Tina Kakadelis
Created and written by Camilla Whitehill, Big Mood is the darkly comedic British series that focuses on the lives of best friends Maggie (Nicola Coughlan) and Eddie (Lydia West). They’ve been inseparable for years, but as they get older they’re forced to reckon with the possibility that their dynamic may not be as healthy as it should be. For an American comparison, think of Maggie and Eddie as Abbi and Ilana from Broad City. Unlike Broad City, though, Big Mood tackles the ripple effects of codependent friendships.
With the second season now streaming on Tubi in the United States, creator Camilla Whitehill and stars Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West sit down with TV Obsessive writer Tina Kakadelis to discuss where the new episodes of Big Mood find the friends.
Camilla, I want to start with the fact that it’s been a year since Maggie and Eddie have seen each other. I think those first words you say to somebody after you haven’t seen them in so long are so important. How long did it take you to develop what you wanted that first interaction between the two of them to be? How do you think it sets the tone for the rest of the season?
Camilla Whitehill: I always wanted it to be really big. I didn’t want it to be that they just walk into a room or they bump into each other. I didn’t want to rush through it. I had a bunch of different ideas for it, but every idea came back to the concept that time should feel like it stands still outside of them looking at each other. It was the look that I really, really wanted.
I wanted the second series to either start a day or a year after the last series. I think it’s all about where do you start? This person who’s so important to you, who you’ve been out of contact with for a year, it’s such a massive thing. Even when you’re not in a good place with them, you still can’t help but feel so happy to see them because that’s someone you know so well and you trust them so much. You’ve got all this history together.
I think the setting of the episode really helps with that. You have a Gothic literature energy running through the location in the first episode, and so it all feels a little bit more heightened. The costumes bring in this theatrical drama, which I really liked for that moment.
Lydia, Eddie turns to wellness, which I think is a really interesting journey for your character. Do you feel this journey of wellness is both freeing and inhibiting to Eddie’s emotional journey?
Lydia West: Eddie meets Whitney when she’s in a really bad, dark place. In Whitney, she sees someone who tells her all the things she wants to feel. She really wants to feel enlightened. She wants to feel free of burden, of grief, of this heavy thing that she possesses. Whitney gives her a quick way out, and Eddie’s very vulnerable and susceptible to that kind of person.
I think really, the final episode is a very important episode for Eddie and Maggie, because everything she’s been holding in for years and years, she’s finally able to release. That in itself is more healing than any of the sound bowls or the chakra realignment she’s done with Whitney. It’s actually true, honest healing and being able to confront Maggie in a way that’s truthful, in a way that’s vulnerable that helps her heal.
I think that’s a good lesson for people struggling in relationships. It’s really hard to have those honest chats and it’s really hard to let your guard down and say how you feel, but it will free you.
Camilla, were you always interested in exploring the world of wellness in this season?
CW: The words I had on my whiteboard wall for this series were healing versus “healing.” Authentic healing and recovery and this commodification of it in the wellness industry. Being told you can buy it and how that looks.There’s no quick path to happiness and emotional well-being.
I think Maggie is on an authentic path to reckoning with her mental illness and finding a way to live with it. I think she’s on an authentic path with that and Eddie isn’t. Eddie tries to take a shortcut to it.
I think it’s easy to take the piss out of the wellness industry. There’s obviously a lot of good in there and there are a lot of good ways to go about it, but there are so many charlatans and they profit off people’s weaknesses. I find that pretty reprehensible.
What was the casting process like to find somebody to portray Whitney, who is a distillation of the bigger issue of wellness?
CW: It was not easy. It’s a character who walks a bit of a line. I think with a less talented actor it would be a harder sell. Whitney’s quite a big character. She can be really extreme and she says quite ridiculous things at times, but you also really want to believe her as someone who Eddie would have fallen in love with and started believing. Whitney has to be someone who is good at getting people on her side.
