Annie Easton is back, and she thinks she’s better than ever.
Hulu’s critically acclaimed sitcom “Shrill” has returned for its second season (now streaming), and “Saturday Night Live” star Aidy Bryant’s Annie is making moves in her life, even if they’re not all that well-advised.
We left off at the end of the first season of the hilarious series with a cliffhanger, as Annie confronted a troll (Beck Bennett) after he aggressively harassed her online. Their encounter escalated to the point where she threw a flower pot through his car window and ran off.
For fans who have been waiting to see if Annie was arrested for vandalism, Season 2 picks up immediately after that moment, Bryant says.
Annie is “post-epiphany as far as finding her confidence and starting to break apart ideas about beauty standards,” Bryant says. “But I don’t think she really knows how to put that into practice yet. She’s maybe over-corrected and has gone into full-blown, going too hard territory.”
Annie is going a little too hard taking risks in her personal and professional life. After quitting her job in a rage at a Portland, Oregon, alternative newspaper, she’s fumbling for a new career, and tries to make a go of a mature relationship with her boyfriend Ryan (Luka Jones), introducing him to her parents.
USA TODAY caught up with Bryant to discuss Annie’s journey in the new season, exciting guest stars and whether Ryan can really be a good boyfriend.
Question: When you came back to start writing Season 2, did you know immediately how you were going to resolve that cliffhanger?
Aidy Bryant: We definitely talked about it when we were shooting the cliffhanger. We had a few ideas so, you know, it could have been anything. But I really like where we landed.
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Q: At the end of Season 1, Annie’s boyfriend Ryan is trying hard in their relationship. Is that something he can sustain?
Bryant: Ooh! I mean, that’s the big spoiler. I feel like that’s the push and the pull of this season, in a really fun way (that) I think people will find really relatable. The most exciting thing for me over the course of this season is she starts to realize that just having affection and support may not be enough in what she wants in a partner.
Q: Can you spill on any exciting guest stars or cameos?
Bryant: There’s an episode that Vanessa Bayer is in that I’m so excited about, and she’s brilliant in it and so funny. She’s maybe a villain but also kind of a hero and you never quite know. … Beck Bennett returns as the troll. We had a lot of fun.
Q: Is there anything more from your life or the writers’ lives that you were able to incorporate this year?
Bryant: That’s all of what the writing process is, us talking about an area of the story and then us telling stories from our own life and incorporating them. There’s lots of pieces. Certainly a lot of the relationship stuff I relate to. Not in my current relationship, but before I met my husband, the things I would put up with or things that I was like, ‘Well this is fine, I’ll deal with this kind of behavior.’ That’s the thing that I’m proudest of that we dug into, and I think it’s a pretty satisfying storyline.
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