The person who knows you best might just be the person you really wish didn’t. Such is the case for Criminal Record‘s June Lenker (Cush Jumbo), who suffers a devastating loss by the end of Season 2. It’s Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi), with whom she’s been clashing all series, who’s sitting with her in the final scene of the finale. TV Insider spoke with Jumbo and Capaldi about that moment, a potential Season 3, and more. Warning: Spoilers for the Criminal Record Season 2 finale ahead!
The case is as closed as it’s going to get — the bombers stopped, the leader Cosmo (Dustin Demri-Burns) in custody — when June connects with her ex, Leo (Stephen Campbell Moore), who has her car. They’re just starting to actually talk like they’ve needed to and should have in counseling, with him admitting he wanted kids of his own with her when suddenly the car explodes. He’s killed.
“It’s quite sad, isn’t it?” Jumbo tells TV Insider in the video above with her and Capaldi. “That was the point. I think it’s really like a metaphor for her whole life blowing up, honestly. … It’s incredibly tragic, but it’s also like, there isn’t anywhere else for that relationship to go as well. It’s not just run its course. It’s like she is no longer, in her mind, the same woman or the same person, and this person doesn’t understand what it is that she does all day, every day. So it was really shocking to read that it was going to happen, but I also was like, ‘Yeah, what else could happen for her right now?’”
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Six weeks later, Cosmo is working as an informant, though Hegarty, after talking to him then joining June at a bar, says they can give him to the spooks if it’s too much too soon. June refuses because she wants to keep digging. He lets her know that if she needs anything, he’s there for her.
While in Season 1, June didn’t know who Hegarty was and worried about him ruining her career, this time around, there was “a fearlessness to her interactions with him,” says Jumbo. “In the end, you do see them closer together, not in a kind of hearts and flowers way, but in a kind of mutual respect kind of way, but not without some incredibly hard falls on the way.”
Adds Capaldi, “I think Hegarty has always, from the moment he’s met June and why he responded to her so powerfully, [seen] how good she was. He’s always had a deep respect for her, even if that’s just coming from his survival instinct of identifying what’s a real danger and what isn’t. … This season, he needs June. So, he has to put up with her and also make her feel secure working with him. And I think that he’s grateful to her. He’s grateful to her for what she does.”
Watch the full video interview above for more from Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi about the finale as well as their hopes for what they’d like to explore going forward, should there be a Season 3.
Criminal Record, Seasons 1-2, Streaming Now, Apple TV