Talk about a cliffhanger. Murder in a Small Town Season 2 Episode 10 left us hanging with Karl’s proposal, and FOX better renew the series!
I had the privilege of speaking with showrunner Ian Weir about the chances of a third season, that proposal, and what we loved about Murder in a Small Town Season 2.
I love book-to-screen adaptations, so I was excited to pick Ian Weir’s brain about the creative writing process, too, especially since the series has now adapted all of L. R. Wright’s novels.
This was one of my favorite interviews, as we discussed both the creative and the acting process of Murder in a Small Town. Here’s hoping for a third season.
Check out the interview below.
I loved Murder in a Small Town Season 2. I noticed that this time, it ended on a cliffhanger.
Oh, yes. We are certainly hoping and praying that we get a chance to explore what happens next. That’s, of course, totally up to FOX to decide. Um, but they’ve been excellent creative partners.
We hope that we get a chance to find out what happens in the next episode and beyond. We started creating some ideas for a potential third season.
I certainly hope we do. And I certainly hope that Karl and Cassandra tie the knot. I’m a big fan of theirs.
Aren’t they great together? The actors are just incredible together. I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting either one of them. They’re both lovely people. They’re an absolute joy to work with.
They’re both brilliant, and as writers, we are kept on our toes by writing for Rossif Sutherland and Kristin Kreuk, but they’re wonderful people to work with.
I interviewed Rossif earlier today. It was my first solo interview with him, since I’ve generally spoken with him and Kristin together.
That’s terrific. They’re lovely and have such a great on-screen chemistry.
I agree. I think their relationship helps the show.
Absolutely. That was something we discovered, right off the bat, in Murder in a Small Town Season 1. On the one hand, we’d gone into this seeing it as a murder-mystery show, but we quickly realized the heart of the show is that relationship.
So, in terms of planning Season 2, it began with plotting what would happen to Karl and Cassandra throughout the season. Because, as you say, it does drive the show in a way that the individual episodic mystery stories do not.
We’re proud of our mystery stories, too, but it’s that ongoing relationship with Karl and Cassandra that really is the heart and soul of the show, and gives us a quality that is quite special.
They went through a lot this season.
Their journey across the season ultimately led them to realize they’re stronger and better together than apart. At the beginning of Season 2, I certainly don’t think Cassandra had any idea that a few months later, she would be looking down the barrel of a marriage proposal.
I think Karl had it in the back of his mind. I believe Karl knew from their first date that she was the one. It took Cassandra longer to admit that to herself, just because that’s who she is, and where she’s been over the course of her adult life. It’s not that.
It’s not that she has “trust issues.” That overstates it. But Cassandra has never, in her adult life, let down her guard and allowed herself to trust as much as she’s doing with Karl.
That is a great point, and I hope we do get to see them next season if they build a family, especially with his daughters, since Holly seems to be such a big fan of Cassandra.
Holly and Cassandra’s relationship gives us plenty of room to explore if there were to be a third season, and Karl and Cassandra’s relationship takes it to the next step.
It’s one thing to like someone whom you see once or twice a week. It’s another thing to build a relationship with someone who is in your life constantly.
There’s also Karl’s older daughter, Steph, who certainly gets along well with Cassandra, but we’d like to explore that in the third season and see more of Steph.
If we get a third season, will we see Cassandra in action as the temporary Mayor?
I would be intrigued to explore where Cassandra goes next, as a civic leader. That’s terrain that interests me a lot. It would also interest me to explore what would happen if the Mayor were in a close relationship with the police chief.
There’s an implied conflict there, and how would they negotiate that sort of question if we were to move forward?
Will we see the Mayor? Even though I wasn’t expecting to. Still, I honestly ended up liking Mayor Homan, especially as we delved into her family, because most shows don’t delve into bullying. I really enjoyed getting to know Brett and seeing why he was such an angry teenager.
Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. It was just such an honor and a delight to work with someone like Marcia Gay Harden. She’s pretty incredible. I also thought the actor who played Brett was terrific.
