Season 2 of Twisted Metal is just around the corner. It looks to be as big and ambitious as Season 1. The new season is based on the PlayStation video game of the same name. It will send the characters to the Tournament that gamers know well. They will continue to struggle to survive the apocalypse.
CGM spoke with Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Quiet in Twisted Metal and is known for her work on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Encanto. She shared where the characters find themselves at the start of the new season, how the adaptation is designed to resonate with fans of the game, and what it was like returning to set alongside series lead Anthony Mackie.
So Twisted Metal Season 2 is upon us. And where we were left off last, you were separated from John, and you found yourself surrounded by The Dolls. So what can you tell us about where we find Quiet at the beginning of Season 2?
Stephanie Beatriz: Quiet’s journey in Season 1 was really like a revenge story. She was avenging the death of her brother. And when that kind of closed its chapter, she was looking for what’s next. What am I going to do in this world? And since she’s been separated from Jon, like you said, she’s kind of captured by The Dolls at the end of Season 1. I think Season 2 shows us that she’s made a home, like a makeshift home, within The Dolls’ community. Honestly, probably where I would go if there were an apocalypse, I’d be with all the badass ladies. And that’s what Quiet has done.
I think she is kind of looking for how to make the world a better place in her own way, and I think there are elements of The Dolls that she really believes in, but she wants more. She’s searching for more. And that’s when the announcement by Calypso about the tournament kind of comes into play. When that happens, she realizes that she has a real purpose, and that propels her forward to the end of Season 2.
As you mentioned, the Twisted Metal tournament is finally here—highly anticipated and teased at the end of Season 1. What can we expect from the tournament that takes the chaos and craziness of Season 1 to the next level?
Stephanie Beatriz: They had more money to spend on the show. And so, there are more cars that get blown up, wrecked, and crashed. We smash into stuff. There’s just like more, bigger, better, more blowy-uppy. I don’t know how to say it any better than that, but there’s like a ton more action. I mean I really think the first season of the show was comedy with some action in it, and now we’re entering into a world where it is an action show with a lot of comedy.
I was really excited to see the tournament begin, thinking of 14-year-old me playing Twisted Metal.
Stephanie Beatriz: We’re very lucky that our showrunner, Michael Jonathan Smith, is also a huge fan of the games, so he’s really taken it seriously. He’s thinking about you guys, fans of the games. He’s really thinking about you while he expands the world and makes it bigger and badder and cooler. He’s also still really thinking about the teenagers that loved these games and played them for hours and hours and hours, and I think that that’s our core audience, people that loved the games, and hopefully really love season two.
You’re behind the wheel a bit more this season on Twisted Metal than you were last season. Did that involve any extra driver training—or even stunt driving?
Stephanie Beatriz: I mean, driving in a car with Anthony Mackie beside you is training in and of itself, because he’s incredibly distracting and hilarious, but I think the training really comes quickly on set. I mean, you’ve got to get stuff done quickly. For the really dangerous stuff, obviously, we have stunt drivers. We try not to do too much stuff where it’s obviously a double.
“There’s just like more, bigger, better, more blowy-uppy.”
There are multiple versions of each car, and many of them are what we call a pod car. It’s the (same) car, but the mechanisms to drive it have been connected to a driver that’s actually sitting on top of the car in a cage. We are inside the car, but our stuff doesn’t work, so pumping the brakes or turning the wheel doesn’t work. You become connected to your driver in that you have to make it look real, so you’re taking these turns and driving straight at a wall at 65 miles an hour, and you’re really trusting those stunt drivers to be really good at what they do, and thankfully, they really are.
You mentioned Anthony Mackie. You guys had fantastic chemistry in the first season of Twisted Metal. What’s it like being back on set with him?
Stephanie Beatriz: I mean, he’s very enjoyable to play off of, and I think these two characters are built in a way that they really love dicking around with each other. I’m not sure I’m allowed to say that, but that’s what they like to do. They’re incredible. Their relationship is one that can be really antagonistic, but also can be really loving, and I think that, for a lot of people, when they fall in love, that is what they’re looking for. They’re looking for somebody to challenge them to level up in the world, and I think quiet and John do that for each other, and hopefully I do that with Anthony.
I don’t know what he (Mackie) is gonna say, but he does make me level up as an actor. I have to be on top of my game, and I think I hope I challenge him to be more funny because sometimes his jokes don’t land, and I’m happy to tell him that it wasn’t as funny as it could be. I don’t know if he likes that or not, but I think he’s really charming in this season in a way that I think is honest and real.
You see a lot of Jon’s journey in this season; you see him reconnecting with his sister. What’s that gonna be like? How does he feel about it, and what’s his relationship to her? Are they enemies or are they friends? Do they really know each other? I mean, it’s been a really long time since they saw each other. You didn’t even know she was alive, so it’s really fun to see the way that it plays out
A show like Twisted Metal—it’s based on a video game and set in a post-apocalyptic world. It gives everyone a chance to take really big swings, both in terms of storyline and set pieces. What’s it like showing up to set day after day and thinking, “Okay, this is what we’re doing today? Let’s go!”
Stephanie Beatriz: It’s amazing! It’s really thrilling and amazing and challenging and wonderful. There were days where you would walk onto the set and it was, I mean, I can’t give stuff away, but we would walk onto the set and be sort of beside ourselves with how cool it was and how neat it was to be living inside this thing.
There are a couple of episodes where I’m with Patti Guggenheim and Lisa Gilroy, who are playing Raven and Vermin, and the three of us would, between takes, we would just be grabbing each other’s hands. It was so fun. It was also amazing to see what could be built on these sets. We shot all of Season 2 in and around Toronto. It was really incredible to see the artists who are working with us, how they created these worlds that looked like straight out of games. They looked like they could be a level in a game that you unlocked. It was really cool.
You’ve had the opportunity to play some pretty good badasses on the big screen and small screen, but you always manage to have some vulnerability within the character. How important is it to you to play characters that aren’t so one note and are fleshed out like that?
Stephanie Beatriz: I feel like the vulnerability from the characters that I play comes from me just being weak and a real baby about stuff. I don’t know that I think about it. I don’t really plot it out or anything, but i mean nobody’s a true, total badass, you know? I’m trying to think of the most badass of the badass characters, and they all had soft sides.
“We would walk onto the set and be sort of beside ourselves with how cool it was.”
It’s impossible not to imbue these characters with heart and vulnerability—because you’re trying to make them real. You want someone watching your work to feel that reality. And how do you do that, other than by drawing from things that are real? When Quiet is thinking about Jon, it’s incredibly difficult, because she’s falling in love with him. I mean, why else would you get behind the wheel of a car—or sit beside someone in this world—if you didn’t absolutely trust them? The stakes are incredibly high.
I’ve got time for one last question. If Stephanie is in the apocalypse, what is the road trip music that you’re listening to to keep yourself level?
Stephanie Beatriz: First of all, if Stephanie’s in the apocalypse, she’s not going to survive, you know what I mean? The girlfriend likes to get her nails done, and I like a soft pillow for my head. But, if I had to have one album, it would probably be Led Zeppelin One. I think that’s probably gonna get me through the rest of my days pretty happy.
Twisted Metal Season 2 arrives on Paramount+ with a three-episode premiere on July 31. The remaining episodes will drop once a week on Thursdays after that. Fans can expect to be pulled into a wild world with chaos all around them and the comedy in the capable hands of people like Stephanie Beatriz. It should make for a lot of fun.
