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Away star Ray Panthaki has shared his hopes for a second season of the Netflix space series.
The actor, who plays second-in-command Ram Arya in the show, explained how the first season felt strangely prescient in terms of grappling with isolation – filmed just before the coronavirus lockdown.
“[Ram] suffers from this huge sense of loneliness,” Panthaki told NME. “And when we finished shooting, lockdown happened a few weeks later. My family was suffering a lot from not seeing each other, but I felt like I’d been a little bit prepared for it.
“When we get to next season, we need to let the world know what the storyline is going to be so we can prepare ourselves. It seems to be weirdly predictive of what the real world is going through.”
Away is yet to be renewed for a second season on Netflix, but Panthaki shared his ideas for his character. “I think there’s so much more to unpack in Ram,” he said. “I find him quite a mysterious character – I’d love to go deeper into that past and figure out why he is the way he is.
“The great thing is, when you have a team of storytellers like Jessica Goldberg, Andrew Hinderaker, Jason Katims, Matt Reeves, Ed Zwick and Hilary [Swank], you just let them do what they have to do because you know you’re in safe hands.”
On the relationship between Ram and Hilary Swank’s character Emma, Panthaki noted the depth of the connection still to be explored, considering the cliffhanger confession at the end of season one.
“He respects her an incredible amount,” he said. “My best analogy for season one is that he had a wound, which was probably plastered over with a band aid. And she’s peeled that thing off which he’s been really fearful about. Whenever you peel a plaster off there’s a lot of pain but she’s like, ‘That wound is not going to heal with a plaster, we need to dig in with stitches which is going to hurt even more!’
He continued: “He’s got this shield and it takes a huge amount to break that shield away. If you break it away, he’s going to give everything to that person. So it’s going to be interesting how it all plays out.”
Season one of Away is now streaming on Netflix.
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