Season 2 will start tomorrow on OCS in France and the English actress tells us how the delicious feminist series has evolved.
“This role is clearly the highlight of my career. I love the 70’s and I love this role.” Ophelia Lovibond is back as stubborn journalist Joyce Prigger, for season 2 of minx which begins in France this weekend, on OCS. Excellent series of manners passed under the radar last year, minx is a social and feminist comedy through and through, which recounts the launch of the first charming magazine for women, in a still very puritanical America, at the end of the 60’s.
Season 2 begins a few months later. We have changed decades. Joyce is no longer that naïve little budding journalist. She has taken the lead and her magazine too. “I missed Joyce! And then I missed wearing those cool costumes. I do not get enough”confides to us the 37-year-old English actress, who confirms in stride: “Of course, Joyce has changed a lot. She no longer writes the same magazine as that feminist pamphlet she composed on the floor of her bedroom all by herself. His magazine is now worth money. In season 2, she has to digest success, people asking her for autographs and all that. By the end of Season 1, she realized she had gotten a little lost along the way. She was diverted from her line of thinking, she who had so many important things to say. But she finds her voice…”
Of course, the one who deflected Joyce was Doug. A porn press industrialist, it was he who had the idea of transforming the journalist’s opinion magazine into a charming magazine aimed at a female readership. He had then gradually taken power. But Joyce regained control and in Season 2, “the dynamics kind of reversed“, resumes Ophelia Lovibond. “Moreover, she herself is much more studious. She is much less at his side and finally, we see them less together with Doug. Joyce is very involved and she is no longer there to laugh. She doesn’t really care anymore what Doug says or thinks. It no longer reaches him. Even if it’s not necessarily a good thing for the business, because they need each other…“
But make no mistake: minx is not a romantic comedy where the two opposites attract each other irrepressibly to the point of finally succumbing to a latent passion. The series aims to be more progressive and Ophelia Lovibond insists: nothing will happen between Joyce and Doug in season 2!
“It is clearly a purely professional relationship. They like each other, but they are frankly very different people deep down. We have already seen this “Will they / Won’t they” dynamic a thousand times in the series! Are they going to get together? This is not a question in Minx. We are in a purely platonic relationship that explores other things. This is not a romantic comedy!“
But minx is still a comedy. A light and fun series. “I want people to laugh. We’re in the fun” describes the actress. “It’s a series for everyone. It’s a feminist series, but it’s not just a feminist series. It has much more to offer: a gallery of incredible characters, humor, entertainment… This is not a moral lesson. And that’s also what I like, as a feminist: minx is a series that has things to say, but it knows how to say them while remaining entertaining!”
Moreover, as in season 1, season 2 does not hide behind its little finger and the naked bodies parade on the screen. Nothing but very banal for Ophelia Lovibond, who is amused that this nudity can be embarrassing: “A penis is just a penis. We are in a professional setting. Certainly, we can regularly have people walking around naked on the set, but all that is very supervised. It’s almost like choreography. We are not a nudist beach (laughs)!“
minxseason 2 in 10 episodes, to see in France on OCS from July 22, 2023.
