Nikita faces a challenge as daunting as Division as the series moves to Fridays for Season 2.
The second season picks up where the first left off, with the characters of Nikita and Michael on the run. Fans of the “Mikita” romance get to see their favorite couple together – but for how long?
KSiteTV and other media outlets spoke with the cast at Comic-Con, and today we share our roundtable discussion with Shane West, who plays Michael. Beware of spoilers within!
Season 2 begins September 23 on The CW.
Questions are posted in bold; answers are not. Please do not reproduce this onto other websites; instead just place a link to KSiteTV! You can find some of our other Nikita interviews from Comic-Con, including Lyndsy Fonseca and Maggie Q, here.
What kind of action do we get to see as the show goes into Season 2?
I think we’re going to see – believe it or not – a lot more than we did last year. I think with them being on the run, and with things having changed across the board, I think that we’re going to see a lot more of it. We have a new stunt coordinator as well, who I know for at least myself, I’m not sure for the others, but I do know that they’re kind of glossing Michael’s fight scenes up a little bit more. He’s a bit deadlier this year, where he was more of just a bruiser last year.
Nikita obviously has of the amazing moves that Maggie can literally do. If they wanted to give me that, I don’t know that I could actually do that. It’s much easier just watching someone.
It’s going to be crazy. We’ve shot the first episode, we’re about to start the second one, and there’s already been a ton of action.
I literally read Episode Two on the plane coming here [to Comic-Con], and it’s awesome. Very cool. I think it’s better than the first one, actually, and the first one is great.
What can we expect from the Michael and Nikita relationship this season?
You can expect a lot of problems. Just natural problems of them suddenly being together. They’re on the run. They’re finally together which is something that they’ve wanted. But there’s so much work to do, with what they want to do, bringing down Division and things like that, and obviously other things pop up that they have to handle as well.
And I think there are the normal problems of a relationship, with the extraordinary circumstances on the side that they have to deal with, like not dying. It’s going to be entertaining. There will be comedy with it as well. But I think a lot of things are going to change for their relationship throughout the year, and there will be some ups and downs for sure.
What are you especially looking forward to filming in this season?
Kind of what I was just talking about, in the sense of the relationship. I’m looking forward to that. Like I said, we have already done the first episode, and there’s a lot of that. There’s a lot of back and forth between them of what they think they should be getting done first, and things like that. I think that’s going to be entertaining. There was so much chasing each other in the first year, and now with them being together, it doesn’t mean the problems are over. And in fact, there are even more problems.
So I’m looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to some of the action scenes. I’m trying to be careful with what I say. But I’ll have a little bit more action, I guess, in Episode Two than I did in the first one. I’m looking forward to that.
Everybody’s coming back. All of our recurrings – the Owens, and the Ryan Fletchers, and all of that kind of stuff, and rather quickly, I think.
It’s exciting to have the chance to do a second year, and to develop a character more. Nowadays, it’s very easy to lose a show after one year, and that they had the confidence in giving us a full year, off the bat, is great. I think we’re all looking forward to that, and defining the characters more.
One of the themes of the season seems to be the characters looking for a home. On that note, where does Michael live? Does he have a home base?
I don’t think we’ll ever know, at least from Season One. That’s the bummer. We used to make jokes about that, where Michael lived. Was it something fancy or was it one of those creepy apartments that literally had a cot, like he was just a soldier? What would that be like? And then all of the sudden the season ends and I’m with her, and I’m like “I guess we’ll never know, unless we do a flashback.”
But there is none for them, at least in the beginning of this year. We have to get it from the beginning. We’re on the run right now, so it’s been motels to motels, hotels to hotels, and knowing Craig [Silverstein], that could change in Episode Three, whereas it could last twelve episodes. You never know. So I don’t really know. Nikita’s lair is gone, too. That was blown up. So, we’re literally on the run.
I’ll just put it this way – I’ve already used two or three different cars. So we’ll see if that evens itself out at some point.
You said there will be more humor. Is Michael going to be smiling more?
Yeah. I think he’s a lot more comfortable, after lot of what happened last season, especially in the last episode, especially after he got one of his pieces of revenge. And we find out quickly that Percy’s not in power right now. Right now… you never know what will happen there, either. So that’s kind of the bottom of his priorities too, getting revenge there. I think he feels like he’s at the bottom of the list right now. And there are other characters that will be coming in and out that also help with the comedy. I think it’s just real comedy. What happens in reality.
What would you like to see as the end goal for Michael? Riding off into the sunset with Nikita?
It’s a hard thing. The Michael and Nikita love story really just started in the original series, La Femme Nikita. Being a fan of the original film, that wasn’t really there. I didn’t see The Point of No Return, so I don’t know if it was there either. It’s something that developed over time, and the fans were really into that for La Femme Nikita, and I know that they took, I think, all the years to build to that, so I would think, in a perfect world, you feel for these characters. I think in the end, whether this went 3 years, 5, 10 or whatever, even if they break up for a long time, that they should be together in the end. It’d be a little more painful if it didn’t happen, and if they changed it up, and they were absolutely head over heels for other people and were in those kind of relationships, I think that would be very strange. I think that would cheapen it a little bit. At least their relationship.
