The Big Picture

Season 2 of The Afterparty delves into another murder, captivating viewers with its exploration of different film genres and perspectives. The cast was impressed by the show’s talented creative team, who worked on set design, lighting, wardrobe, and makeup to bring each genre to life. The actors enjoyed exploring their characters’ backstories and complex family dynamics, with each character being richly developed and offering a unique perspective.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of The Afterparty.]In Season 2 of the Apple TV+ comedy series The Afterparty, naturally another murder has occurred, reeling Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) back into the mix, due to her desire to team back up with Aniq (Sam Richardson) and solve the crime. As the pair make their way through questioning all the family members and guests at the wedding of Grace (Poppy Liu) and the now super dead Edgar (Zach Woods), they take what they learn about the fateful event, with each recounting being told in a different film genre to match the individual’s perspective, to find the guilty party for this whodunnit.

During this interview with Collider, Liu (whose character, Grace, is both a newlywed and newly widowed), Vivian Wu (who plays Vivian, mother to both Grace and Zoë and the wife of Feng), Ken Jeong (who plays Feng, aka The King of Bing, for his Bao Bing Taiwanese shaved ice company) and John Cho (who plays funcle Ulysses) talked about how much they were drawn in by their characters’ backstories, exploring the complicated family dynamic, working with the vow box, making a memorable entrance on a horse, sharing dance scenes, and researching shaved ice.

This interview was conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Collider: Did you guys go into Season 2 as fans of the first season? Did you know what level of shenanigans you would be getting up to?

POPPY LIU: Yes, I had seen the first season. I binged it in one day, and was just like, “I need to know who did it.” It was really cool to be invited into the second season, knowing that the bar was set quite high. I was like, “Where are they gonna take this? What new genres are they gonna explore?” And they definitely did it. They really went full one hundred with the different genres. It was really impressive to see all the different creative departments do their thing with set design, lighting, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and everything. It was such a talented team to be able to do basically 10 mini-movies in one show.

JOHN CHO: We knew what was coming down the pike. We tried to be consistent, from the first frame, and play our characters honestly, so that people could catch it. The filmmakers really wanted to ensure that, on second or third viewing, it would all be consistent and not just rely on the device of figuring out who the murderer is, but also work as a story, absent of suspense. So, we just tried to play that play the stuff we needed to play, to set up the end of the show.

KEN JEONG: The backstory, in and of itself, for Feng and Ulysses was so compelling. What amazes me is that every single character has so much richness that it’s like a novel. This could be a novel because all the characters are so wonderfully developed. For an actor, real talk, that’s just a joy to jump into. When an actor is excited about something that’s richly drawn, all you wanna do is fill all those buckets of backstory in. You actually work harder because it’s more easily drawn.

Image via Apple TV+

What was it like to get to explore some of the same moments, from so many different perspectives?

VIVIAN WU: It’s so freeing for the actors, and it was freeing for me. It’s a retelling of the same weekend from different people’s perspective, and their minds are all subjective. I didn’t have to worry about continuity because I knew that in different people’s minds, I could be totally different. It’s all selective memories anyway. So, we trusted a lot in the creatives and their work. They were geniuses at putting this gigantic puzzle together. All we need to do was play the moments. That was it. It was very refreshing and it was so much fun, as an actor, to work on the show.

It seems like this family dynamic would have been so much fun to explore because there really are so many different sides to it, with the daughters, their parents, and the funcle. What did you enjoy about getting to dig into that?

WU: It’s true. We Asians are crazy.

JEONG: Feng was actually one of the most relatable characters that I’ve ever played. When I think about it academically, because I’m a father of two daughters myself, one of them also named Zoe, there is so much parallel, especially when doing my own episode. There was really just a lot where it was less a thought and more just accessing and allowing myself to be as vulnerable as I possibly can. That’s all it was. It was less thought and less proactive. It wasn’t, “I’ve gotta do this, and I’ve gotta do this.” It was about opening myself up in a way that I haven’t done before, and do that on a [Phil] Lord and [Chris] Miller project, with amazing actors like John. Also, I was doing something that’s dramatic, more or less. I have lovely comedic moments, but that was not the purpose of the producers to purpose my character with, nor was it mine. I looked at it like an amazing challenge and assignment, like being in a conservatory. Not having a lot of formal acting training myself, I look at a couple of seminal events. Community was really important to me. I learned how to act on that job. To me, this was o different. I was learning how to do this, at an elite level for people who are already elite.

