LOS ANGELES, Oct. 18 (UPI) — Wolf Like Me creator Abe Forsythe said Isla Fisher had the most formidable assignment in Season 2, which premieres Thursday on Peacock. Fisher plays Mary, a werewolf in a relationship with single father Gary (Josh Gad).
“Isla had the toughest job out of anyone in the cast in Season 2,” Forsythe told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. “You can see what she does dramatically in the last episode.”
Season 1 teased Mary’s transformations during every full moon. Now that her condition no longer is a spoiler, Season 2 shows Mary’s transformation on screen.
Producer Jodi Matterson said that Fisher embraced the dramatic implications of the werewolf transformation. The show is a horror comedy, but treats Mary’s transformation as a sincere affliction.
“It takes a lot of guts to be able to go, ‘OK, I’m going to play a role where I transform into a werewolf and I am going to 100% fully commit to this,'” Matterson said.
The opening of the season was based on Fisher’s suggestion, Forsythe revealed. Forsythe always intended to have Gary and Mary married and pregnant, but Fisher preferred a shocking wedding scene that opens the new season.
“Without giving anything away, I can say that there was something in the wedding scene that came from an idea of Isla’s,” Forsythe said. “Certainly, it’s a really interesting way of getting the audience into the story.”
Forsythe said the pregnancy increases the dangers of Mary being discovered. Should the baby turn out to be a wolf like her, it will be much harder to keep a werebaby a secret.
In addition to werewolf prosthetics, Fisher had to be fitted for prosthetic tummies to show Mary’s pregnancy. This was much simpler, Matterson said.
“Because she’s so tiny, there were a lot of different pregnancy tummies and trying to figure out what was the right size,” Matterson said. “I think, in the end, we had three different sizes as she progressed through the season.”
Both Matterson and Forsythe cited the 1981 horror comedy, An American Werewolf in London, as the inspiration for Mary’s physical transformation.
Though the show employed a mix of makeup work and computer-generated visual effects, Forsythe said the makeup was key.
“It makes such a difference when you can actually look at something on set, see it and light it,” he said. “It does make it feel so much more lifelike.”
In the first episode of Season 2, Mary and Gary buy a house together. The house was a new set built in a warehouse near Sydney Airport.
While living together, Mary also gets closer with her stepdaughter, Emma (Ariel Donoghue). This relationship was important to both Matterson and Forsythe.
“It’s a really important dynamic to show for me a mother and a stepdaughter, which is as important as a mother and a daughter relationship,” Forsythe said.
He said that Emma shows Mary that she isn’t alone anymore. Matterson added that Mary is an important influence as Emma enters her teenage years.
“Emma starts high school and she starts needing her independence,” Matterson said.
Matterson said she and Forsythe have more ideas for a third season, should Peacock renew Wolf Like Me. However, Season 3 could be the show’s last.
“When Abe started to conceive of this idea, for him, he always saw it as hopefully being a three-season show,” Matterson said. “We’ll wait and see.”
All seven episodes of Wolf Like Me Season 2 premiere Thursday on Peacock.
