‘Girlfriend Experience’ Season 2 Sets New Parallel Stories in 2018 Setting

Starz’s series adaptation of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience certainly turned heads last year, and it appears the second season will do as much in two directions. Producers confirm Season 2 will follow two separate storylines, as Anna Friel, Louisa Krause and Carmen Ejogo join the cast.

Per Starz’s official announcement, Steven Soderbergh will return to executive produce, with Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz serving as showrunners, writers and directors for “parallel” storylines. The fourteen episodes of Season 2 will be set in both Washington D.C. and New Mexico, the both sides of which are outlined below:

Kerrigan’s storyline is set against the backdrop of the corrupting influence of dark money in the upcoming 2018 U.S. mid-term elections, where everything and everyone has a price. This section of the second season of “The Girlfriend Experience” tracks an unexpected and complex relationship between Erica Myles (Anna Friel), a commanding and strong-willed finance director of a Republican super PAC, and Anna Greenwald (Louisa Krause), a confident and intelligent GFE provider at the top of her game. Erica is under intense pressure to deliver on her super PAC fundraising goals. She meets Anna and enlists her help in blackmailing a high-powered dark money fundraiser. After their initial exchange, Erica and Anna fall into a complicated sexual relationship, marked by an exploration of vulnerability, dominance and submission, which also draws in Erica’s manipulative ex-girlfriend. The mix of personal instability and career pressure mount and lead Erica down a path, both professionally and personally, that she struggles to control.

Seimetz‘ storyline follows Bria Jones (Carmen Ejogo). After discovering disturbing information about a regular client, Jones is forced to relocate to a remote location in New Mexico. Unable to shake her desire for risky relationships and the finer things in life, Bria navigates her new penniless and surreal existence by forming eerily intimate transactional relationships. While Bria’s ghosts from the past continue to haunt, her new connections with men redefine the meaning of the Girlfriend Experience.

Said Soderbergh of the plan:

It was always our intention to change the universe every season, but Amy and Lodge have cranked up the ambition, scope, and complexity of the show by creating two storylines even more provocative and confrontational than last year’s. I’m as excited as a Swedish person is allowed to get.

The Girlfriend Experience Season 2 has not set an official premiere window, but check out the first year on Starz, and stay tuned for more.