“The Girlfriend Experience” executive producer Lodge Kerrigan said parts of the Starz drama’s second season were rewritten after the 2016 election because the season is set within the context of the 2018 midterms.
“I actually rewrote them after the conclusion of the election … I tweaked them,” Kerrigan told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour on Friday.
The 14-episode second season of the Starz drama is split into two halves, with Kerrigan and co-creator Amy Seimetz each writing and directing seven episodes.
Kerrigan’s political storyline stars Anna Friel and Louisa Krause, and Seimetz’s story features an escort in the Witness Protection Program. Season 2 will air across seven weeks, with an installment from each airing as an hourlong block.
Kerrigan’s half of the season stars Friel as Erica Myles, the commanding and strong-willed finance director of a Republican super PAC, and Krause as Anna Garner, a confident and intelligent provider of “girlfriend experiences” who gets caught in a Erica’s blackmail scheme.
“I was just really open to the idea that reality is now becoming stranger than fiction,” Kerrigan said. “And so in the writing of it, the rewriting of it, without giving too much away, I just tried to be really open to that and being able to make last-minute adjustments as we were shooting.”
“The self-serving nature of the political world just seemed to be very apt at this time,” he continued. “There’s so much self-interest under this veneer of democracy. I think theres a lot of veneer to the whole world of GFE and luxury, presenting an image of escorts. Presenting some kind of fantasy or image to their clients. Not really who they necessarily really are, but a version of themselves.”
Kerrigan was cagey on the details of the storyline, simply suggesting that the relationship between Erica and Anna and how it unfolds would be “more unexpected” within the context of the Republican Party.