Yahoo News Top of the Lake's Elisabeth Moss: S2 is deeper & darker
Top of the Lake finally returns to BBC Two this week, and the wonderfully weird and deeply unsettling series will be even darker than before.
"I think the end of season 1 is so vague, it's a mess," Elisabeth Moss, back as the fragile yet irrepressible Detective Robin Griffin, told Digital Spy. "So I thought it was a great jumping-off point.
"You could go anywhere. I requested we went in a darker, deeper, more challenging direction."
Gwendoline Christie joins the cast as Robin's unlikely partner in crime, eager-to-please junior police officer Miranda Hilmarson.
"The reason why I was so overjoyed to have had this character to play is that's she so extraordinarily complex, and I think that what Jane [Campion, writer] and Gerard [Lee, co-writer] do brilliantly is that they really look at what it is to be a human being in all of its darkness," the Game of Thrones star told us.
"They like to look at the darker recesses of human life, so don't be afraid, there's plenty more from where that came from."
Season 2 focuses on the compelling dynamic between Miranda and Robin, with Moss observing: "They are opposites in a way.
"Miranda is sensitive and open and atheistic, and on the inside is strong, and intelligent and fiercer. Whereas Robin is the opposite.
"She wants to be fierce, and tough, and be considered that, but really she's very soft and vulnerable and sensitive on the inside. They do connect over what they have in common, in that way."
The second season has a gritty, urban setting in Sydney, and examines the murky underbelly of the city that involves sex trafficking, prostitution and an immigration loophole which enables Australian brothels to import sex workers by manipulating the country's student visa program.
The first season had the breathtaking landscape of a remote mountain town in New Zealand, with Moss continuing: "The first series was about the wilderness outside and the second one is about the wilderness within. Which is exactly right. You're exploring the landscape within people and relationships.
"The first season I was on my own in the wilderness, I had scenes with mostly men or on my own. With this I felt it was a real human drama, and that I was exploring more personal relationships especially in Gwendoline's Miranda. I had a partner quite literally in crime.
"I had a person I could play off of, and have this arc of a relationship that goes the whole six episodes.
"And to have a female energy was different to explore. It felt like a step forward, which is what I really wanted."
Jane Campion and Gerard Lee's Top of the Lake: China Girl follows Robin's murder investigation after a body in a suitcase washes up on Bondi Beach.
It also centres on David Dencik's mysterious character Pus, who resides in a brothel with his pet cats, and his unnerving relationship with teenager Mary, played by Alice Englert. Nicole Kidman joins the cast as well for season 2.
Top of the Lake: China Girl airs on BBC Two at 9pm on Thursday, July 27.
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