Single Drunk Female Cast Calls Season 2’s “Shiva” Episode The Hardest To Film, Plus Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy Reunite
While Samantha Fink (Sofia Black-D’Elia) has finally found her sober footing in Freeform’s Single Drunk Female season 2, sometimes the past comes back to haunt her. Kristen Maldonado of Pop Culture Planet spoke with the cast at the New York premiere about one of the most difficult episodes to film this season: episode 7’s “Shiva” which finds the ensemble flashing back to the day of Sam’s father’s Shiva.
Sofia Black D’Elia called filming that episode the “hardest week” on set. “This is a story about a young gal in recovery. The more time she has sober, the more past issues she has to face and she doesn't have the same vices that she used to in order to deal with those things. It seems to get more challenging as it goes, but she's also obviously growing a lot,” she told me. “We did an episode […] called ‘Shiva’ and it's a flashback to the day of Sam's dad's Shiva. [It] was an incredibly challenging week for me, but also very rewarding and very fun. It was the thing I was most anxious about tackling this year and I'm very proud of what we ended up doing. That was the hardest week for me for sure.”
This flashback episode gave more insight into the connections between various characters, including Sam, Brit, and Joel. “We go back to when Sam's lost her father and it's the night of the Shiva. That was difficult in a great, challenging way just to do some episodes where we're all buddy-buddy and then have to go back and remember, ‘Oh, right. We fought.’ That’s where Brit and Joel got together and we see that it was trauma bonding,” said Sasha Compère. “It was a really fun night, but it was challenging to live in that space and have to say and do some supportingly ugly things as friends during such a difficult time. That was tough.”
The Shiva episode also had The Breakfast Club co-stars Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwald reunite as sister-in-laws. “I love Molly and I had told her I was so happy in the show and she was thinking she'd like to do a role in it. She's always wanted to work with Jenni Konnor, so, when Jenni asked her, they came up with this great part. We'd be sisters-in-laws, she said yes, and then we had the best time,” said Ally Sheedy. “The writer and director of that episode is John Riggi and I love him so when Molly was thinking about it I just said, ‘Listen, if you're going to come on the show, this is the episode you want. Then we had a we had a great time because we got along really well and that history is there. The old family relationship was just very easy for us.”
Creator SImone Finch added: “Molly is a professional. She's amazing. She's a wonderful actress. She brought it. Their chemistry is palpable. You can feel it. It jumps off the screen.”
New episodes of Single Drunk Female season 2 air Wednesdays on Freeform, with the full season available on Hulu.
