If you thought “Vice Principals” was dark in its first season, brace yourself.
Kimberly Hebert Gregory, who plays Dr. Belinda Brown on the HBO comedy, told TheWrap that the new season that premiered on Sunday will have even less “sunlight” than last year’s batch of episodes.
“We have to find out who shot a man, right?” Gregory asked. “The writers in no way signaled that, ‘Hey, it’s going to be light and funny.’ [The Season 1 finale] wasn’t pretty, and they’re not backing down from that.”
The actress, who also co-stars on ABC’s new drama series “Kevin (Probably) Saves the World,” said that Belinda will pop up throughout the season but won’t be centrally involved in the conflict between Neal Gamby (Danny McBride) and Lee Russell (Walton Goggins).
“Everybody’s individual story will be highlighted,” she said. “They’re going deeply into people individually — deeply [into] people’s brokenness. They really explain the characters in the most telling, artful and comedic, dark way. It’s just a well-thought out final semester.”
Among the more memorable moments in Sunday’s Season 2 premiere was Belinda revealing that she has a tattoo of Gamby and Russell holding hands while, uh, eating feces. Needless to say, Gamby refers to the tattoo as “filthy.”
Gregory told TheWrap that an artist created a number of temporary tattoos as options for her to wear, but the one that viewers saw was the obvious winner.
“That one was the icing on the cake — I loved it so much,” she said. She added with a laugh, “I wish I actually could have taken one with me, worn it on the red carpet.”
Did she keep the tattoo after she was done filming?
“Absolutely not! I was like, ‘Can we get the rubbing alcohol? I cannot walk out into the world with this on me. Not possible!’”
The creative team behind “Vice Principals” has previously announced that the show would end after two seasons and, according to Gregory, this is still the plan, despite the show being one of HBO’s highest-rated comedies.
“[The network] talked about that while we were shooting [Season 2] — and [creator] Jody [Hill] and the producers are very clear that they came to this with a movie idea — that the two seasons would meet their requirement of telling that full story that they wanted to tell,” she said. “Would we love a third season? Absolutely, but that’s not in the works.”
“Vice Principals” airs Sundays at 11/10c on HBO.