I don’t know if they’ll return for a third season, but I hope and pray there’s a way to see more of the Hollmans. I don’t know if that would be possible, but that would certainly make me very happy if there were a way to do that.
When we started writing the second season, I didn’t know how much I would come to like Mayor Holman. At the beginning, she’s more of an antagonist character.
She certainly does some things over the course of Season 2, which antagonize Cassandra, but there is a sense of what’s underneath that and why she is that way.
By the end of that season journey, Cassandra had realized that she was wrong about Christie Holman. It was easy to get caught up in the animosity she felt toward Christie without quite understanding what lies beneath that and what arises around that.
That’s how I felt about her. I didn’t really like her at the beginning, but the more I watched, the more I thought, “Oh, she’s a mother with a lot of problems at home.” I can empathize with her about what she’s dealing with.
Yes, absolutely. Just as with Rossif and Kristin, it’s such a delight to watch an actor of Marcia’s stature at work. The choices she’s making moment by moment on set. It was great.
Our cast has served us so well. The core cast has been beyond what one might reasonably have hoped for.
I was also impressed by the actor who plays Brett because I’ve seen him on When Calls the Heart, and he is so different there. He’s such a nice person. And then here I’m like, “Wow, he’s got a lot of range.“
Yes. The rage he conjured, you know, seething inside the character, is just emotional in the best possible way. My heart broke for him, but he also terrified me: that character, not the actor.
The actor is a lovely guy. But there’s something about the force of Brett’s anger that does take you back.
What did you think about the fact that we had two longer arcs this season? And then, every week, we had a case. How did that flow for the season?
That’s a great question. In Murder in a Small Town Season 1, we had the long arc of the Karl and Cassandra relationship, but we didn’t have what amounted to serialized cases.
That was something we built on with the slow build on the Lauren Park storyline, Cassandra’s old high school friend, who died. I enjoyed the storytelling challenge posed by the serialized story within the context of a standalone season structure.
The audience feedback I’ve heard has been positive on that storyline. How did you feel about it?
I liked it a lot. I could not believe how it came together in the finale.
The finale was loads of fun. Again, a great cast enabled us in the finale. I liked the slow-burning of the case. Obviously, the heart and soul of the show does need to remain in these standalone mysteries. That’s who we are.
But there’s certainly room for the serialization of more than just the relationship stories over the course of the season.
How do you find the material now that the books are done with?
We’ve used all the books. We still have the characters. We still have Karl and Cassandra themselves. The inspiration of the books is still very much present for us, with stories arising from character.
It’s interesting when you mentioned the Season 2 finale and the merging of elements. The character of Maeve does have its antecedent in the novels. There is a character who does what Maeve does, although the character has changed quite a bit.
So that was an interesting example of a storyline in which a whole lot else was melded into a plot inspired by one of the novels. In Season 2, we also used elements from the novels’ B plots as our A plot or mystery.
To some extent, we would try to do that in a third season as well, borrowing characters and plot elements that may not have been the primary focus in the L.R. Wright novels. Apart from that, we are much more on our own.
We would be much more on our own in Season 3 than we’ve been in Seasons 1 and 2. But I think by the time we’re at the end of season two, the show and the characters have found their own life as well.
I think we are our own thing to a much fuller extent now than we were in Season 1. It’s more palatable and more realistically creative to move well beyond the novels’ plots.
Got it. And to wrap up, how do you find the guest stars? Because Season 2 had an excellent list of them. I mean, we even brought Noah Reid back.
It’s always just an absolute thrill to see the kinds of talent that we’re able to draw to our show. You go into a season hoping that great guest stars will be attracted, but it’s a process, a great casting team we have, and FOX‘s casting department making suggestions and talking about possible ways to go.
Our first guest star was James Cromwell. Getting a chance to work with James Cromwell was one of those career opportunities that was a thrill right out of the gate.
The casting people at FOX and our casting people continue to make miracles happen.
Murder in a Small Town is streaming now on Hulu.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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