“13 Reasons Why” is not an easy show — to watch or to shoot. A story about teen suicide, the show packs an emotional wallop for both viewers and its cast.
“There was a lot of tough scenes for me. The whole role is tough,” Kate Walsh, who plays Hannah Baker’s grieving mother on the Netflix drama, told TheWrap. “Except for the flashbacks, those were the fun times. The moments of real joy were a lot of fun to shoot.”
But when it comes down to the single most challenging — or at the very least, intimidating — scene Walsh had to tackle on the show, she chose the most hotly-debated scene from the finale. After 13 episodes of build-up, Katherine Langford’s character Hannah slits her wrists in the bathtub, only to be discovered by her parents hours later.
“I don’t know if it was the hardest, but we were sort of gunning for it the whole series,” Walsh said. “I knew that that’s where it was going to, so it was always sort of there in my mind.”
Despite Season 1’s self-contained structure, Netflix has already renewed the show for a second season, leading to wild speculation about what another season of “13 Reasons Why” could possibly be about. The show left off with a few unanswered questions, but the main storyline — Hannah’s suicide and the titular reasons for it — was resolved, for the most part, in the emotionally unsettling finale.
“One of the things that I loved about Season 1 and what Brian [Yorkey, showrunner] is really gifted at, is telling the story from all different facets … and playing with time,” the “Grey’s Anatomy” alum said. “We’ll continue to do that in Season 2.”
“He has a real way with the tone of getting inside a person’s head, and getting inside of a person’s experience with the silence,” Walsh continued. “And I think with Mrs. Baker we’re going to see a little more of that.”