More than two years after the Season 1 finale of Platonic, the show is returning to Apple TV+. Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen return as Sylvia and Will, former best friends who reconnected amid Will’s divorce. The new season will see the besties as they deal with “new midlife hurdles.”
The premise of Season 1 stayed true to the show’s title in that Will and Sylvia were never more than friends. But will that be the case going forward?
“We feel like we’re kind of honor-bound to try to figure out a show about a platonic friendship,” Francesca Delbanco, who created the show with her husband, Nick Stoller, tells TV Insider. “I love ‘will they/won’t they’ kind of shows and movies. It’s one of my favorite genres. But it’s just not what we’re doing on this one.”
Delbanco points out that there have been “so many of those kinds of stories,” but she and Stoller “wanted to try to do a deep dive on a friendship story, and specifically, a male/female friendship story in a kind of honest way.” She says those are the “parameters” the writers set from the beginning and will “maintain in the future.”
Stoller adds, “I think it wouldn’t be accurate to the characters who are portrayed if they got together. It just wouldn’t make sense for them to be together.”
Byrne admits that she and Rogen had to “specifically shut off the valve” of having chemistry with one another. “It’s true,” Rogen agrees. “We were used to playing a couple, and there were moments where we’d be a little too affectionate with each other, and we’d be like, ‘You can’t do this! Shut it down!’” The actors previously played a married couple in Neighbors and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.
While they don’t have a romantic relationship with each other in Platonic, Will and Sylvia are both headed into Season 2 in good places in their respective love lives. While Will got engaged to his boss, Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom), at the end of Season 1, Sylvia got back to a good place with her husband, Charlie (Luke Macfarlane), after hitting some roadblocks in their marriage.
“I think, first of all, for the show to kind of work is we have to believe that [Charlie and Sylvia] are going to be okay,” Macfarlane admits. “But I also think it shows so much about allowing your partner, whether that’s your friend or your actual life partner, to kind of grow and change and become different things and to be patient with them. I think Charlie’s really patient with Sylvia. I think Sylvia, as we discover this season, is really patient with Charlie, too.”
As for Charlie and Will’s relationship, Macfarlane says, “I think it’s always going to be a little weird, as I think it would be in real life, but I also think this sort of anxiety and stress and threat that was kind of throughout the first season has been erased. I think he’s less nervous about his space being encroached upon. I would say that Will has a very positive influence on Charlie this year in that he kind of gives him, for right or for wrong, this sort of ability to be able to say, ‘I’m going to try something a little bit crazy.’ And I think that’s good for him.”
Platonic, Season 2 premiere, August 6, Apple TV+