Snowpiercer season 2 is about a power struggle for control of the mighty super train and Miss Audrey (Lena Hall) finds herself caught in the middle. Mr. Wilford (Sean Bean), the charismatic billionaire Messiah, has emerged from the cold to take back Snowpiercer, but standing in his way is Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs), who runs the train’s fragile democratic government.
Meanwhile, the return of Mr. Wilford, who was thought dead for the last seven years, has rattled the normally unflappable Miss Audrey. The calculating chanteuse who runs Snowpiercer’s Nightcar has a complex history with Mr. Wilford and she isn’t coping with the ghosts of her past suddenly returning. In Snowpiercer season 2’s first 3 episodes, Miss Audrey has been a shell of herself as Mr. Wilford sinks his claws into the train, but she is about to get much more screen time in the upcoming episodes, which will delve into her past with the man she intimately knows as Joseph.
Tony Award-winning singer and actress Lena Hall spoke to Screen Rant about Miss Audrey’s season 2 struggles, who she thinks has the upper hand between Layton and Wilford, Mr. Wilford’s bathtub, and why Miss Audrey is the Cher of Snowpiercer.
Hi Lena, first question: How’s the weed on Snowpiercer? [A subplot on Snowpiercer season 2 involves a black market pipeline for marijuana from Big Alice to Snowpiercer]:
Lena Hall: (laughs) The weed on Snowpiercer is very good. It’s probably really horrible but beggars can’t be choosers, essentially. You get what you can get. I would imagine it’s probably lab-made if it came from Big Alice. The Big Alice Special. There should be a new strain that should be called Big Alice. Not even in Snowpiercer, but just in the general public.
Yeah, why not? There’s Snowpiercer beer now. There’s an actual brew.
Lena Hall: Yeah, exactly! I personally, me as a human being, as Lena Hall, I don’t do any drugs, actually. I’ve been sober for five years. But Miss Audrey, however… she misses it! (laughs)
Miss Audrey doesn’t seem to be taking the fact that Mr. Wilford is back too well. She’s very different from how we’ve seen her in season 1.
Lena Hall: Yes, there’s a long history between Mr. Wilford and her, and we will discover more of that, especially when episodes 4 and 5 air. Those really dive a lot deeper into that past. I think for Miss Audrey, [Wilford] just disappeared. It wasn’t like she got any closure on that. It wasn’t like she was able to heal from all the scars and wounds from that relationship. It’s a very poisonous relationship. They bring out pretty much the worst in each other. And she’s been away from that for so long but never actually had to close the book.
So she suddenly has a rush of all of these very mixed emotions coming back and she doesn’t know how she’s really going to handle it. Especially since they’ve just gone through a revolution. She’s just lost so many people that she loves so she’s pretty vulnerable emotionally right now, along with a lot of the other main characters. Everyone is very, very vulnerable on Snowpiercer right now because we just went through a huge change and a massive loss of life and a fight. So we’re weak. We’re weakened from that. And to suddenly have to face [Wilford], which is an even, I guess, foe, you would say. Although he’s not a foe to all. To some, he’s a savior. But to all of a sudden face this new unknown, it is a lot for everyone to handle. Some of us in particular have a bigger hill to climb with it.
Mr. Wilford has been an amazing, charismatic, rogue character, but he also does a lot of disturbing stuff. The way he messes with Alex’s mind, and I am not over the bathtub scene with Kevin! Does Mr. Wilford do a lot of business in the tub?
Lena Hall: Well, I mean, a lot of us do our best thinking on a treadmill, or working out, or on a walk out in the park. Mr. Wilford does his best conjuring of plans and his best manipulation in the bathtub. (laughs) And we’ll find out more about the bathtub. It plays a very significant role in season 2.
It seems to. It seems very prominent.
