Anna Friel joins ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ for unique season 2 storyline

The second season of The Girlfriend Experience is gearing up with new cast members and a new premise.

Anna Friel (Pushing Daisies), Louisa Krause (Billions), and Carmen Ejogo (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) will lead season 2 of Starz’s limited series, the network announced Thursday. There’s another twist for the show, which is executive produced by Steven Soderbergh: there will be two parallel storylines, both written, directed, and executive produced by co-creators Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz.

Season 1 primarily focused on Riley Keough’s character, Christine Reade, a law firm intern who goes into the call girl business after her friend recommends it.

There are two other shake-ups for season 2. After season 1 took place in Chicago, the two new storylines will play out in Washington D.C. and New Mexico. There will also be 14 episodes, instead of the debut season’s 13.

“It was always our intention to change the universe every season, but Amy and Lodge have cranked up the ambition, scope, and complexity of the show by creating two storylines even more provocative and confrontational than last year’s,” Soderbergh said in a statement. “I’m as excited as a Swedish person is allowed to get.”

Below are Starz’s synopses of the two storylines.

Kerrigan’s storyline is set against the backdrop of the corrupting influence of dark money in the upcoming 2018 U.S. mid-term elections, where everything and everyone has a price. This section of the second season of The Girlfriend Experience tracks an unexpected and complex relationship between Erica Myles (Friel), a commanding and strong-willed finance director of a Republican super PAC, and Anna Greenwald (Krause), a confident and intelligent GFE provider at the top of her game. Erica is under intense pressure to deliver on her super PAC fundraising goals. She meets Anna and enlists her help in blackmailing a high-powered dark money fundraiser. After their initial exchange, Erica and Anna fall into a complicated sexual relationship, marked by an exploration of vulnerability, dominance and submission, which also draws in Erica’s manipulative ex-girlfriend. The mix of personal instability and career pressure mount and lead Erica down a path, both professionally and personally, that she struggles to control.

Seimetz’s storyline follows Bria Jones (Ejogo). After discovering disturbing information about a regular client, Jones is forced to relocate to a remote location in New Mexico. Unable to shake her desire for risky relationships and the finer things in life, Bria navigates her new penniless and surreal existence by forming eerily intimate transactional relationships. While Bria’s ghosts from the past continue to haunt, her new connections with men redefine the meaning of the Girlfriend Experience.