Jackie takes aim at a deadly opioid and its distributors in Season 2 of ‘Hightown’
It’s war among the Roys as HBO’S ‘Succession’ returns for Season 3
Things are on the upswing for Cape Cod fisheries agent Jackie Quinones, who like the actress portraying her takes on a new role as the Starz drama “Hightown” opens its second season.
Premiering Sunday, Oct. 17, the 10-episode sophomore round finds Jackie (series star Monica Raymund) clean, sober and beginning her new job as a real cop in the tourist mecca of Provincetown, Mass., where she aims to do some real good in the world.
With a rash of carfentanyl deaths wracking the Cape, she sets her sights on bringing down drug dealer Frankie Cuevas (Amaury Nolasco), who she blames for the death of her best friend Junior, as well as his sociopath cousin Jorge (new cast member Luis Guzman, “Code Black”), who has joined his operation.
Jackie also gets a new partner in Leslie (Tonya Glanz), now that disgraced cop Ray Abruzzo (James Badge Dale) is off the force, and both women are likeminded in their determination to bring an end to the scourge plaguing their community.
“I think Jackie’s mindset coming into the season is very positive,” Raymund explains. “I think she’s feeling herself. She feels like she’s got a little bit more grounding under her because she’s able to stay sober. She feels like she’s learned some new tools. She feels like she’s growing up. And I also think that she’s ready to kick ass because she knows that she will be a very good cop and she has plans to do her best to climb up and prove that the opportunity that she’s gotten is worthwhile to the boss.”
Similarly, Raymund herself took on new duties on “Hightown,” directing the third episode of this season. It’s not her first time behind the camera, however, having done previous turns at the helm on “FBI” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” But it was the first time she had to act and direct at the same time.
“It was very challenging,” she says. “Directing is extremely different from acting, literally in the sense that you’re using different sides of your brain, and so it does feel like you’re jumping back and forth when you’re in it and when I’m overseeing the entire vision of the movie. But you know, there are other actresses who do it and are able to do it successfully and they really inspired me to take on the challenge.”
Battle lines are drawn in and around the dysfunctional Roy family in the wake of a bombshell press conference as HBO’S “Succession” returns for its third season.
Premiering Sunday, Oct. 17, the nine-episode round opens with family patriarch and Waystar Royco chief Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the target of rebellious son Kendall’s (Jeremy Strong) press conference ambush at the end of Season 2, scrambling to secure familial, political and financial alliances as a bitter corporate battle threatens to spill over into all-out family civil war.
Which forces virtually all to choose sides, among them daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook), her husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), sons Connor and Roman (Alan Ruck, Kieran Culkin), great-nephew Greg (Nicholas Braun) and Waystar general counsel Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-cameron).
And at the center of it is Kendall, who at the opening of Sunday’s premiere appears to be trying to come to grips with what he has wrought.
“I felt that after the press conference it was as if I’d sat under the Bodhi tree and achieved a moment of clarity and what feels for Kendall like enlightenment and liberation,” Strong explains. “And so I think we see a sort of airborne Kendall at the beginning of the season, someone who feels like he’s finally wrested himself free from the chains that have been binding him. And, yeah, there’s an airborne quality to it.
“And Jesse (Armstrong, the series’ creator, writer and showrunner) did say to me it was as if Napoleon is sacking Moscow and everyone has left the city so it’s sort of a pyrrhic victory, which I think is part of what we explore in Season 3. I’ve done the thing, but if I don’t have support in a coalition, what is the value of it?”
On the other side is the formidable Logan, who moves to secure support against his son, painfully aware his advanced age makes his time atop the media conglomerate severely limited. That’s not unlike another character the veteran stage actor Cox has played in past, Shakespeare’s King Lear.
“He pretends he’s able to let go of his kingdom ... ,” Cox says. “He’s looking for a successor but, at the same time, he can’t let go. And it’s very hard to let go of something that you’ve created.”