Lena Hall: If you think about it: Everyone’s been trapped on a train for seven years and you wonder about their living situation. There’s not a lot of room. So I wouldn’t imagine anyone has a tub unless you’re primo primo on the train. Even First Class, I would feel, wouldn’t necessarily have bathtubs. They’d have really big showers. People in Third have communal showers, and people in Second have those tiny RV bathrooms. Only Mr. Wilford has a bathtub in my mind. And his bathtub is made of a beautiful stone. It’s probably the most expensive bathtub you could possibly have. And he loves to take very luxurious baths, and that’s where he does his best thinking, his best plotting, his best planning. It’s where he clears his head. It’s his most personal space.
There’s also the greater development going on outside of the train. Melanie discovered the Earth is warming up. How do you think Miss Audrey feels about the prospect that the future is outside?
Lena Hall: There is hope there but it does feel fleeting. It’s one of those things: How much is it gonna cost them as the human race to recolonize and restart the Earth again? It seems daunting, especially after what they just went through. So while it is an amazing concept, it’s almost like the concept, as we sit here now, of someone being like, “Life will go back to normal. We won’t be in a pandemic anymore eventually.” When we started back in March, that seemed very soon, that seemed like two weeks away. “This isn’t gonna last that long.” The longer we sit in this pandemic, the more far away that seems, and the harder it is to grasp, and the harder it is to wrap yourself around that hope.
I think they’re in the same place [in terms of] the idea of getting off the train. This is their home now. This is what they know now. They can barely remember the before times. I mean, we’ve only been in this thing for less than a year and I am having a hard time remembering things before COVID. So imagine seven years. And I think for Miss Audrey, she has so much more to deal with as far as the elephant in the room that is Mr. Wilford that her brain can’t even wrap itself around the idea of getting off the train.
We also found out in episode 2 that Josie is alive, which was the biggest shock. Is that something Miss Audrey would have been aware of or known?
Lena Hall: The mystery person maybe she kind of thought [it was Josie], putting two and two together. But not much time has passed, we are literally picking up season 1 left off so no time has passed. As the next three episodes have aired, there’s not a lot of time that’s passing. So the discovery of Josie and knowing that Josie is alive, I think we’re all discovering that at the same time. At the time she was discovered, she was a Jane Doe. No one really knew who she was from the Tail. The only person who would know was Melanie and maybe the Jackboots. So I don’t think it’s common knowledge, I think that was an assumption that was passed around the train. But now people are going to discover together that she’s still alive and what that means for Layton.
Speaking of Layton, Miss Audrey is acquainted with both Wilford and Layton. Who does she think has the edge between them?
Lena Hall: Unfortunately, Mr. Wilford has the edge because he lacks the one thing that is a major downfall for Layton and that is empathy. Where Wilford can take a life and not care, and actually kind of get off on it, as he did with Kevin, so much has to happen before Layton can kill someone in order to save himself. So there’s a big difference between this psychopath and someone who is trying to lead and be faced with these very difficult decisions.
It’s like Melanie as well. While she can appear to be a monster, she has such a good conscience and it’s really hard for her. She’s trying to do the right thing for the good of everyone and doing that blurs the lines between some major morals that she has. She has to make really difficult decisions. You have to crack an egg to make an omelet. Whereas Mr. Wilford: He doesn’t have to crack an egg but he will!
That’s actually a perfect way to describe him.
Lena Hall: So that’s why Wilford has the edge because he lacks that empathy.
Snowpiercer season 2 introduced some great new characters. There’s Alexandra, the Headwoods, Kevin, and Icy Bob. Can you give us a bit of a preview if Miss Audrey gets to interact with any of Big Alice’s people later in the season?
Lena Hall: Yes, she does get to interact with them. She’s like a fish out of water on that train. Eventually, she does her thing and she, of course, is Miss Audrey. You cannot take that away from Miss Audrey! She’s always Miss Audrey. I always think of Miss Audrey as Cher. If Cher was the only celebrity who survived the apocalypse. That’s Miss Audrey. She’s like the only celebrity who survived the apocalypse, other than Mr. Wilford who built the train and the important people on the train like Melanie.
People come to Miss Audrey with their problems and she ended up coming up with a way to help people through them. In episode 3, she doesn’t know too much about what’s going to happen, but later on, she’s ready to reign supreme again.
