Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Audacity” Season 2 finale.
“The Audacity” wrapped up its first season Sunday on AMC, perfectly encapsulating the modern-day horrors of day-to-day life in the high-tech, tech bro social media age.
The show was already renewed for Season 2 before the series even premiered, which gave Billy Magnussen plenty of time to worry about how life might imitate art as IRL billionaires like his character Duncan Park continue to grab more power than ever before.
“If you try to block this world out, it will still affect you and steal everything from you. It’s your responsibility to do something. Our job as a satire is just to put the mirror up to the world, and if you keep ignoring it, it will consume you. Ignoring it doesn’t mean it goes away,” the actor told TheWrap. “It is crazy. There are people in this world, a handful of white men in Silicon Valley, that make decisions for 7.4 billion people and affect their lives daily. Again, to ignore this or be uninformed about it does not negate that this stuff is happening.”
The series from Jonathan Glatzer follows a handful of power players around Silicon Valley as they use their intellect, currency and connections to backstab one another through personal data, AI and even governmental red tape, despite the ramifications for their fellow humans.
“I’ve talked to some people from Silicon Valley, none of the titans, but they say it’s pretty accurate, the type of egos that live out there and operate in that world,” Magnussen shared. “Even though we’re saying ‘AI is the future and this is everything,’ AI is created by people — people are industry, people are humanity. I hope these people out there don’t lose their humanity.”
“Social media has helped celebrate mediocracy instead of true value, and I think it’s affected our culture really poorly; we don’t reward actual greatness,” he further noted. “That’s what society has turned into. Until we start going, ‘Hey, let’s hold ourselves accountable, let’s hold the people in charge at the highest standard.’ Because we’re not.”
Still, the “Made for Love” and “Maniac” star has faith in both his audience and the network for supporting a show with such an important message.
“Millennials and Gen Z are smarter than what the studio system makes of them. These people want well-crafted characters with journeys, they don’t want to just be plopped into a world and be like, ‘This has stakes and this is important because we say it’s important.’ You can smell that s–t,” Magnussen said. “What Jonathan has created is stakes of character, where choices mean something. There’s value in the storytelling, you earn it with these characters and you slowly actually live with these people. These are fully fledged characters, not some copy of a situation.”
“I love working with AMC because they don’t have big tech throwing money at them,” he continued. “Any other studio would have shot this down, because you know we’re poking fun at them; we’re pulling the curtain away to reveal what’s there. So I give so much kudos to AMC for saying, ‘No, let’s keep going, this is a very important message that needs to get out there.’”
So where exactly will the show be going in its second season?
“There’s a line Duncan says to JoAnne [Sarah Goldberg]: ‘You can’t unf–k that bell once you ring it.’ That’s what I think Season 2 is,” Magnussen ultimately teased. “Duncan’s grab for power and greatness and trying to become a tech titan elite… there are no emergency brakes on his trajectory.”
“The Audacity” Season 1 is available to stream on AMC+.
