The Buccaneers Season 2 did something the debut season couldn’t. It put a significant distance between Lady Jinny Seadown (née St. George) and Lord James Seadown. Fangirlish spoke with Imogen Waterhouse (Jinny) and Barney Fishwick (Seadown) to discuss what that space meant for their characters and the season ahead. After all, the first season kept Jinny and Seadown dangerously close as Seadown’s abuse of and control over Jinny intensified.
The Buccaneers Season 1, Episode 8, “Wedding of the Season,” changed everything by breaking that pattern. Nan, Jinny’s sister, married Theo, the Duke of Tintagel, to gain a title that protects her sister from Seadown. The brave mission to save Jinny (and her unborn child) only started there. Most crucially, Jinny had to leave England. Guy Thwarte accompanied Jinny as an act of love for Nan. The Buccaneers Season 2, Episode 1, “The Duchess of Tintagel,” found them in Italy, with the new addition of Jinny’s son Freddie in Italy.
All the while, Seadown was desperate to find his wife and son. Barney Fishwick shared that Season 1 saw Seadown “being very controlled and very like trying to keep a lid on everything. And [in] Season 2, the lid is very much off.” That description went perfectly with Seadown throwing gas on a dimming fire by the end of The Buccaneers Season 2, Episode 2, “Holy Grail.”
After Nan made a statement about how men shouldn’t have any ownership over their wives, Seadown followed her into the night. Before anything irreversible could happen, Theo found them, landing a nasty right hook on Seadown’s cheek. So, Seadown chose the low road – again. He told Theo the truth about Nan and Guy on the night of Nan and Theo’s wedding. Then, Seadown disappeared – until The Buccaneers Season 2, Episode 4, “Ice Cream.”
Meanwhile, Jinny was trying to build a life in Italy. The first few episodes of The Buccaneers Season 2 showed that doing so safely meant little contact with the Dowager Duchess. For Imogen Waterhouse, that distance gave Jinny the space she needed to start to figure out who she was.
“I would say I think it’s, it’s nice, respectfully [to Fishwick], to see Jinny away from James because it’s like, who is she when she’s not under his kind of controlling thumb, and like…, I think she doesn’t really know. And so it’s like her discovery of who she is on her own as a mother as well, which I was excited to explore,” Waterhouse told Fangirlish.
Imogen Waterhouse shared some insights about Jinny’s headspace amid all of those changes: “Yeah, well, I think she feels that she was – suddenly is – really isolated and doesn’t have her community and her friends. And I think maybe she took that for granted. And now she kind of realises the importance of it, and having a child really puts that all into perspective as well.”
“But yeah, I think you feel the absence of them; she feels it, definitely. And it’s really lonely, even though she’s got Guy Thwarte, who’s amazing.”
Waterhouse shared that working with Broome more in Season 2 “was amazing.” She said, “I love working with Matthew, such a generous actor, and also just a lovely man. And it was cool because we didn’t really have any scenes together last season, apart from in the carriage at the end. So it was kind of like these strange characters who are strangers, navigating this like really weird new scenario that they’ve been flung into.”
Waterhouse spoke to “all the emotions that are surrounding both of them, like from Jinny, the guilt and the doubt. And he’s like, showing up for his lover’s sister, because he’s, you know, it’s like there’s a lot within them that I think they kind of don’t really connect at first, but then they have a real love for each other. And that’s so interesting to watch play out throughout the season, I think.”
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The Buccaneers showed how hard it was for Jinny and Guy to begin this chapter away from everyone they loved. The latter resulted in a breakthrough scene between Waterhouse’s Jinny and Matthew Broome’s Guy Thwarte in “Holy Grail.”
From there, the show was able to settle into Jinny and Guy’s dynamic. It started to lean into their life with Freddie. It also discovered a new friendship with a newcomer to The Buccaneers – Grace Ambrose as Paloma Ballardino.
In that arc, Imogen Waterhouse liked exploring who Jinny is. “She’s put so much, like, expectation on her life being a certain way and society and marrying for status and all this stuff. And when it’s all stripped away from her, who is she? And like, it’s exciting for her to kind of, and scary, for her to have to face that and be like, find her light and her joy again,” Waterhouse shared.
“Ice Cream,” being The Buccaneers Season 2’s midseason outing, threw a wrench into all of that with Nan reuniting with Guy and Seadown finding Jinny.
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Meanwhile, Barney Fishwick liked “seeing Seadown out of control, that’s a very new place to see him. And I think it’s like you learn what or who he is when he doesn’t have the things he relies upon to kind of be that high-status figure. And like in many ways, he looks a lot more pathetic, and I think that’s kind of nice to see because it’s sort of, that is, it’s very much like a projection of power.”
“I think we all like know people in life who are like that, who sort of project power. And it’s nice to be reminded that they’re sort of like human and, you know, dealing with sort of similar things whilst pretending not to.”
Whether it be the universal themes or a familiar soundtrack (“Ice Cream” featured Suki Waterhouse’s “Featherweight”), the period drama connected the 1800s to the present. When asked what they thought drew audiences into The Buccaneers, Imogen Waterhouse said, “I think people like period is such a kind of grand and fun thing to watch, because it’s so different to like how we live now.”
“But it’s also not,” Waterhouse continued. “So many of the emotions and themes and everything is still ring so true today. So you’ve got this blend of things that people go through and can relate to now. But in this setting of like wonderful houses and clothes, and [a] different vibe.”
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What did you think of our exclusive interview with Imogen Waterhouse and Barney Fishwick about The Buccaneers Season 2? Let us know in the comments below!
The Buccaneers streams new episodes every Wednesday on Apple TV+.
