I find that when I start a new season, I always go back and watch the first, or look at, like, same notes from the script, but I try to, like, go back and make sure, like, I’m caught up, you know, and that I’m back in the world. This season, definitely, I know we all, like, when we got landed in Cape Town, one of the—we had a really wonderful gym membership at the place we were put up at, and I think we were all in that gym, like, real hard. I was in great shape.

I think two of the biggest preparations for me is, I always keep a notebook of my character in terms of character biography that I kind of write down, because these characters in particular take such leaps, episode to episode, that I really like to know the journey that they’re going on. And also, I think we did a lot more, because of the amount of stunts and gunplay that are going on this second season, we did a lot more sort of firearms training, and a lot more stunt work, literally limbering up. We have the same stunt team that worked on Children of Blood and Bone and The Woman King.

We were able to tap into that with, I mean, with the audience that we have from our run on BET+, and then our run on Netflix, which really catapulted us. I think we were like number three or number four for like two weeks, like over there. So I think that’s what really sent people to follow our journey. And now to be on Paramount+, is amazing. And the way that they’re pushing it out there, people are excited and subscribing and it’s just, it’s a wonderful thing right now. Yeah, we’re really fortunate to have found a home with Paramount+, because, you know, initially BET+ was our champion and they gave us a home and they gave us a shot in the first place. And so they’re the ones who really were the stewards for us. They believed in this project from day one. They loved what Rob was doing. They loved what we were all doing. And we can’t thank them enough. I mean, if it wasn’t for BET+, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

And then, you know, whatever happens structurally, what happens to these big conglomerate companies, you know, they got absorbed. So for us to land at Paramount is such a bonus, but it’s still with stewardship of BET+. And like he said, Netflix, that was a great, you know, that injected us a little bit more into the popular culture. And now I think people are kind of finding the show. So I think we’re going to hit the ground running on Paramount+.

I think my biggest, and I think all of our biggest trial, tribulation, was blocking all this out in order to focus on the character and what we were doing or whatever, you know. And yeah, that was definitely mine. Yeah, it’s true. I mean, every day, it could be a vacation. I mean, we’re in this incredible location in this beautiful country. And he’s right. We had to go and step up and go to work every day. And you just want to go, I just want to go hang out on a boat in that beautiful water, eat that amazing food at that seaside restaurant that looks like the South of France. That’s what I want to do. But Cynthia’s right. She touched on the physicality. We had stunt rehearsals that weren’t just casually like, hey, we’re going to get together and show you the fight. No, it was a dedicated hour, hour and a half, two hours of choreographing these really intense fight scenes, really with an incredible professional team of stunt performers. So yeah, we ramped it up. There was some training involved. Yeah, lots of injuries too.