‘Shining Vale’ Creator Breaks Down That Season 2 Twist — and Courteney Cox’s ‘Holy S—!’ Reaction to It
04.11.2023 - 04:23
/ variety.com
Hunter Ingram SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Smile,” the fourth episode of Season 2 of “Shining Vale,” now streaming on the Starz app. With each passing episode on the set of Starz’s horror comedy “Shining Vale,” Greg Kinnear made a habit of asking co-creator Jeff Astrof how he planned to get the characters out of the spooky corners he backed them into. “And every time I told him, ‘Just trust me, we’re gonna get out of it,’” Astrof tells Variety.
But even he admits the latest twist required some extra explaining. In the final moments of Episode 4, mere minutes after Pat (Courteney Cox) and Terry (Kinnear) tell their children Gaynor (Gus Birney) and Jake (Dylan Gage) they are getting a divorce, Pat learns she is pregnant.
The baby could be amnesiac Terry’s, with whom Pat had reconnected before he learned about his wife’s affair –– again. But given the nature of the haunted house series, it is far more likely the baby was conceived during the demonic dream orgy Pat found herself at the center of during last week’s episode.
After pitching the twist, Astrof says the logical first question that arose in the writers room was a respectful but realistic ”How?” Even Cox, who is 59 years old, questioned the viability of the pregnancy –– if only for a moment. “Courteney was, of course, very game for it,” Astrof says.
“When I first told her, she said, “Wow, holy shit! How are you going to do that?” I just said, “We’ll do it if you’ll do it!” And she was all in.” Astrof confirms Pat’s pregnancy will launch “Shining Vale” into a full-fledged “Rosemary’s Baby” homage –– if that gives viewers any indication of who the father might be. But the twist itself is actually rooted in co-creator Sharon Horgan’s pilot script.
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