Russian Doll creators 'already have ideas' for two more seasons
Could further helpings of the surreal Netflix comedy be on the cards?
Russian Doll may well return for further seasons if its creators Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler have anything to say about it.
Though the series has only just been released, Headland has told RadioTimes.com that they originally pitched the show to Netflix as three seasons of TV.
"We initially pitched it as three seasons," the screenwriter said. "We came in with it as like, 'Here’s the idea for season one, here’s the idea for season two, here’s the idea for season three'. So, I could definitely see us going back to one of those ideas."
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However, Headland would not confirm whether any of these ideas involved Alan and Nadia, or whether they would be looking to tell a different story.
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She also stressed that the show became a much more communal effort in the period between pitching to Netflix and its completion, and said that they may decide to take an entirely different tack if they do end up getting signed on for another season.
"I could also see us doing something completely different," she said, "because the show is the result of all of those people working for all of that time on it. Though I still feel like those are cool ideas, I do wonder if now, having created what we all communally created, if that is the best thing, to go back to the drawing board in so far as the next chapter of the story.
"But even when we were working on it we were like, 'Oh yeah and then in the second season we’ll be like blah blah blah', and we would pitch and pitch all that kind of stuff."
She did, however, tease that a return for the two star players could be on the cards – "I can say that we really enjoyed writing them" – and added that they intentionally made season one feel like a complete story.
"We did specifically want the first season to feel like a complete thing. That was always part of the pitch and part of our vision, that at the end of four hours you’d be like, 'Oh, it's over'. That particular story is over. And then, even in our early pitches before we’d written the pilot or gotten greenlit, we were saying, 'Here’s some places it could go [in season two].'"
The decision to renew Russian Doll could be made quickly: British comedy Sex Education, released at the start of 2019, has already been recommissioned for a second season.
Russian Doll is now streaming on Netflix