Surface Season 2 Premiere: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Millie Brady Talk Sophie and Eliza’s ‘Dark History’ and ‘Messy’ Dynamic
Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right. Maybe you really can’t go home again.
In the Season 2 premiere of Apple TV’s Surface (now available to stream), that’s exactly what Sophie Ellis/Tess Caldwell (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) learns as she prepares to take on a family of wealthy Brits she shares murky history with. As she begins exploring London to find the truth behind her mother’s death (and her own very strange disappearance), her former friend Eliza Huntley (Millie Brady) and Eliza’s brother Quinn (Phil Dunster) aren’t about to make things easy for her.
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Although Sophie has left everything she’s known behind (including her husband, James), she almost seems as if she’s on sturdier ground than before, despite the many mysteries that continue to swirl around her.
“She is driven,” Mbatha-Raw tells TVLine about her character’s mental state. “She’s sacrificed so much in leaving James, in leaving what she knew of her San Francisco life. Coming to London, she’s incredibly focused when we first meet her. It’s almost like she’s undercover trying to embed herself in this aristocratic society and this family of the Huntleys. She’s really on a mission: Find the truth, find out about her mother and don’t let anyone stand in her way.”
But judging on Eliza’s reaction to Sophie’s (or is it “Tess'”) reappearance, we can tell straight from the jump that this reunion’s gonna be bumpy. When Sophie shows up to an auction run by the Huntley family, Eliza’s initial response: “What are you doing here? I told you to leave me alone.” Ouch.
“It’s a sketchy past!” says Brady. “They’ve got a dark history that [the Huntleys] have spent years covering up. They have got it down to such a fine art of how to pretend that this doesn’t exist. [Using] money to get rid of stories. Both of our characters are trying to find the truth in two different ways. I feel like Eliza is desperately trying to change the narrative. I don’t think she wants to carry on this continuation of family trauma and this weight of guilt that has gotten to a point where she’s about to explode. At the same time, Sophie re-emerges back into her life. Sophie was the beacon of hope in a lot of ways for Eliza. They’re rediscovering each other and are going on these two separate, but also similar missions to uncover truth. It’s pretty messy.”
As Sophie Googles the family’s background, we learn that the Huntleys started their own charitable foundation, Quinn is recently engaged and there’s a journalist named Callum Walsh who’s dead-set on exposing the sins of the rich. Sophie had been in touch with Callum in the past, specifically about her mother’s death, and when Callum starts to investigate, he uncovers that she used to work at the Huntleys’ stables. We also find out via a private archive Sophie stumbles upon that the Huntley patriarch, William, has been associated with multiple murder cases. As the premiere continues, we can clearly see there are multiple puzzle pieces missing. Unspoken secrets, even. What’s Sophie not telling Eliza, and vice versa?
“Sophie is not really being completely honest with everybody, but that’s because she doesn’t have all the information,” says Mbatha-Raw. “She still doesn’t remember everything, so she’s very much going into these social settings with this poker face of, ‘Oh, I can fit in and mix with this high society,’ but she’s actually there to gather information and clues. She’s not being completely authentic with Eliza, and I think there is a deep sort of love and trust and shared experience there. But also, to a degree, Sophie’s using her to further her own ends in terms of finding out about what happened to her mother and her connection to the family. To be able to be completely authentic with Eliza, it would almost be too vulnerable at this point.”
What did you think of the Surface premiere, and what are your gut feelings about the Huntley family? Grade the episode in our poll, then light up the comments.
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