Homecoming's Chris Cooper and Hong Chau on the themes—and the Joan Cusack—of season two

One of the most intriguing threads left dangling from Homecoming’s first season was Hong Chau’s Audrey Temple, an administrative assistant at Geist with corporate ladder-climbing aspirations. After all, Chau’s made a habit of popping up in excellent television series and raising the stakes, so it stood to reason that Audrey was more than meets the eye. Season two fulfills that promise, quickly escalating Audrey’s rank, and getting her in the same room as Chris Cooper’s Leonard Geist, the company’s head honcho with quite a big chip on his shoulder. Undoubtedly, Chau and Cooper are two of the most reliable character actors working today, and Homecoming gets a lot of mileage out of watching them bounce off of one another. During last week’s virtual junket for the series, we spoke with the pair about the idealogical divide between their characters and how their contrasting beliefs fuel the themes of the season. The actors also told us about the joys of working with Joan Cusack—yet another all-time great character actor—and explained how her Francine Bunda further complicates the dynamic.