Sweet Tooth season 2 is our show of the week! It’s our turn to sit down and talk with Jim Mickle, showrunner, about the adaptation process and the balance between the dark and the light of this season. Ready?
Here we go!
Jim Mickle talked about the differences in storytelling between Sweet Tooth season 2 versus season 1. He shares that they had to “balance it very carefully because it could be a very dark season if we kinda went full on in that. I think it is the light and the dark and the mix of those are a big part of the show. And you have to kind of mix those two and make sure you have a little bit of both so that you can feel them. I think that using Gus as your point of view into the story and his very unique point of view is a big part of it. In season 2, there are a lot of times that we come up with a question of, like, is it Sweet Tooth? Because oftentimes, especially with apocalyptic stories, you can tend to feel very like that can happen in any show in a way.”
“And so that was a question we came back to a lot. Even if you didn’t a hundred percent know, like, what were the full ingredients of that, you sort of knew whether it was or not. I think we knew that season 2 could be darker and could go more mature. The characters are grown up. Gus is more grown up. You know, he’s seen a world now that he hadn’t seen in season 1. So that was a part of it. But I found something really interesting coming out of season 1. I started writing some of the same sorts of scenes or rhythms or sort of sensibilities in some of those early scenes and very quickly started to go like, I don’t know that we can do that. Gus is a different character now. Christian [Convery] is a different actor and so suddenly you just start to tell what the story wants it to be,” Jim Mickle added.
The Last of Us set the bar high when it came to apocalyptic shows, so Jim Mickle discussed with us how Sweet Tooth season 2 makes a difference.
For him, it’s thanks to “the hope. That was the thing early on. When I read the comic book, it came out like the year of apocalyptic fiction. I made a movie called Steakland at the same point. It just felt like everybody was in the water and sort of had the same thing. And then looking back at it, I reread it in 2016 when I was thinking about doing it as a series and it was kinda like I love all this stuff still but I feel like it would feel dated to do this very literally because we’ve got all these movies and shows since then. So, not the sort of went in go like, well, how do we set this apart? But it was like, what’s the stuff that makes this unique? And it was Gus and the fact that the world was so darker, even in the comic book. That lives in the show and the comics.”
“Gus is so hopeful but the world was kinda dark. And I was like, I don’t wanna make something that’s just gonna be a constant reminder of that. And so it felt like what if Gus could, what if the world looked like a world that you wanted to go to, which you never can say in apocalyptic storytelling. If you had a character that gave you a little bit of hope and you’re like, if Gus could get through this, then I’ll get through this. So I think that carries itself all the way through with Gus as a character, and then with all the hybrids this season, I think that helps the season too,” Jim Mickle commented.
Speaking of comics, it’s not easy to balance what comic book fans want to see with the changes that, as showrunner, Jim Mickle must make. Jim shared with us how he managed to do it in Sweet Tooth season 2. He confessed that “don’t spend a lot of time on social media, that’s a really good thing for all sorts of reasons. But so I don’t see a ton of it, which is good. And when I do, I tend to try to block it out or take it with a grain of salt. But I saw that there were a lot of people that loved Bobby as a character. And that was exciting because Bobby was a character that we just rolled on. And, even before we released it, I remember people would still be thinking is this gonna work or not? But people love it. So you sort of all the stuff that we sort of branched off on were things that people liked.”
“I know there are people that feel like the comic is darker and we’re not quite as dark or it. But I would argue that there are things in our show that are very dark.
We just do it in a slightly different shade. I think that the beautiful part about doing a show for season 2 is you know who the characters are, and you know who the actors are. And you then just get to tell the best stories about those people and thankfully a lot of times that lines up very close to what happens in the comic book and then, sometimes, that means you go off in a completely new direction, but I’m as big of a fan of Jeff’s comic as I ever was and I think hopefully they live in their worlds,” Jim Mickle added.
