SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for My Life With the Walter Boys Season 2.
My Life With the Walter Boys Season 2 finds Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) returning to Silver Falls, Colorado to give living with the Walters another shot after the chaos of last season that sent her back to New York.
While she asks for space from Cole (Noah LaLonde), and Alex (Ashby Gentry) asks for space from her, Jackie throws herself into schoolwork and extracurricular activities, first pitching a fundraiser to save Silver Falls High School’s canceled Fall Formal and then organizing a college fair for juniors with one-on-one interviews for students with reps from schools all over the country. By the end of the season, it’s clear that Jackie’s found her place in the Colorado town.
“That’s what Season 2’s theme is — Jackie wanting to embrace and cement her life in Silver Falls. Season 1 was really about her wanting to put everything behind her and get to Princeton, [to] jump over this point in her life,” showrunner Melanie Halsall told Deadline. “And Season 2 is about her wanting to settle in this life, and realizing that Silver Falls is a wonderful place to be, which is what we’ve already realized, because it’s so beautiful and it’s got wonderful-looking boys in it.”
In the below interview, Halsall expands on her transition between Seasons 1 and 2 and tracing the arcs for both Cole and Alex Walter from Season 2’s opening scene to later episodes.
DEADLINE: Having Season 1 under your belt, what did you want to take into Season 2 that you learned?
MELANIE HALSALL: Obviously, Season 1 was an unknown entity. The actors were fairly new, and filming in Calgary was fairly new, and it’s a new story. In Season 2, I realized what great chemistry those actors had. We were so lucky that the actors all developed such great chemistry and friendships, not just the main trio, but the whole cast are such good friends. They’re a real family, which is lovely to see. I think you can see that on screen.
With Season 2, we really wanted to develop that further and really show how these relationships have developed over time and how our actors also matured from day one of filming to the final day of filming, through publicity, through launch. We really wanted to reflect that as well, and I think that really affected the stories we told and how we told them in season two.
From a practical point of view, you understand which locations work well — we have this amazing landscape in Calgary, and we wanted to use more of that in Season 2 — and you will see more of that in Season 2, which I’m really proud of. I think Season 2 looks astonishing.
Ashby Gentry as Alex in ‘My Life with the Walter Boys’
David Brown/Netflix
DEADLINE: How did you approach Alex’s glow-up and balancing that with keeping the aspects of his personality that make him desirable to Jackie?
HALSALL: We have a summer break between Season 1 and Season 2. So he goes off to rodeo school, which he’s going to do at the end of Season 1. He comes back, and he’s really learned and developed and grown in that, at that rodeo camp. He’s become more confident through doing something he’s really good at and that he really loves doing, and also being outside and being with horses and all that exercise, that’s part of the glow up as well. So it’s a physical thing and a mental thing he’s learned.
Of course, he comes back wanting to get over what’s happened in Season 1. He wants to move on from it, so there’s a definite desire from him to have toughened himself up a little bit. But of course, that is married with the fact that he’s still the sweet, lovely Alex we all know and love underneath. We will see glimpses of that as we go forward. He feels quite defensive when he first comes back in. He’s quite protective of himself. But as the season progresses, he opens up more, and then we see more of that sweetness and that old Alex, [who] we all absolutely love.
I always say to Ashby that Alex didn’t need a glow up, but his glow up is a natural progression. Young men often go away for a summer and come back and they’re six inches taller and all muscly, and so it’s very natural. But it wasn’t because I didn’t think, or we didn’t think, that he was worthy of Jackie in Season 1. It’s a natural progression for him.
DEADLINE: The opening scene where Cole picks up Alex after he spent the summer away really sets up the whole season in terms of the two paths of these brothers and Jackie and the decision Jackie has to make between them. Can you talk through how you wanted to weave their stories together with their similarities and differences?
HALSALL: We say there’s always been a rivalry between Alex and Cole that didn’t start with Jackie’s arrival. It kind of [picks up] with Jackie’s arrival, but they’ve been like this forever, and I think a lot of that is because they are quite similar, and we do see some moments where they’re very close. Although they’re close to all their brothers, Cole shares a room with Danny, he’s his twin. Alex shares a room with Nathan, who is his closest in age, and they’re very close in those relationships as well, but the two of them are very similar to each other. They both love a bit of danger and a bit of excitement. They’re both very loyal, and they really love and respect each other, as well as finding each other incredibly difficult to be around sometimes.
I think that’s quite relatable for a lot of people who often have that kind of push me pull you situation with someone that they’re very close to and are very similar to. What we wanted to show in Season 2 was that they have very different interests, and they seem like very different people, and they go down very different paths. Of course, there are differences in them. Alex is much more bookish, for example, although Cole is clever and can be academic and is in no way some silly, stupid jock or anything— but, in the obvious ways — and Cole is more sporty in the obvious ways. In Season 2, those two paths converge a little bit and we see the opposite side of each brother, making them both a little bit more well -ounded
Noah LaLonde as Cole in Season 2 of ‘My Life with the Walter Boys’
Courtesy of Netflix
DEADLINE: Could you talk about how you charted Cole’s arc so that, after he’s fallen back on old habits, later in the season, he bounces back and grows? How did you navigate that for it to feel right for him to not make such self-destructive choices?
HALSALL: So I’ve always said Cole’s one of the most honorable, if not the most honorable, character in our show, and if you chart his journey from episode one onwards in Season 1, he never throws anybody else under the bus. He takes on all these accusations and problems of other people, and he’s got his own thing that he’s dealing with, but he holds everything inside him, and at the same time, he can be quite self-destructive, as you said.
So he whenever Cole feels lost, he falls back on his old habits. That’s what he does. And his old habits are, as we see in Season 1, drink, drugs — quite soft drugs — and girls. Those are the things that he loses himself in, and he climbs his way out of those because he wants to be a better person, and because he understands that that path of self-destruction only leads one way. It’s really hard for him to do that, because it’s the easy path, and that’s the one he’s always known. But in Season 2, he goes to summer school, he starts off the season trying to improve himself. He falls off that wagon and it’s a struggle to get himself back on it. But that’s what he does. He falls off the wagon, and then his arc is getting back back on it because he wants to be worthy of Jackie’s love, essentially.
DEADLINE: Separate from the boys, Jackie’s arc this season seems like she’s acclimating to Silver Falls and Colorado. Can you talk more about the ways you want viewers to see that as Season 2 unfolds?
Absolutely, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m thrilled that comes across so well. We really did want to show that, which is why, as I said before, we’re outside a lot more. In Season 2, we show a lot more of the world of the community of a small town. Lots of things that happen in a small town, events that you attend, and that kind of thing. We wanted her to be really in the center of those things, because that’s what she’s trying to do in this season. And of course, then the dilemma she has is upending that again as her journey ends in the season. That’s her dilemma because she’s worked so hard to be part of that world.
Katie Campione contributed to this interview. It has been edited for length and clarity.
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