It wasn’t an easy casting. It wasn’t like we met one person, but the minute we met Hannah Onslow, I felt like she got the character so well. She’s such a smart actor. I think you see that in her performance. She sells moments that I think are not easy to sell as an actor, but she always landed on the tone so perfectly.
One of the lines from last season that really stuck out to me is Eddie saying, “I fix problems, you have them,” in reference to Maggie. Do you feel like that was a fair assessment for her to have last season? Do you think it still holds true for the journey they’re going to go on this season?
Nicola Coughlan: I think it’s difficult, because there’s definitely truth in it. At that point in Season 1, it had been an unsaid thing. For Maggie to hear that, it’s painful like, geez, that’s how you see our friendship? But also not being able to retort and go, hey, that’s not true, because she really has been the fixer for a lot of things in Maggie’s life.
I think there’s an uncomfortability in this season because they’ve swapped roles. Maggie is really worried about Eddie, and Eddie, having always been the strong one, can’t accept that she needs the help. Eddie doesn’t see that she needs help, doesn’t see that she’s sort of drowning.
I think it’s realistic. It can often be that way in friendships where one person is a strong one versus not. In a true friendship, though, it’s going to be give and take. The scales will move, but even out in the long run.
CW: What Eddie should be saying is, the way I see problems is I like to find a solution and then follow that solution. Instead, she’s putting it on Maggie. They’re different people, and I really think Eddie’s not great at diving into gray areas and diving into her own feelings. I think she wants a solution and she wants to find it as soon as possible.
I think that’s what she thinks she’s doing with Whitney. The grief of losing her dad, losing the bar, everything that’s happened with Maggie…I think that is a lot for someone like Eddie to face. I don’t think they’re good at it. I don’t think they like to be in that position. To her, Whitney is a solution to a problem.
Maggie and Eddie help each other in lots of ways. You see Maggie in this series trying to help Eddie and ultimately kind of succeed and be a hero. It’s just that her way of doing things is different, and it’s coming from a different mind, a different way of thinking. I think there are so many ways you can be a good friend, so many ways you can support someone. That all looks different depending on who the person is.
I don’t think it was fair for Eddie to say it, because I think it was an oversimplification and a reflection of how she deals with problems rather than anything else. I also think that being friends and being part of the close support circle for someone with mental illness can be really draining. Sometimes you can’t be super perfect in your responses to it.
Your director, Rebecca Asher, has returned for this series, which is, I’m sure, very exciting. How do you feel your working relationship has developed and allowed for you to go for something bigger in terms of this series?
CW: It’s unusual for a British show to hire an American director, just because of the logistics of it. The tone of the show, I think, is maybe a little bit more like an American comedy than a British one. Asher and I are quite different people, but we have the exact same taste. I knew I could push things a bit more, and she would go with it, and I would know to trust her to not push it too far.
It’s more common to have multiple directors on a show. For me, it’s very important to have a close relationship with my director because it feels like I’m not alone. If there are two of us handling this together, we both really care about it and we’re both looking after it. You kind of feel like parents. The more you trust each other, the more you can push things.
The hijinks are some of the most fun parts of the show. What is the situation you would love to see the two friends in that could never get written into Big Mood?
CW: There are so many things you just can’t get away with in TV for financial reasons. In the first series, there’s a pagan festival that was actually meant to be set at a real pagan festival in my hometown. I would love to travel with them a bit and see them in another place, another country. I would think it would be great to go on holiday with them. It would be cool to see them totally out of their normal area, somewhere completely different to London, and see how they do.
NC: Yeah, just like a proper holiday. Somewhere with a pool on holiday.
LW: At the end of the last season, I said to Camilla, what will happen next season? She was like, well, we pick up in LA and I was like, sun? And then I got the scripts and I’m like, we’re still in East London. This is Dalston, this is not Los Angeles.
Big Mood Season 2 is now streaming on Tubi in the United States.
