At the end of season 1 of The Umbrella Academy—the Netflix series that is about, among other things, preventing the annihilation of the human race—the moon gets blown to smithereens and rains down destruction on Earth. At the beginning of season 2, the band of sibling superheroes must go back in time to stop the apocalypse from arriving.
It is not lost on Ellen Page, who stars as Vanya on the show, that this dystopian premise might feel a little close for comfort at the moment. “There’s so much in the storyline that’s relevant, including civil rights threads in the 1960s and how not a whole lot has changed since then,” says the actress, via Zoom, in mid-July.
But there’s a special kind of power in revisiting that era—even a fictional fantasy version of it—onscreen. “When you’re watching something like this and you connect emotionally, that might create some form of empathy you haven’t tapped into before,” she says. Below, Ellen shares some big-picture thoughts about season 2 and the pockets of hope she has found in our tumultuous times.
Let’s start with a cheat sheet: Were did we leave off with Vanya in season 1?
Vanya’s arc last season was very, very extreme. It ends with her having this repressed emotion energy release, which doesn’t work out in some ways because she does blow up the moon and the world. But it takes an incredible weight off her. So at the beginning of the second season, she’s very different. She’s more open, more in her body, more able to access her emotions. She falls in love for the first time. She starts gaining a much stronger sense of self.
This is a show about stopping an impending apocalypse, returning for another season at a time that sometimes feels like…an actual apocalypse. Can you talk more about that?
The show explores issues during the civil rights movement, horrific examples of police brutality, the way peaceful protesters and Black people are treated, and how that hasn’t changed. I think it will be evident for a wider range of people [who are] more directly seeing what’s going on and what our society really is, in terms of inequality: white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and laws. Then with COVID-19 mixed in and the impacts of climate change already happening—this is all what’s in so many people’s consciousness right now. And this season really reflects a lot of those things.
How have you been handling the COVID-19 era?
I’m doing fine. At no point have I been like, “It’s hard to stay inside.” It’s totally fine. [I’m also] just wondering how people can even possibly be getting through this, in many ways—that’s what definitely weighs the heaviest. I try to do what I can in my own way, publicly using a platform and then [doing] other things privately.
You’ve been part of the protests in NYC. What emotions does that experience leave you with?
I’m like everybody. Some days, or some hours, you’re feeling hopeful. The next hour, you’re not. But when you see that many people come together—just the size of them, the scope of them, the hearts of them; the communal atmosphere with people handing out snacks, sunscreen, hand sanitizer, and everyone’s wearing masks—you feel this care for one another. I felt a lot of hope in those spaces, seeing people educate themselves and going, “Fuck, I should grow my own food,” becoming more conscious of issues. In terms of my personal joy, [it’s] my dog, watching my wife dance, reading, and long walks.
In addition to The Umbrella Academy, you have a documentary on Netflix right now that’s highly relevant to this cultural moment. Can you share a bit about that?
It started with this book by [social scientist] Ingrid Waldron called There’s Something in the Water, which is about environmental racism in indigenous and Black communities in Nova Scotia. I just was blown away and, in many ways, ashamed that I had no idea these certain stories were going on in my home province. The degree to which these voices have been silenced is just unfathomable. People who grew up right next to these communities have no idea.
I connected with Ingrid, and she connected me to these water protectors—the grassroots grandmothers—and I came to the conclusion that Ian Daniel [my codirector] and I should come up with some cameras and make some clips to put online. We went to Nova Scotia, shot for a bit, watched the footage and thought: There’s a feature film here. And now it’s on Netflix.
The Umbrella Academy returns to Netflix with season 2 on July 31.
