PRODIGAL SON's Bellamy Young: 'The Ground Opens Up Underneath' Jessica - Give Me My Remote : Give Me My Remote

PRODIGAL SON’s Bellamy Young: ‘The Ground Opens Up Underneath’ Jessica

February 2, 2021 by  

jessica learns ainsley killed nicholas

PRODIGAL SON: Bellamy Young in the “Bad Manners” episode of PRODIGAL SON airing Tuesday, Feb. 9 (9:01-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2021 Fox Media LLC Cr: Phil Caruso/FOX

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, February 2 episode of PRODIGAL SON, “Take Your Father to Work Day.”]

After months of secrets, coverups, and lies, a rug ended up being the key piece of the puzzle for PRODIGAL SON’s Jessica (Bellamy Young), as she tried to piece together what was going on with her kids.

At the end of season 1, Ainsley (Halston Sage), accidentally, brutally murdered Nicholas (Dermot Mulroney). But when Malcolm (Tom Payne) realized his sister went into a state of shock—and didn’t comprehend what she did—he took things into his own hands, recruiting their serial killer dad Martin (Michael Sheen), from afar, as Malcolm convinced Ainsley he had been the one to kill Nicholas.

But their pitch-perfect cover story for why Malcolm got rid of Jessica’s rug, down to the exact wine type that spilled, rang untrue to Jessica. She called Martin, suspicious that their kids were up to something—and he told her the truth, albeit sarcastically. However, it was enough to cause Jessica to tear up her home, looking for some kind of proof about what went down…which she found, and confronted Malcolm with.

While Malcolm tried to take the blame for Nicholas’ death, again, his mother immediately realized he was lying—and that Ainsley was the one to commit the crime.

“As an actor, I’m always grateful, especially as a female actor, when they let the journey be messy,” Young explains. “[I appreciate] when they don’t keep you on the outside and keep everything buttoned up, freshly ironed and everything clean; that’s not fun to play. And, honestly, not loving. You don’t keep the people you love on the outside. So I was really very grateful, as an actor and as representing the character, that Jessica was going to get to be on the inside. Even though it’s horrible and ugly, the truth is always better.”

“And you want to be able to—especially when you love people like that—fight for them,” she continues. “You want your chance to save them; you want to rush into the fray, for the people that you love. And so if she had been deprived of that, that would that would almost have been worse.”

So, what comes next? Young breaks down Jessica’s heartbreak and fear for her daughter, an upcoming confrontation with Martin, and getting to have a member of the SCANDAL family come visit her new show.



Jessica has often tried to stay in quasi-denial about what’s going on with her family. How is she coping with her bubble being punctured and having to face what Ainsley did?
We leave her in shock. I don’t think coping is even an option yet. I think there’s the paralysis; a pitchfork got taken to the little bubble she’s been living in.

And the bubble wasn’t cozy. [Laughs.] The bubble was, “My son might be a serial killer like his father; I’m going to spend every waking moment making sure that he isn’t. If I’m not looking at him directly, I’m side-eying. I’m always focused on my Malcolm, nature-nurture, what’s going to happen. Thank God Ainsley’s this perfect child.” And now… [::makes an explosion noise::] Everything is the upside down.

And God bless her, I’m glad it didn’t happen to her when she was older, because I don’t think her heart could have taken it. [Laughs.] It would have been too much. She’s like, peace out, I’ve seen too much. But I think, in that moment, there’s so much to take in for her, because she’s so grateful for what Malcolm is doing. He’s trying to lie for his sister.

All the 20 years of fear, it’s sitting under that dome at the dining room table. And then he lied. And I think that moment, she doesn’t know why, but the ground opens up underneath her, because she knows he’d only do that valiantly. He proved himself to be the wonderful man she believes he is. But that means that the unutterable is true. And so I think where we leave her in this episode is in bed with a killer. She’s been living in quarantine, in the house, with what she feared all along—that one of her children could turn out to be like their father, and she didn’t even notice.

That’s the thing about mothers: they know us better than anybody in the world, they can read us in a nanosecond. But if we can pull something over on them, then they’ll never forgive themselves for not seeing it. She can’t believe she didn’t see it. And so I think she spends the rest of the night, after this episode, wide awake, terrified, in bed next to her little angelic, perfect, little beautiful daughter, going through every moment of her childhood. Every moment she spent with her father. Every moment since then, when she’s, like, eating a Cornish hen strangely or whatever that she missed when she was focused on Malcolm.



We’ve seen Jessica in fix-it mode in the past. Now that she knows this is a problem for Ainsley—and her daughter doesn’t realize what happened—how will she be handling things?
Well, that’s the thing, I don’t think she’s even gotten there yet. I think she literally—mind, heart, spirit, soul—is paralyzed. Next week, we start getting into how can I manage this? And she’s going to try all the things she tried with Malcolm: keep them separate from the world, contain the danger, watch for the signs, get her out of the country, get her out of the city, control her. So all of that. Everything that she’s put on Malcolm all these years is suddenly going to have to shift to Ainsley.

But Ainsley doesn’t know, so she’s going to have to do it in a fun way, like, “Hey, nothing weird, let’s just go to Siberia for the next six months. Nothing strange at all.” We’ll get to the planning. And she’s very good at it. She being doing it for 20 years, but it’s been all focused on Malcolm. It’s just really a whole new, desperately disappointing world, to think that her little girl, her perfect little girl, could do this.

jessica learns ainsley killed nicholas

PRODIGAL SON: L-R: Bellamy Young and Michael Sheen in the “Bad Manners” episode of PRODIGAL SON airing Tuesday, Feb. 9 (9:01-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2021 Fox Media LLC Cr: Phil Caruso/FOX

Though it was done in a manipulative way, Martin did tell her the truth. How does it color their next interaction when they come face-to-face next week?
I think there’s going to be Hell to pay. If it were a phone call this week, she is going to have to stare that man in the eye and have a little come to Jesus [moment]. The fact that he knew?! She doesn’t really have time to channel all the venom/anger/absolutely burn it down to the ground with fire that she has in her heart over that, because she’s trying to take care of Ainsley, and that is her only priority right now. But believe me, she’s going to take an hour out and drive over there and she is going. to. have. a. word. So, yeah, that’s where we meet them next week.

On a lighter note, your former SCANDAL co-star Kate Burton is in the next episode. Did you get to reunite on-screen, or was it more of a situation where you said hello from afar?
Sadly, it’s COVID, so I couldn’t even do that, because [we didn’t have scenes]! But we did celebrate the joy of proximity. I didn’t have anything to do with that storyline, but I told everybody to take good care of her. She was, of course, a pistol, like she always is. So she just crushed the character and did a great job, and I can’t wait to see it.

The first day, she was like, “It’s like SCANDAL again. I got to work and they handed me a monologue.” She did a great, great, great job. I wish that all my SCANDAL fam could cycle through.

PRODIGAL SON, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox

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