TVLINE | We talked at the junket about the goal for Katie being that she ultimately feels autonomous and independent — do you see Katie ending things with Archie, once and for all, as her fully achieving that?
LAWRENCE | Yes, we would have failed as writers if she ever returns to that. And, you know, it’s really interesting… I’m not going to tell you who’s been through this before, but divorce from someone when you’re young and you have no kids — especially when you’re only married for a tiny period of time — it ends very quickly, often feeling no different than the person you dated for two years in college. It just doesn’t have the same stakes. And I think it would be a disappointing retreat for her character to ever be stuck there. With the issue of a kid, though, I think that other relationship is still fraught. Not in terms of Sunny returning, because she’s very matter of fact, but for Archie and what he lost.
TARSES | There’s even a version of it that we’re circling around where, post-breakup, there’s actually a new kind of healthy friendship that will evolve eventually.
LAWRENCE | We want to believe that Katie when said, “I hope you end up figuring out how to be happy,” that she actually meant it.
TARSES | That she means it, yeah.
TVLINE | In the same way I think the audience would have judged Katie had she stayed with him, it feels like there might be similar judgment if Sunny were to take Archie back.
LAWRENCE | By the way, we’re not going to mess with that because everybody would be so mad — but the one thing we promised Phil Dunster, I think I told you this before, was he was, like, “You’re going to make me play an irredeemable guy again, aren’t you?” And I said, “Yeah, but we’ll give you another journey. But we can’t do it until he totally bottoms out.” Characters don’t really become reflective until they bottom out, and I think Phil Dunster is off somewhere right now hoping his character is totally bottomed out.
TARSES | But he hasn’t. [Laughs]
TVLINE | We’ve seen Phil Dunster play the ego maniac who evolves into a more fully realized, less selfish person before with Jamie Tartt on “Ted Lasso.” Is there another route forward for Archie that keeps him in that morally gray space where he’s not quite the villain… but also not a hero either?
LAWRENCE | Yes. He’s not the guy who is going to come around and lead the hockey team to victory. And his redemptive arc will definitely — if it ever happens completely and ever graduates past the one step forward, two steps back — have been earned over a number of seasons.
TVLINE | Beyond having her heart broken by Archie, Sunny had also given up a promising job offer in New York. So what does the dynamic between the two of them look like in Season 2?
LAWRENCE | I think it’s a matter of fact thing. This guy, the father of her child, still has to be in her life. But watching her not only try to rebuild [her life], but in a show that’s about community, building her own [community]… Look, in a good way, it’s a bigger hole to dig out of than, “Hey, we hooked up and I wasn’t the best boyfriend,” you know?
TARSES | This is more complicated. And we built this strong character in Sunny who, even though she had this emotional moment at the very end, I think is too disconnected from her emotions to not go and make a new plan pretty quickly and keep going. And I think that’ll create a dynamic with Archie where he can’t quite understand how— well, I don’t want to give too much away.
LAWRENCE | Look at it this way: The other writers in the room would kill us if we saw either of those women retreat to that guy again. On the other hand, I would argue that show probably took place [over] less than a month. If you look at the dates, Greg came in late. We jumped ahead over the Thanksgiving break, and then everybody goes home for Christmas. We always knew we wanted to break them both free at the end of the first season. But even with that quick amount of time, the amount of people I try not to respond too much on the Internet because I get myself in trouble even though I enjoy it…
TVLINE | You? Never!
LAWRENCE | I do enjoy it.
TARSES | All I do is say, “You don’t have to write back,” but he does.
LAWRENCE | There’s one thing I didn’t write because people are entitled to their feelings. Everybody’s like, “How could these two women keep falling back in with this guy?” And I’m like, “So really, none of your friends, male or female, ever hangs around in a toxic relationship for more than three weeks and it drives everyone around them crazy? They just all immediately go, ‘I’m done with this’?” Because that has not been the story of my life, my kids’ lives, and my friends’ lives. It drives me f—king bananas. But the B-side of that is I don’t want to see either [Katie or Sunny] make that mistake again, and that’s part of the fun. I think Archie probably comes into [next] year thinking that one of them definitely will, and it’ll be interesting to see if he’s right or wrong.
