Russian Doll Season 2: Natasha Lyonne Reveals What Inspires The Show
Natasha Lyonne, creator, writer, and star of Netflix's high concept science-fiction series Russian Doll, reveals the media that helped her develop the show's second season. Lyonne created Russian Doll along with Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler. The show dropped all eight episodes on Netflix on February 1, 2019. It follows Nadia Vulvokov (Lyonne), a game developer who finds herself stuck in an inescapable time loop on her 36th birthday where she dies again and again. It's only when she meets Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett), who is also stuck in a time loop, that she starts to piece together a solution. The season ends with the pair escaping death but stuck in opposite universes. A trippy trailer for Russian Doll season two revealed that the show will jump back to the 1980s and will take place four years after the events of the first season.
In an interview with THR, Lyonne reveals what season 2's all-female writer's room drew inspiration from when penning the scripts. Two books Lyonne mentions are Doug Hofstadter’s philosophical exploration I Am a Strange Loop, and Viktor Frankl’s memoir Man’s Search for Meaning about his search for hope after being imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. Lyonne also references taking inspiration from Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical musical All That Jazz and Richard Pryor's Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, as guidance for taking a "first person" approach to infusing herself into the show. Read her full comments below:
Netflix and Universal allow me to assemble sort of the Avengers of the best lady writers that we can find. It’s the second time we’ve had an all-female writers room. They’re knockouts — such cerebral hotshots. So I come in with this pile of books and questions: “Oh, thank God you guys are finally here because, what does this stuff mean?” A lot of it is a reference to the books that were with us from season one, Doug Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Because it’s a show where we can philosophically wonder: What does it mean to be alive?
I come at it from a first person, Fosse-esque All That Jazz or Richard Pryor Jojo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling-level that I’m always trying to infuse. The idea in season one was, what does it mean to be self-destructive? [The main characters] Alan (Charlie Barnett) and Nadia (played by Lyonne) can’t stop dying until they find a connection. In season two, it’s about: “Now that I’ve stopped dying, how do I start living?”
Obviously, on a personal level, that’s a very tangible problem. So that was the itch I was trying to scratch with this room. To just ask those questions — not really to answer them — but to build story around that, because I’m personally curious.
Based on the material that Lyonne mentioned, it's likely that this season will share an even greater connection with her own personal journey through life and her struggles with addiction and trauma than season 1 did. The question that she said the second season of Russian Doll is based off of also hints at possible plots for Nadia and Alan who have to find a way to start living life now that they've stopped dying. Audiences will have a chance to finally see how all of these factors play into the second season of Russian Doll when all seven episodes are released by Netflix on April 20.
Source: THR