Kit Steinkellner talks with Screen Rant about season 2 of her critically acclaimed series Sorry For Your Loss, ahead of the premiere on October 1. A standout among the early entries in Facebook Watch's foray into original programming, the series takes an intimate look at Leigh, a young widow played by Elizabeth Olsen, as she struggles to come to terms with the death of her husband Matt (Mamoudou Athie), and how that loss impacts her relationships with her sister Jules (Kelly Marie Tran), mother Amy (Janet McTeer), and especially her brother-in-law Danny (Jovan Adepo).

The series is a deeply felt and emotional study of grief and recovery, one that takes its time exploring the inner lives of its many characters and examines the sometimes startling ripple effects death can have on a group of people. The series seems as though it might be tough going for some viewers, but as Steinkellner proved in season 1, Sorry For Your Loss is a thoughtful blend of tones that take audiences through the highs and lows of its characters' lives, ensuring they'll experience a wide array of emotions along the way.

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Steinkellner spoke with Screen Rant ahead of the season 2 premiere, offering insight into where the drama was headed and how she makes the series' complicated relationships feel so lived-in and real. Read the interview with Kit Steinkellner about Sorry For Your Loss season 2 below:

What was your plan for season 2 was and where did you want to take your characters and the story this time around?

Look, season 1 really came up fully formed. It was about surviving this brave new world and I'm so proud of how we built and crafted that story. And season 2 was really about moving forward. It was always about moving forward and the way that our show tells stories, and treats and deals with our characters who are always going to be messy and complicated. They always take one step forward, two steps back, three steps forward. Moving forward I think can feel overly simplistic. But even though you're moving towards the horizon, there's a lot in a way that's between you and that horizon. 

And truly that sets up a journey for season 2. Our characters  are stumbling forward trying to figure out who they are going to be in the world and what their lives are going to look like. It's not easy figuring that out much less, you know, having their life razed to the ground and figuring out how to rebuild that life. But that's what's happening for all the characters for season 2. 

In what way did the critical response to season 1 have an impact on your approach to the new season? Did it take some of the pressure off for you or, did it add to the pressure?

Oh, both. It's really validating and gratifying when your gut instincts are rewarded and recognized. That's also really daunting when you feel like the bar is set high. I mean look, we didn't want to recreate season 1. We wanted to build upon it, we want to make something that expands the world and elevates what we've already made. So it's not a matter of clearing the bar - if that's what you want - it's a matter of raising that bar a couple of notches and then clearing that bar, which is a daunting task. But look, ultimately, everyone on this team loves the show so dearly. It's the easiest thing to wake up early in the morning for, to go to bed late at night for, so as, as scary as it can be, taking big risks - and I believe we take big risks this season - it felt necessary and it felt like the people who love our show and love these characters deserve the most exciting, essential emotional version of his next chapter. And then we endeavored to deliver. 

Kelly Marie Tran as Jules Shaw in a workout outfit in Sorry For Your Loss Season 2 Facebook Watch

What about the challenges of telling a story with such heavy emotional elements to it? A lot of it is centered on idea of grief and loss. It's obviously going to be a difficult balancing act in terms of tone. How do you strike that balance and keep the story moving forward? 

It's parsed the way I see the world and who I am as a writer. As a human, I feel very deeply, and I often feel a lot of emotions all at once, very deeply. As like a dumb side note, you know, leading up to the premiere, I've been feeling so much and I had a joke with my husband where I was feeling like 15 emotions at once before we found something I wasn't feeling, which was hangry. At the moment in I was like literally every other color in the Crayola box. 

So, all that is to say, when I feel, I feel deeply, I feel angry, overjoyed and sad and hopeful and frustrated, I do all of it at once. So it's important to craft episodes of our story in which all those emotions are really playing at full volume. For me, it feels like reality reflected, and I will say in terms of balancing humor and pathos, to me those to me are married in life.  

I have never laughed harder than at a hospital waiting for bad news, but I was just like crying. My gut was going to burst. I was laughing so hard. Those were funniest, worst days of my life. The worst days of my life were always the funniest days of my life. So in balancing tone and being hilarious, devastating, mysterious, romantic, honestly that's just how my life feels. That's just how I see the world. The balance for me is about authenticity and tightening the fabric of my life.

