It doesn’t get talked about by the TV press as much as “Male Anti-Hero Drama Variation No. 5743,” but the first season of “The Girlfriend Experience” was one of our favorite bits of television of last year. In fact, it took second place in our Best TV of 2016 piece, so much did we love Starz’s adaptation of Steven Soderbergh’s movie, produced by Soderbergh himself and directed by the indie dream team of Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz.
Anchored on an all-timer of a performance by Riley Keough, and reminiscent of a Bertolucci movie more than it was anything else on TV, it’s haunted us ever since it aired, and so the news that Kerrigan and Seimetz were returning for a second season, which premieres this week at TIFF before airing in November, was great.
Those of us on staff who haven’t yet gotten to see screeners are pretty amped (those who have are under embargo…), but there comes a little rough news with the smooth: we talked to Kerrigan about the new season (which takes a look at the sex industry from a different perspective, and with a different set of characters) this week, and he revealed that both he and co-director Seimetz will be moving on in the case of a third season getting the green light.
“Amy and I are going to bounce after season two which was always the plan to allow new filmmakers to come in,” Kerrigan told us. “And I think this new structure for season two will completely wipe the slate clean, so whoever follows us can basically do whatever they want. They don’t have to follow anything” (Look for more from our interview soon).
It’s a similar two-season structure to the one that was planned for “The Knick” (though sadly it was cancelled before Soderbergh got to pass on the torch to anyone — we heard some very interesting rumors about who he had on deck), and Soderbergh has also told Deadline that Starz are asking about future seasons, and that he’s starting to think about who could take on.
“There are a couple of people that I’m aware of that I’ve kind of had my eye on. The good news for them is that they’re busy. You know, what was great about Amy and Lodge in this instance, because I wasn’t sure how they were going to respond when I pitched it to them, they leaped at it. They realized, wow, the ability to have complete creative freedom and just go out and do what we want to do and have this kind of platform. They looked at it as a gigantic movie, and they didn’t hesitate at all. So, especially now that we’ve had the result that we’ve had, I’m hoping that I can identify some young filmmakers that will be similarly excited about the opportunity.”
We hope so too. “The Girlfriend Experience” returns to Starz on November 5th, starring Carmen Ejogo, Anna Friel, Louisa Krause, Narges Rashidi, Michael Cram, Emily Piggford, Tunde Adebimpe, Morgana Davies and Harmony Korine.