The second season of SundanceTV’s Emmy Award-winning short-form anthology series State of the Union premieres on Valentine’s Day 2022. Season one focused on the troubled marriage of Tom and Louise, played by Chris O’Dowd and Rosamund Pike. Season two stars Brendan Gleeson and Patricia Clarkson as Scott and Ellen, another married couple who’ve turned to counseling to save their relationship.
Per the official synopsis: “Liberal campaigning Ellen (Clarkson) drags her traditional, self-made husband Scott (Gleeson) out of his comfort zone and into a hipster Connecticut coffee shop, where they have ten minutes before their marriage counseling session to drink a coffee, gather their thoughts and argue about everything from Quakerism to pronouns. Amongst the bickering they also discuss betrayals from their past, how they’re changing as people, and what the future of their relationship might look like in a changing world.”
State of the Union creator, executive producer, and writer Nick Hornby joined director and executive producer Stephen Frears along with stars Brendan Gleeson, Patricia Clarkson, and Esco Jouléy for the 2022 Television Critics Association’s winter press tour. Despite the fact it was a virtual panel with the participants in different locations, it was evident from their exchanges the cast and producers truly get along and respect each other.
Season two’s 10-minute episodes consist of 10 minutes of real-time conversation. That meant Brendan Gleeson and Patricia Clarkson had to be aware of the speed in which they delivered their dialogue.
“We were summoned to a kind of rapidity by our esteemed director who kept us within limits. But there was a kind of vitality and a drive in the writing anyway that kind of insisted on that. And it was exhilarating,” said Gleeson.
“Yeah – and that’s exactly what it was. We knew these brilliant 10 minutes, we have to make the most of them. We have to cut to the chase. There’s no fat. There’s no wasted time,” said Clarkson. “It took on its own rhythm and Stephen made sure we kept in that rhythm. We love him.”
The dialogue is so raw and genuine that delivering it was occasionally painful as it made Gleeson and Clarkson reflect on their own experiences.
“I think as an actor if you’re going to find truth in the words, and you have found truth in reading them and then you interact with somebody, to explore the truth you have to take part of your own experience and your own soul and kind of embroider it into the fit that you’re kind of portraying,” explained Gleeson. “And so obviously you draw on your own experiences, your own mistakes, your own shortcomings.”
Gleeson added: “And when you get in with somebody like Patricia who’s – I mean, obviously to add subtlety and brilliance and vigor is there, but added to that is, again, the integrity of what you’re trying to do. She obviously has skin in the game, so to speak. That’s where you do enter into a place where there’s a little bit of emerging, and that’s why it becomes a very emotional experience and actors get bad reputations for saying lovely things about each other. And so, yeah, it was you have to delve into your own well and take what you can from it, and then drop it if it’s getting in the way.”
Clarkson agreed that some of the dialogue was tough to deliver. “Yeah, it was very difficult for us. And remember when we would run these lines and we knew some of these scenes and some of these words we had to say were brutal? It’s never easy as an actor, ever. But the beauty of Stephen Frears is he never lets you be indulgent and so it really is about the scene. It is about moving through it and forward, and where the action of the scene (goes).
But the homework that Brendan and I had to do, of course, to play these characters was scar-making,” laughed Clarkson. “I mean, we’re still a little wounded, I think. But it was worth all of it and it’s the path we chose as actors. It’s just what we do and it’s something I’d do in a hot minute again.”
Season two deals with timely topics that aren’t necessarily related to the couple at the heart of the story’s relationship problems. Gleeson’s Scott has a difficult time understanding gender pronouns, and Gleeson revealed he learned a lot from Esco Jouléy about that subject while filming was underway.
“It wasn’t something that I was overly familiar with in terms of pronouns and all that. And it was very liberating to explore how gender has become such a kind of imprisoning definition,” explained Gleeson. “I think what’s wonderful about the writing for me was that Scott is not without his own curiosities or without his own tolerances, even though he appears to be the very opposite of that. And so I really enjoyed the exploration because I certainly learned from it.”
Nick Hornby confessed he also learned a lot about pronouns while writing season two. “I felt the same as Brendan, that I discovered a lot of things through the writing and then through talking to Esco,” said Hornby. “There was one line that Scott has in the script where he berates himself for getting a pronoun wrong and says, ‘Oh, Scott, you stupid old man.’ And that line came because somebody pointed out to me that I got a pronoun wrong and I said, ‘Oh, Nick, you stupid old man.’ And I thought I’ll just give that straight to Scott.”
“Well, we had quite a few non-binary people on the set, assistants, and so we had to live off-screen what we were living on-screen,” added Clarkson. “And so, it was quite wonderful to all of us in a learning curve in London. So, it was helpful and quite remarkable at times.”
Esco Jouléy’s Jay is the barista who interacts with the couple as they meet up before their counseling sessions. Jouléy, whose preferred pronouns are he/him, believes the reaction to the use of the wrong pronoun has a lot to do with the person’s intention. “If you know someone doesn’t have any ill intention, I’m willing to stand there and be like, this is new. Hey me meeting you is new, too.”
Gleeson credits Jouléy with helping them all get up to speed. “His empathetic nature and his forgiveness of the human race for being human…he never sweated the small stuff,” said Gleeson. “He didn’t get irritated if somebody (erred). His line was, ‘No, I find it really interesting that that’s how you see me.’”
“We all make assumptions about everybody, including myself. I am not excluding myself from any of this,” said Jouléy. “And it’s just amazing how someone can see you, especially if they have no ill intention. You’re like, ‘That’s how you see me? That’s amazing. Rock on.’ And it’s also very interesting because throughout the show Jay is – by opening that door – able to get to know Scott even more. And so, it’s also Jay has to negotiate that too of like, ‘How much am I getting my way from actually just meeting a new person? I also want to be accepted, maybe Scott does too.’”
During the TCA panel Hornby was asked if there’s a difference between writing for men or women. “I know this sounds like a corny answer, but I’m writing for people. And there are so many varieties of people, and there are so many varieties of women, and so many varieties of men,” replied Hornby. “So, you start with the character and, you know, I just walk round and round a character and think about the character, and once I get to that stage, I’m not thinking is this a woman or a man? I’m thinking, is this real to this person? And of course, their gender becomes a part of it.
But surely, as a writer your job is to write about everyone. I know this has become increasingly stressful, this subject. Should I be able to write about women or people of a different sexuality to me or a different race to me? But you’ve just got to hope for the best, observe as much as you can, and get people to read. And I had a reader for Esco’s part as soon as I finished because of course you’re going to make mistakes about certain things.”
Clarkson confirmed she’s an admirer of Nick Hornby’s writing and said she’d take anything he writes for her, any day of the week.
“I’ve never had such a delicious, glorious feast of words. And I think Nick, you write with just this…it’s so fast and funny, and it moves so quickly between the emotional and the poignant and the poetic and then into brilliant comedy. It’s just all in one quick breath sometimes and it’s an actor’s dream. It’ll kill you, but it’s an actor’s dream,” said Clarkson, laughing.
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State of the Union premieres on Monday, February 14, 2022 on SundanceTV, Sundance Now, and AMC+.
