[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Surface Season 2 Episode 2 “Speak of the Devil.”]
Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) would certainly use this episode’s title to describe one another on Surface. And in the final moments of this installment, she is shocked to find that he’s followed her to London!
Leading up to that point, Sophie is continuing to investigate what happened to her mother. She suspects that the Huntley patriarch killed her. To do so, she’s working with journalist Callum (Gavin Drea), who she recently learned her mother contacted in the past before she lost her memories. Still using the name Tess Caldwell (from a passport she found), she also reconnects with Eliza Huntley (Millie Brady) and admits that she came back to London because her life fell apart and she felt like she was playing a role that never quite fit. She last felt like herself with Eliza. She scores an invite to Eliza’s brother’s (Phil Dunster) engagement party. It’s there that she’s shocked to hear, then see James right before he calls her over as his wife.
Sophie is in “utter shock” seeing him again, Mbatha-Raw tells TV Insider. “She thought she’d left James behind. She’d covered her tracks. She’s created this whole other sort of socialite life for herself in London. I mean, it’s sort of paper-thin because she’s still bluffing her way through so many social situations. But I think the moment at the end of Episode 2, it’s one of my favorite cliffhangers early on in the season when James shows up. It is really intense. And then they end up in this sort of cat and mouse [game]. I mean, he wants to make her feel the pain, I guess, that she made him feel.”
James is “furious,” says Jackson-Cohen. “He turns up in London with a very, very big agenda, and I think for the first time he’s kind of enjoying toying with her. That is, I guess, what he feels has historically happened the other way around with him, so he’s trying to give her a taste of her own medicine. The way our showrunner Veronica West interweaves all these things, it’s very, very satisfying and fun to play and satisfying to watch.”
According to executive producer Lauren Neustadter, their dynamic is “very complicated. He’s coming in, and he’s pretty mad, and he doesn’t have a lot of empathy for her. So I think he’s going to really keep her on her toes in ways that are very unexpected and very exciting.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Callum confronts Quinn (Dunster) — the two have a history — about having someone follow him; he was writing a story about him and his family, but his source has gone MIA. Callum asks if he paid the girl, Phoebe, off and warns him that getting rid of her won’t change anything; he still knows what she told him and will find another way to prove it.
Their past informs Callum’s impression of Quinn in the present “massively” as well as “Callum’s character overall,” says Drea. “This is a guy who moved over to London from Ireland when he was very, very young and has had to work very hard to try and fit into a world in Cambridge and these upper-class elite people that he will never be one of and never be remotely associated with. And I think that’s part of the thing that drives him to want to shine the light on these people and their corruption and their sins. That scene between him and Quinn is indicative of who Callum is and I’d like to think you’re rooting for Callum in that scene because Quinn’s a bit of a piece of work.”
Later in the episode, Callum is so sure he’s being followed that he confronts and punches a guy … who wasn’t actually trailing him for the Huntleys.
“Callum’s in a very emotionally exhausted place with the job and he’s had a lot of stories that maybe he wrote them but then nothing came of them. I think it can be very tiring trying to expose corruption and then to have it just completely be ignored. He’s a very frustrated figure. I think you can see that frustration in him constantly building and he’s like a coiled spring and he has such paranoia,” Drea explains. “The job leads to it. Of course, people hack phones, they track journalists. It’s a reminder that it’s a really scary time to be a journalist and you’ve got to be really brave to do the job. And I think he probably snaps and loses a bit of control that he’s usually good at keeping in.”
The hits keep coming for Callum, who, near the end of this episode, learns that Phoebe died after supposedly falling off a balcony a week ago. Callum is 100 percent questioning that, according to Drea.
“I just don’t think he’d be in his line of work if he gave stories like that the benefit of the doubt,” he points out. “I think no chance in his mind, but I think he’s also hurt by it because any good investigative journalist has a duty of care in a way or responsibility to their source. And while it wasn’t his fault, obviously, per se, I think it hits him hard and he takes it personally. I think he is a very emotional guy deep down and he does care a lot. He might seem a little bit sharp and a little bit touchy and cold, particularly with his poor assistant Claire. But yeah, he definitely feels it.”
What are you hoping to see next from Sophie and James now that they’re back in each other’s orbit? Let us know in the comments section below.
Surface, Fridays, Apple TV+