The Blacklist, NBC’s endlessly twisty conspiracy thriller, returns for Season Eight on Friday, Nov. 13. The brand new season — which will not be animated – will decide up the place the abbreviated seventh season left off, with Elizabeth Eager (Megan Boone) allying along with her ruthless ex-KGB agent mom Katarina Rostova (Laila Robins) towards Raymond Reddington (James Spader) and Rostova’s father Dominic Wilkinson (Ron Raines, taking on the function originated by the late Brian Dennehy), who’re preserving secrets and techniques about Reddington’s true id and why he got here into Liz’s life that Liz must know. And Liz, who discovered deviousness and amorality from Reddington, will do no matter it takes to seek out out the reality, even when it means turning her life the other way up and inflicting a whole lot of ache for her family members. Not even Pink is aware of how a lot Liz has turned towards him, which places him within the uncommon place of not having all the data.
It additionally places a whole lot of pressure on her relationship along with her FBI colleague Donald Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff), her shut confidant and can they/will not they counterpart. At the start of the sequence, Ressler did not belief Liz due to her mysterious connection to the felony Reddington. However over time, he grew to not solely belief her professionally however care about her intimately, even sharing his biggest secret along with her. “And now, realizing, as quickly as he does, that she is dedicated to this path that may be harmful for her, and would possibly consequence ultimately of the connection that they’ve needed to date, I believe it brings out an extremely intense need to specific emotions which were kind of latent for therefore lengthy,” government producer John Eisendrath instructed TV Information.
Season Eight is being filmed in concordance with New York’s COVID-19 manufacturing security protocols, and thus far hasn’t needed to shut down for a constructive case on set, not like a whole lot of productions. There are lots of issues they’re doing otherwise this season on The Blacklist, from placing within the effort and time to adjust to the security protocols to possibly having fewer actors in a scene than they usually would, Eisendrath stated. “Clearly we make changes, however what we have seen thus far of the filming of the episodes, I believe the viewer expertise shall be unchanged, which we’re very happy about,” he stated.
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Not like many different exhibits, The Blacklist won’t be coping with the pandemic in its storyline. “We really feel like every certainly one of these episodes must be an hour to step away from the nightmare that has been COVID and kind of a little bit of escapism, hopefully,” creator Jon Bokenkamp stated.
That does not imply there aren’t some issues that may remind viewers of the surface world, even when they’re coincidental. Within the opening scene of the season, a personality wears a surgical masks, supposedly to guard from nuclear radiation coming off of one other character. “Jon and I, we snigger about it, as a result of, mockingly, that scene and that particular person carrying a masks was written earlier than the pandemic,” Eisendrath stated.
For the scene, which was initially purported to be a part of Season 7, there wanted to be a cause for folks to not wish to comply with this character right into a room, and so they settled on saying the man within the room had an extremely contagious viral an infection. Then, just a few weeks later, manufacturing was shut down due to coronavirus. When the writers’ room reconvened, they tried a model of the scene the place COVID was talked about by title. “After which we had been like, ‘Individuals watch this present for an escapist expertise,’ and we modified it to a nuclear [sickness],” Eisendrath stated.
Individuals additionally watch this present for the case-of-the-week episodes the place the duty pressure tracks down a given Blacklister, and the producers stated that after the primary few episodes of the season, which shall be closely serialized and cope with the present Liz and Pink storyline, there shall be “some actually nice and weird and harmful and enjoyable Blacklisters every week,” Bokenkamp stated. Eisendrath added that they will have some overarching unhealthy guys this season, too, with one particularly enjoying an “outsized function for a great portion of the season.”
The Blacklist Season Eight premieres Friday, Nov. 13 at 8/7c on NBC. It will likely be out there to stream on Peacock.
