TV Talk: Filmed-in-Pittsburgh 'American Rust' streams season 2 on Prime Video in March

PASADENA, Calif. — After Showtime canceled filmed-in-Pittsburgh “American Rust” following its first season, Amazon’s Freevee said it would pick up the crime drama starring Jeff Daniels. But Amazon’s Prime Video announced Thursday the show will stream on Prime (not Freevee), confirming my reporting from late last year.

The new season, called “American Rust: Broken Justice,” debuts March 28 on Prime Video, picking up from the first-season cliffhanger where Buell, Pa., sheriff Del Harris (Daniels) killed a drug dealer (and a drug-dealing pharmacist) who was going to testify against the wrongly imprisoned Billy Poe (Alex Neustaedter), son of Harris’ beloved Grace (Maura Tierney), for the murder of crooked cop Pete Novick (Jim True-Frost). Del arranged the crime scene to make it look like the dealer shot Jackson. Novick was actually killed by Isaac English (David Alvarez) who came to the defense of Billy.

Harris’ deputy, Steve Park (Rob Yang), suspected his boss was up to something while Harris was questioned by Pittsburgh cops about an earlier shooting as Isaac, who’d been on the run, returned to Buell and tried to turn in the wrench he used to kill Novick. And elderly Henry English (Bill Camp) overdosed.

The show’s season two cast includes Daniels, Tierney, Alvarez, Neustaedter, Yang, Julie Mayorga (“Rare Objects”) as Lee English, Mark Pellegrino (“Supernatural”) as Virgil Poe and Kyle Beltran (“Inventing Anna”) as Detective Fisher.

Mild (but unsurprising) spoiler: Bill Camp, whose Henry English appeared on the brink of death at the end of season one, is no longer in the cast.

In a Zoom interview Wednesday, co-showrunners Dan Futterman and Adam Rapp teased that viewers should expect to see Henry English as a ghost.

“We had a lot of close calls at the end of season one, so it was just a question of who we could reasonably bring back,” Futterman said.

“We love him so much that my bone-headed idea was what if we brought him back and he played another character and had a Swedish accent,” Rapp said.

That did not happen.

Rapp said filming on “American Rust” season two, which shot in Western Pennsylvania from November 2022 to April 2023, went “surprisingly smoothly” even though they filmed largely in the winter.

“We had pretty good weather, a few snow days and we got the snow on camera,” Rapp said. “I think our first season was harder in terms of weather.”

Joining the cast for season two are Luna Lauren Velez (Capt. LaGuerta on “Dexter”) as Detective Angela Burgos, Marc Menchaca (“Ozark”) as Vic Walker, Nick Sandow (“Orange Is the New Black”) as Mike Orr, Britian Seibert (“A Murder at the End of the World”) as Cynthia Frazier, Christopher Denham (“Billions”) as Russell Wolff, Amelia Workman (“FBI”) as Rinna Bransford, Leon Addison Brown (“The Knick”) as Chief Bolt, and Sara Lindsey (“High Desert”) as Maya Park.

In season two, a string of seemingly unrelated murders that hint at a larger conspiracy threatens the town.

While season one began with a slow (re: too slow) burn, Rapp said that won’t be the pace at the start of season two.

“We wanted to embrace creating faster plotlines, more mystery,” he said. “We really loved the slow burn of season one and how (the faster pace) kicks in after (episodes) three, four and five but we wanted to start with a gallop. There’s more bodies, the procedural elements are more at the forefront than they were last season. There’s more of a police detective force from Pittsburgh proper that takes on these mysteries and I think that will feel like a faster pace, but we also didn’t want to sacrifice character stuff or the character nuance we loved so much.”

“American Rust” is based on Philipp Meyer’s critically acclaimed novel of the same name. The show’s first season is expected to be available to stream as part of a Prime Video subscription sometime before the start of season two but no timeline for when it will become available has been announced.

‘Community’ movie?

Following a session at the Television Critics Association winter 2024 press tour for Peacock’s upcoming limited series “Apples Never Fall” (March 14), based on the Liane Moriaty novel, actress Alison Brie professed no knowledge on the status of the long-gestating movie based on the 2009-15 TV comedy “Community” she starred in.

“I see headlines about (‘Community’ star) Donald (Glover) talking about the storyline, but I certainly don’t know anything else – nothing that I could say publicly,” said Brie who in her youth worked one summer at the pool bar at the hotel home of press tour, then the Ritz Carlton, now the Langham Huntington Pasadena. “It’s always surreal to come back here for this (press) stuff. I kind of love it.”

Brie said they’re trying to coordinate the busy schedule of the “Community” cast so they can make the movie come to fruition. The series, set at a community college, focused on disbarred lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) and other members of a study group, including Brie’s over-achiever Annie Edison and Britta Perry, played by 2000 Mt. Lebanon High school grad Gillian Jacobs.

“I will be happy to see the gang get back together,” Brie said. “I do hope that Annie still has a crush on Jeff because I have always loved playing out that back-and-forth with Joel.”