More twists & turns in The Affair Season 2

BEVERLY HILLS, California — If you’ve been watching The Affair (Tuesday nights on RTL-CBS Entertainment Channel, starting at 9:55), you must have realized that extra-marital affairs are universal, happening here and there, that have become a favorite topic not only in our teleseryes.

Now on Season 2, The Affair explores the emotional and psychological effects of an affair that destroyed two marriages and the crime that brings these individuals back together.

Joined by Sarah Treem (House of Cards, etc.), the creator/executive producer of the Golden Globe-winner drama series (aired on Showtime in the US), two of the stars recently faced the international press at the function room of the Beverly Hilton — Joshua Jackson and Maura Tierney.

But first, about the plot (from the network’s production notes): The provocative drama is told separately from four different perspectives, revealing four distinct truths. Alison (played by Ruth Wilson of Luther fame) is a young woman attempting to move on from tragedy and build a lasting relationship while contending with the judgment of others and her own self-doubt. Her lover Noah (played by Dominic West of The Wire) is a burgeoning writer trying to balance the temptations of success, the family he left behind and the woman he loves. Noah’s former wife Helen (played by Tierney) is attempting to piece her life together while navigating divorce proceedings care for her children, and her parents’ noxious influence. Cole (played by Jackson) is Alison’s former husband struggling to overcome past heartbreak and start a promising new life.

Here are excerpts from the presscon:

Ten or 15 years ago, the other woman was usually portrayed as the villain or the dim-witted idiot, but now it has changed. Olivia Pope from Scandal is the heroine, so the other woman in power is also portrayed as the good girl. Why do you think about this shift in how the other woman is perceived?

Treem: It’s a really good question. I don’t know kind of culturally why that’s happening. I mean I think on our show it was just because I had this same interesting idea that archetype of lover in an affair is not — hasn’t sort of been explored in a complete, humane way yet? Yeah, sometimes you’re the wife, sometimes you’re the other woman, but you’re still the same person.

Tierney: And I think it’s the wife’s part, too, on the show that is different because it’s not sort of a shrew or there is no like justification. So that’s also sort of a different approach to having an affair.

Jackson: It’s not obvious. It’s not easy.

Treem: Yeah, we have this kind of idea on the show that everybody is part-angel and part-devil. But, you know, if you see us from one light, we are a hero and if you look at us from another light, we are a villain. There is no truth there. It’s just about which way you are approaching the scenario.

Sarah Treem, the show’s creator and executive producer

Do you guys have theories about why people stay in dysfunctional relationships, which seems to be very much a case of these relationships in this show as well? Are people afraid to be happy or do you think they don’t deserve happiness? What’s your take on this because you must have been thinking about these psychological issues when playing these characters?

Jackson: I think each individual situation is different. I mean if you’re talking about the two marriages on this show, the dynamics, the power structure, the baggage that each person brings into it is really specific to that relationship. So I’m not sure that you can make a blanket statement about people in general — but I think if you just speak from Cole and Alison, they have this enormous lengthy shared history together and they had this incredible tragedy that both bound them together and drove them apart. And after a lifetime of togetherness, particularly for him, he just didn’t know any other way and that’s specific to that relationship. But I think in each relationship on the show and each dynamic in-between two people is its own thing.

Treem: And I think all relationships are dysfunctional in some way, you know, and functional in others, and I guess the question is if the relationship gets to be more pain than anything else then people get out of it, but I don’t know. I think we also have like a really high tolerance for pain as human beings and I think you don’t like to be alone, really.

(To Jackson) Coming from an artistic family, what advice has your mother given to you that still helps you in your career?

Jackson: Like out-loud advice? I mean the beauty of being a child to a very strong-willed parent is you learn most of it by osmosis. Where work is concerned, the advice she gave me when I was just starting is just be — honor it as work and it will constantly reward you. And I love what I do for a living and I think if you put the time and energy into it, it pays you back enormously.

Woody Allen once said that women need love to give sex and men need sex to give love, so what do you think about that?

Jackson: Are you quoting Woody Allen as a relationship expert? I don’t really think I need to comment on his words. I’m going to say that he probably needs to search a little more for his answers.

What to you is a real man?

From left: Tierney, Jackson and Treem fielding questions: ‘Sometimes you are the wife, sometimes you are the other woman,’ says Treem, ‘but still and all, you’re still the same person’

Jackson: Oh ladies, I can’t wait.  I am dying to hear.

Treem: This season what we are trying to explore is honesty. I’m not saying that that necessarily makes a real man but I think that when a character can be really honest with themselves and who they are, and therefore with their own fallibility and flaws and the people that they have hurt, that there is a maturity that gets achieved at that point, that maybe makes a real man.

Tierney: If he can change a smoke detector, and a flat tire, because that’s what I need a man for, I would consider him a real man. Just to change the smoke detector. (Laughs)

Jackson: I think honestly the conception of what a real man is, is really culturally specific. I think this is the international press here, so each one of us here would have a very specific different idea based upon where we grew up and the pressures and how we mould our young men in the society that they are raised in. I think each one of our versions of masculinity through all of the cultures here has a toxic element to it that we are constantly grappling. That would be my answer.

After playing the character for a while, have you started sharing more of his traits?

Jackson: I certainly hope not.

Treem: It would be bad news.

Jackson: Yeah, Showtime will have to start paying for therapy if that’s what happens.

(The Affair was one of the nine CBS Studios International shows presented at an international press conference. The others were: Bull [already featured in this corner], Doubt, Jane The Virgin [new season], The Great Indoors, MacGyver [reboot], Man With a Plan, NCIS [reboot] and No Tomorrow. RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network is a venture of two of the world’s largest content producers, RTL Group, the leading European entertainment network, and CBS Studios International, the leading supplier of programming to the international market place. The network has two channels: the general entertainment channel RTL CBS Entertainment HD and the male-skewed entertainment channel RTL CBS Extreme HD. Both channels are widely distributed in the Asia Pacific and are localized in five languages.)