'I don’t think it’s going to be what you thought it was going to be. But it's juicy,' Chalke teased in ET's exclusive interview.
Tully and Kate are back! The Firefly Lane besties are gearing up for the second and final season of the decades-spanning Netflix drama, and only ET exclusively premieres a first look at the official trailer for the final 16 episodes.
In the revealing two-minute trailer, Katherine Heigl's Tully Hart and Sarah Chalke's Kate Mularkey open with a promise to always have each other's backs no matter what, a promise viewers will recall from the season 1 finale that will be broken years later. "Promise me that we will always be there for each other," Tully says to her best friend. "Cross my heart," Kate assures her.
There's a lot to unravel in the final season, as the trailer addresses many of the questions raised in the finale -- from the aftermath of what happened to Johnny (Ben Lawson) following his time in Iraq to Tully taking a detour in her career after being sued for walking away from her talk show and igniting a search for her father to Tully's spicy fling with a new sportscaster (Ignacio Serricchio).
Of course, the biggest mystery of the season looms, as an estranged Tully and Kate -- dressed in all black at the funeral of Kate's father -- look at each other with pained expressions before Kate suddenly walks up the steps into the church, leaving a teary Tully outside. In another heartbreaking scene, the (temporarily ex-)BFFs walk past each other without so much as uttering a single word.
The jam-packed trailer also teases a potentially fatal car accident, as remnants of a flatline is heard seconds after the scene cuts to black. Should viewers be worried?
ET's Denny Directo exclusively spoke with Heigl and Chalke for their first interview about season 2, where they promised all the questions swirling in people's brains for the past 20-plus months -- most notably what tore Tully and Kate apart -- will be directly addressed. (Watch ET's extended 8-minute interview with Heigl and Chalke by pressing play on the video to the left.)
"You’re going to get all of the answers and it's crazy," Chalke teased. "I don’t think it’s going to be what you thought it was going to be. But it's juicy and you’re going to laugh and you’re going to cry and you’re going to do all of the things."
"It's going to feel very similar to season 1 and it’s moving through the decades and the timelines so we'll get to journey with them through all that backstory that led us to that moment, plus some other things," Heigl added. "John coming back from Iraq and Kate trying to deal with him post this traumatic experience, Tully in a storm effect from her career and being sued and not sure what she’s going to do moving forward. So there’s some great character drama for all of us that we go through this season and with the audience. Like Sarah said, there’s just so much. I don’t want to give anything away but it’s so good."
Watch the full Firefly Lane season 2 trailer below.
With Firefly Lane's final season split up into two parts -- the first nine episodes dropping Dec. 2, while the remaining seven will be released sometime in 2023 -- Chalke revealed there is a major cliffhanger at the end of Part 1 that will leave people talking.
"Yeah it does," she confirmed when asked about a big twist in episode 9. "It does need to be slowed down and you'll see why when you watch it. It's a giant cliffhanger so that and some space and then the next round [of episodes drop]. It's actually really cool to film 16 episodes in a row so it allowed for time and space... I think we really needed it to get to everything that happens in the book and really dive into like Johnny and Kate's love story, having found love at work."
The pair also reflected on this being the final chapter of Firefly Lane, with Chalke acknowledging that it was "hard" to know that this was it.
"We had gotten all so close. It's part of what I loved about getting to film this season, it’s such a different experience coming back and filming a second season versus starting a new show, a new job because you already have that foundation. Obviously, it’s not always the case, but it certainly was in this one," Chalke said. "Everybody, it just worked. It was one of those best-case scenarios where all of the elements came together where you love the character you get to play and the writing and the show and the story but then also the people. We had some pretty good epic game nights from my house that turned into long night dance parties. It was just a rare situation like that so it wasn’t lost on any of us that this will be hard to replicate, and we were towards the last four weeks of filming [where] it was starting to get real that that was the case."
"Especially with the content of this story, the intensity of this friendship and these relationships," Heigl chimed in. "Letting it go was, yeah it was hard. And we went in knowing this is it. There’s an end to this story and we're telling it so we knew and I feel like I did and Sarah did and I think the rest of the cast did too, and the crew just really savored it and really tried to be present and be in the moment with everyone because we knew it wouldn’t be forever."
Adding intrigue to the series are new cast additions Serricchio, India de Beaufort, Greg Germann and Jolene Purdy, some of whom make appearances in the season 2 trailer.
"There are some fun new characters this season. I worked most with Ignacio, who plays Danny, and he's just extraordinary," Heigl previewed, adding that their presence "adds just a whole other dimension of joyfulness." "He's so much fun, too much fun quite frankly. We'd be like, 'Quiet Ignacio, we're working.' It's a great, fun relationship for Tully and I don't want to give too much away but it's one of those really fun-to-watch banter. Greg Germann was great, so good as always."
As for what Heigl and Chalke want viewers to take away or remember when they do sit down to stream the final season, it's that Tully and Kate's friendship -- though strong -- is complicated.
"It’s one of my favorite parts about it. You see this perfectly imperfect friendship that’s real. It’s not glossy and obviously where we start off in this season, it’s really rough. It’s at the hardest point in their friendship that they’ve ever been and you honestly don’t know if they will come back from it," Chalke said. "To have two people that are so inseparable and each other’s everything go through something that big..."
"It would be so fun to get every new script because very much like season 1 these ones all end on a cliffhanger, so I'd finish one and I'd be like, 'Oh wait, what’s going to happen next?'"
Heigl admitted it was difficult for her to get through the trailer, as it dug into Tully and Kate's fractured friendship.
"This trailer, when I watched it, started making me cry again because I missed them so much and the way they started to feel very real to me felt, Tully and Kate, Tate, whatever you want to call them," she shared. "That particular part of the storyline was really hard for me to show up and not have that connection between these two that I had. It started to feel like they’re real people and it’s a real thing and now they’re mad at each other and it was hard. It only got harder."
If there's one crucial message Heigl hopes people grab from Firefly Lane, it's that female friendship is precious and to do everything possible to maintain those bonds.
"I think this show and this relationship, and even the relationship that Sarah and I formed through working together, it reminded me how valuable and how important those female friendships are and Sarah has a best friend that she’s had her whole life. I have a best friend I’ve had my whole life. Now we have each other and we are each other’s best friends," she said. "And I want that so much for my girls because I think it’s difficult for women to form those bonds sometimes, especially at young ages. Those tumultuous teenage years when everybody’s just trying to figure out who they are and there’s the mean girl's syndrome, there’s the clique popularity contest that can ruin your faith in that kind of relationship. This reminded me, like no, those relationships do exist, they are important and they are important to foster and I’m really pushing my daughters to be that girl for someone else."
Firefly Lane drops Part 1 of the final season Friday, Dec. 2 on Netflix.
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