challenging during the creation of these new episodes?

Jones: Michael?

Dorman: Definitely for me… We like to refer to [my character] as ‘El Gordo’, he goes through some changes in those ten years and I think it’s a really wonderful element in the show because as the viewer you don’t get to see it all. You just pick up in their lives where they are and then you piece everything together yourself which is awesome.

It was a challenge. I had about six weeks and I was aiming to put on between 40-50lbs, which is a lot. I had to see a specialist to make it as safe as it could be for me because it was so fast and then I had to take it all off in a really rapid way as well. All of that was a big physical challenge.

I think the greatest challenge for me, as a player was the seven month hiatus in between the filming just because we’re building a rhythm and the tension, you keep in your body as you’re building it, to get to that peak where everything explodes. We were just about to get there, at the climactic moment and then it just all stopped. And then you had to come back and just sit in that spot.

That was the greatest challenge for me. What about yourself Jonesy?

Jones: I’m with you on that. You and I have had lots of discussions about that and I would say, it wasn’t so much the time jump or the period element. There are so many moving parts within the production and everyone is so skilled in their departments.

In so many ways all we do is show up and go ‘Wow, thank you’ and then you’re there.

But for me I would say, and this is sort of in relation to what Michael was saying about the hiatus, just overall there were certainly moments in filming both seasons where I wondered if maybe if the writers had planted microphones in my house or something.

Dorman: (Laughs)

That’s when you know a show’s working isn’t it?

Dorman: That’s right, absolutely.

Jones: I felt a kinship with Tracy in a way that I wasn’t always comfortable to acknowledge and have to work through regardless. That’s always challenging because sometimes you don’t really want to do that. It’s a little easier to understand a perspective when it’s someone else and you can go, ‘OK, I get that…I understand this journey here and maybe why this person would choose to be a certain way’ or to make this kind of decision.’ But when there’s moments where it’s hitting a little too close to home….

Where the mirror’s being held up to you

Jones: Right, sometimes it’s tricky.

Dorman: That’s the beautiful thing about the writers on the show, the adaptation. When we first all got together, you could see that they started to watch and then things started to unfold from there. And like you said, that’s when you know the show is working.

New episodes of For All Mankind drop every Friday on Apple TV+