One of the most fascinating relationships in a series is the one between Leigh and Jules. Anyone who has a sibling can relate to how they communicate, in ways that are both good and bad. Where do you draw from in terms of telling that particular story?

I draw from everybody I love who also drives me insane. I've been both Leigh and Jules, but I think a lot of writers and creators can reach into your soul and grab hunks from you and bestow that upon their characters. On my show and everything I work up, I need to really see both sides and be able to relate to every character. I want to get up on that stand and be able to really argue and advocate for both characters. Leigh and Jules are in a fraught place in the first two episodes [of the new season]. They're both feeling really stuck and trapped in their owns lives and stuff, and trapped in their own dynamic and in wrestling free from all those things they feel are holding them back and hurting them. 

They do end up hurting one another. And over the course of the season there is a rebuilding of their relationship. It's not trying to rebuild what was there before. It's rebuilding something stronger and better. There's, there's a new normal for the sisters this season and I think that's just the case any time you shake up a family. And that is the journey of these sisters and their love story over the course of the season, which is really exciting for me. 

Jovan Adepo in Sorry For Your Loss Season 2 Facebook Watch

Early on in the season, Leigh uses psychedelics as a tool for dealing with the emotions she's going through. Where did  that idea come from and how did you settle on the drug she would use and the way the show was going to depict her experience?

Oh my gosh. Hours and hours and hours of conversation. People use [psychedelics] for deeply spiritual reasons, when they're unable to connect with something or someone or want  to figure something out, you know. I'm not advocating for that but, but it can be a helpful too  for people who have exhausted other options. Or so I've heard, Kevin. 

In any event, we really wanted the experience to be visual. It was so weird. And like for example in Michael Pollan's book [How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence], he references someone being able to feel their loved one in their elbow or their shoulder. That's tricky to dramatize and we really wanted a visual experience. We also looked at ayahuasca for awhile, and there were some cultural appropriation issues we talked about. Ultimately what we were really hoping to tell or to portray in the story is an experienced, very private experience, because [Leigh] really has to believe she can have that alone; she comes down into an unsettled space. There is something gratifying about the experience.

So she can connect with Matt, but only to a certain point and she had to come back out into the real world. We needed to make sure that whatever drugs she used,  also allowed her to end up in an unsettled space. So kind of  in working backwards, DMT ended up being the drug that made the most sense for us. It is sometimes called the death drug. People often do find a spirit guide, or feel like they are really close to death in those 15 to 20-minute experiences. And it can be spiritual and also unsettling. I won't name names but there were people we worked with who had experienced this particular drug and so we were able to have a conversation, and from there it was about figuring out how to portray this moment and in a really cinematic and visceral way 

Mamoudou Athie in Sorry For Your Loss Season 2 Facebook Watch

You're at the forefront of this streaming revolution on a huge platform. What has the experience been like for on a service like Facebook Watch?

Look, it is everything that is really terrifying about being a pioneer. I think about it often that Facebook is the place where life is happening. A community and a conversation is happening. Most deaths I hear about, I've heard on Facebook first. It's the same for births and engagements. I've taken to calling Facebook the largest public square in history. It's where life is happening. So for our show to not only be on a platform where all that is happening, but also get a platform where that conversation is happening right below the show itself is amazing.

If I'm watching, let's say, HBO on my TV, maybe I will then go on my laptop or my phone and Google reviews or see what's on Reddit or whatever and that's not the experience on Facebook Watch. People are watching our show and the conversation is happening on the same page; it's  part of the show itself. It's so thrilling to watch the conversation unfold and to watch how kind people are in the comments that I saw, which is as you may have heard, is quite an anomaly on the internet. 

My goal in making the show was to allow people to feel seen and known. So yes, we are part of a revolution, but being on Facebook for that revolution, I would argue is a different experience than a Netflix or Hulu or an Amazon in the kind of conversation at community. 

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Sorry For Your Loss season 2 premieres Tuesday, October 1 @12pmPT/3pmET with three episodes, on Facebook Watch.