LIU: Whenever I do script work for a character, one of the common things you do is that you write down what everyone else says about your character. You’re just info. gathering. I think it’s really cool, from a character perspective, to be able to see how these different people view you because everyone has a slightly different subjective experience. It actually flushes out the world of the character a lot because you get so much information. It’s fun to play a slightly different version of yourself, not just because of the genre, but based on whose memory it is. In Travis’s memory of Grace, he’s convinced that she’s dropping seductive hints to him and flirting and being a seductress and being coy. Meanwhile, in reality, she’s like, “Why are you here?” It’s fun to be able to play in someone else’s imagination.

Image via Apple TV+

Poppy, how did you feel about the vow box? What’s it like to do an emotional scene like that while you’re standing so close together?

LIU: Apparently that’s a real thing in Silicon Valley. Some tech people who are very socially anxious will actually use a vowel box to mitigate their anxiety, or whatever. It’s an actual, real thing. Chris and Anthony folded it into this because Edgar is also a socially anxious tech guy. There are so many shenanigans going on, at all times, while you’re also having to play a real moment, and it’s funny. Life has wild, unimaginable moments. You’re like, “I’m going through the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through, but I also have to be able to laugh at it.”

John, what’s it like to get to make an entrance on a horse?

CHO: It’s pretty great. I’m a big fan of first shots of characters, the introductory shots of characters. It’s something that I love noting in films. I think it’s in Stagecoach with John Wayne where the camera zooms in on him as he twirls a rifle on his finger. That’s the greatest introduction to a character that I’ve ever seen. First shots of characters are always really fun to note, and I had my own personal flashy intro with that horse, which was really cool. The horse was remarkably cooperative, aside from one take when he pooped on stage, but he’s a horse. That’s one of the privileges of being a horse. You call the shots.

Image via Apple TV+

Vivian, what was it like to get to explore the different dynamics between these two men? What was it like for your character to have to deal with both Feng and Ulysses?

WU: I think audience would probably underestimate Vivian and her story. She’s mysterious. She’s always refined. She’s quiet. On the surface, she’s a good wife and good mother. As the story unfolds and more episodes show up, the audience will start to see Vivian in a different light, and then they will find out that she’s also a woman with her own true self, her inner world, her struggle, her battles, and her choices in life, with her deepest secret that she’s held for so long. She made a choice and she lied because of her protection for her loved ones and her family. This is a woman that I don’t necessarily agree with or approve of her behavior, but I would say that I understand her very well, with her devotion.

How much fun was it to get to have dance scenes?

CHO: Those scenes where she was instructing me, being a novice myself, it was very natural to me to be disciplined in that moment. It was so fun to not only learn dance, but also to watch the dancers who were teaching me dance, and to marvel at their expressiveness and how they could do things with their body and communicate so much, so clearly, through movement. It was just a mystery to me, so it was a real privilege for me to get to know a little bit of that world.

WU: As a little girl, my dream was to become a ballerina. I was growing too tall, so nobody would be able to lift me because the boys were not growing as fast. So, they tossed me out of the class. My first dream was crushed. I remember that moment so sadly. It was a big thing in my life. So now, doing this show, I had to train for the dancing sequence and it brought up a lot of memories from my childhood. It brought back a lot of joy that I had forgotten about. The muscle memory came back. And John was such a good partner, and such a joy to be with and to dance with. We practiced, and he was so committed. We witnessed John go from a non-dancer to a really good, awesome dancer. On the day, on the set in Malibu, with all the waves coming at us, we did the scene and it was totally out of the world. It was beyond our expectations. We did something that we didn’t get to do in the studio when we practiced. It was fantastic. It was magical. It was very, very, very uplifting.

Image via Apple TV+

John, where did you draw inspiration from, for your dance in the rain?

CHO: I just let George Michael take me away. I let his words and angelic voice pierce my heart, and let his fluids course through my veins.

JEONG: What?!

CHO: Yeah. Real talk, baby.

Ken, did you ever expect that you would have to learn so much about shaved ice and different kinds of shaved ice, and trying to sell it and pitch it to people?

JEONG: No, I did not. I joke about not doing research, but I did ask around. I did ask some friends and I did do a little bit of research on it. I was very blessed to have training, learning how to do it. You train to appreciate it, not really for the execution. You want to believe what you’re selling, and I really believe Feng was believing what he was saying. There’s a sweetness to the comedy of Lord and Miller, and Anthony King, that I’m a big fan of. I just felt so fortunate that I was able to be a part of a Lord and Miller joint. It was amazing.

The Afterparty is available to stream at Apple TV+.