‘The Affair’ Season 3: Twists And Time Jumps To Come Says Joshua Jackson And Maura Tierney [Video]
Showtime’s dark and fascinating drama The Affair is heading for Season 3 in November this year. What can we expect as the tale continues to unfold?
For those who haven’t seen it, The Affair is the story of a married writer, Noah Solloway (played by Dominic West), who goes astray during a summer visit to his in-laws home in Montauk, New York. Solloway falls in love with a married waitress, Alison Bailey (played by Ruth Wilson), and the affair eventually leads to the breakdown of both marriages, along with the mysterious death of Bailey’s brother-in-law.
The show is unique, as half of each episode of The Affair is told from one person’s perspective, while the other half is told from the other person’s viewpoint. As in life, these perspectives are usually quite different, and reveal just how subjective our reading of a situation can be. There are also flash forward scenes, giving tantalizing glimpses into a dark future story.
In Season 1, we saw the perspectives of Alison and Noah, as their affair develops, causing problems in both their marital lives. Season 2 builds on the theme, by adding the perspective of Alison’s husband, Cole (played by Fringe star Joshua Jackson) and Noah’s former wife, Helen (played by Maura Tierney).
In the interview, Joshua Jackson told Yahoo TV how his character, Cole Lockhart, has developed since Season 1. He did say he was happy that The Affair waited until its second season to add the perspectives of both Cole and Helen, saying it would have been too busy to do this in Season 1.
“I think it would have been probably too busy to have those four story lines happening at the same time if you had no previous knowledge of what the show was.”
Jackson went on to say, “I think the second season definitely allowed us to spin the story and, certainly as an actor, it was just fantastic to go from being an object to a subject of the show.”
Jackson said that with his perspective being introduced in Season 2, the character was given more depth and he felt like he was playing a completely different person at times.
“When we come back in season two, he’s completely broken, just emptied out inside. He’s not all the sort of swaggering, masculine man he was in the first season. It felt like we were starting from a completely different place, and I also thought it was a fun place for me to get to play.”
He went on to say that seeing a character from the outside first, as we did in Season 1, especially one who is portrayed as “stoic, proud to a fault, and strong in both a really positive and sometimes negative way,” seeing how that person is actually feeling inside was a really interesting place to build from.
Now for a few spoilers, so for those who haven’t been keeping up with The Affair, you might want to stop reading here.
At the dramatic ending of Season 2, Noah confessed in court to killing Cole’s brother, Scotty, in a hit and run accident. However, this confession wasn’t quite what it seemed, as it is then revealed Noah was taking the blame to protect the two mothers of his children, Helen and Alison.
In a shock scene we find out Helen was actually the one behind the wheel of the car, and it was Alison who deliberately pushed Scotty into the middle of the road, leading to his death.
Presumably Season 3 will return to the end of the trial, but according to Tierney there are some more time hops involved. Tierney was recently interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, and she said, “It’s going to be back and forth a little bit more next season.”
“That is not going to happen this season,” she said. “If we come back for a fourth, it might be implemented then. But I think they just decided to go a different way. This was is good, too. I don’t know that much. It was just going to be fun… it might still happen, so I don’t want to say.”
Showtime will be airing the premiere of Season 3 of The Affair on November 20 at 10 p.m.
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