Our next question focuses on hybrids. Each one is special but Jim Mickle confesses what is the funniest thing about writing about them when he tells us that “that was a real test to the writers room because I remember we kinda started from scratching a lot of ways here. And what’s fun is you have all these different writers that come in and they sort of have their pet hybrid that they love or ones that they write or the ones they always have good ideas for. So It’s pretty fun when you get into that. I remember Bo Young Kim, one of our writers, wrote Teddy as a completely different character with that idea of him being just a character that only really grew up listening to music and so only spoke through songs. So little touches like that just kinda come out and then you sort of toss them around a little bit and sort of the best ideas win. So that’s fun.”
“But then we had this year we brought in a designer named Jane O’Cane who had kinda headed up a hybrid department, and then she breathed even more life into those hybrids. That became its own wonderful thing with the puppetry and the prosthetics. And then you get all the kids there and some of them have acted before and some have never acted before. We had an amazing team, Brie Peters and Dave Van Horn were our acting coaches this year, they just whipped those kids into like an acting troupe, and suddenly they all found their voices and their characters.
And so you start with this little kernel and then they come to life beautifully on set,” Jim Mickle shared.
Seizing the opportunity, we dove right into the balance of emotional depth that Sweet Tooth season 2 brings to its characters while elevating the story to be told. Jim Mickle didn’t hesitate to confirm that “it’s a real challenge. And in season 2, we were dealing with COVID in a way we weren’t dealing with in season 1 because we were shooting in New Zealand and COVID was not there in season 1, and then it kinda hit pretty hard in season 2. And that added on top of everything else that we were trying to pull off.”
“So it’s interesting because I remember not thinking it was that much bigger but yeah, it’s bigger. We didn’t have a bigger budget, but we just pushed everything harder and heavier instead of having 3 hybrids, you have 15. So anyway, I mean I think the beauty of that is in season 2 because you know who the characters are and you know what they’re up against. And suddenly you can just start the story. Whereas in season 1, you’re still sort of building where these people are and you’re sort of getting an understanding of where they are and where they come from.”
“What’s so fun in season 2 is you can just kinda jump right in and pick the ball up with those characters and suddenly tell even more nuanced things. So that was a big part of it. But I think it was also repairing this season of characters. We sort of took everyone out of their comfort zone and matched them up with new scene partners really that just get to explore new things and that was a fun challenge this season. So it was definitely, it was a lot harder but hopefully, we got there,” Jim Mickle added.
With this in mind, Jim Mickle shared if, after the good reception of Sweet Tooth, he feels the pressure with Season 2 to put up some good numbers. He feels “a little bit [pressure] but we were smart and we started writing season 1 before season 2. So, we opened a writer’s room for about a month just in case the show did well. And so there was this fun period where we were just kinda dreaming up what season 2 would be. And while that was happening, we were still finishing the edits of season 2 and suddenly the show comes out and you’re like, I hope it does well.”
“I think people liked it. The reality is it’s such hard work and it’s so much and you’re doing so much that you don’t get a lot of time thankfully to stop and sort of think about the pressures of that. I think if you would, it would probably paralyze you, but you’re just in such a rush to get everything done, get scripts in order, and get ready to shoot. And then by the time you start shooting, you just hang it on for dear life until basically when the show comes out,” Jim Mickle said.
To end our interview with Jim Mickle, we wanted to know if he is particularly proud of any Sweet Tooth scene from season 2. It was hard for him to choose because “it’s like picking your kids. There’s some stuff during the end that was very difficult to shoot. There’s a scene at the end where the kids have to get very emotional. When we started shooting with them at the beginning on day 1, we wrapped and it was the first day of the kids, and I went to the office and I just stared at the wall and I was like, what did you do? You have 15 kids, in different forms of puppetry and costumes, and the day is going by like how are we gonna pull off a season of this? That’s just gonna be nuts!”
“And then I came back to do a little bit at the end in the last episode and we were shooting a scene where those kids had to emote. And they all did in this really beautiful way. It was like being there at the beginning of their journey on their day 1, and then on their end, on their last day, and seeing just how much they had all grown during the season. Was mind-blowing as sort of an actor and from a production standpoint. Even though the scene itself is not the pivotal scene, it was just the real sign of like, wow, we had accomplished a lot this season,” Jim Mickle confessed.
Sweet Tooth season 2 is available to stream on Netflix.
