When it comes to television comedies, season two is when things start to get interesting. Adults star Amita Rao feels the sentiment’s true for the FX comedy, which returned for its second season yesterday (Aug. The 27-year-old actress and comedian plays Issa, the delightfully confident and outrageously funny member of the core Adults gang.

When season one ended, Issa’s boyfriend Paul Baker, played Related Stories Next Big Thing 'The Last Sunrise' Star Maia Reficco Is Finally Facing Her Fears Next Big Thing Jonathan Daviss Thinks You Will Be Surprised With His Post-'Outer Banks' Role The only problem is that Paul Baker and Anton have palpable chemistry with one another that even Issa can’t deny, and that dynamic plays big into the wildly funny second season of the show. For related coverage, explore our detailed analysis on Technology and Digital Systems.

Love Triangle Done Before Updates

The love triangle has been done before in comedies, and Rao’s more interested in dynamics outside of the romantic relationship. “What was always been interesting to me was the tension between Issa and Anton as best friends,” Rao tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent Zoom.

“Me and Owen had a lot of fun talking about what was shared and unsaid behind the scenes because it never really made sense to us that they wouldn’t have debriefed about this.” Rao knew that Adults was special from moment one.

“I hadn’t seen a show that really encapsulated a Gen Z ethos [like Adults did],” she says. When the show premiered, she and her co-star Malik Elassal called each other to talk about the “energy shift” that happened. It was different than she was used to working as a stand-up comedian.

She adds, “When you’re doing a live show, you feel like an instant energy exchange.” While Rao puts a lot of herself into Issa, par for the course for a comedy like Adults , she is not the character she plays on television. “People totally do believe that I am Issa,” she says, explaining she can instantly tell Below, Rao speaks with THR about Adults season two, balancing comedy and acting and her perfect day off.

What Show Made Want Updates

What was it about this show that made you want to be a part of it so much? The writing was really tight and really funny. The premise was really good.

I remember when I first read it, I felt like I could add to it. That’s always the feeling I like when I read something because sometimes I’ll read something that I think is so funny, but something about my style or my rhythm will lead me to feel like I can add to it.

As someone who creates my own work and produces my own comedy, it’s important to me that I can add to the cumulative process. Do you find it to be difficult ever, as someone who does your own stuff and produces your own comedy, to then have to live in someone else’s world for a bit?

How do you work through it? It’s hard because, on one hand, they do want you to imbue it with a lot of yourself, especially on this show. But I think learning when to speak up has been the lesson [for me].

It is definitely a big switch. Going from producing my own shows all the time and being all on the same page and level to switching to TV, which is so hierarchical. [It’s the] opposite of improvising, an anti-hierarchical craft.

[Improvising] is about making sure everyone is on the same ground and equal. We put on a power dynamic in a scene, [but] it’s for the purpose of the scene and not the nature of the craft and the art making.

TV and film is so different, but the moments we can access that kind of pure egalitarian play is ultimately what we still are aspiring for, but there just is a hierarchy that has to happen when things are operating at that speed.

You all portray the chemistry of a friend group so well. Did that feel instant? To FX’s credit, they did what they did with The Bear to us.

With The Bear , they paid for them to go to culinary school for three months before. For us, they essentially paid for us to be there a month early and get drunk and party. That’s what we did for a month prior to the pilot.

Wow, that’ll bring you close. Obviously, they didn’t know we were going to get drunk, but the hotels were on their tab, and we ordered a lot of martinis, so it’s kind of what happened. But we got close fast.

Being at such similar inflection points in your career is really helpful. Me and Owen got so, so, so close, and Malik is a comedian too, so we ended up connecting a lot about comedy stuff. Even with Lucy and Jack, again, this was our first big thing we were doing all together.

Owen had done a couple other things, same with Malik too. I don’t know; you just don’t spend that much time with people and feel that unmoored and not cling to one another. What does a perfect day off look like to you?

Whether you’re shooting Adults or not. A perfect day off for me would be going to swim. I fucking love swimming.

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I love a lake and swimming in a lake. It’s Mother Nature’s womb. I like to be in the water.

It really helps me engage my mind and my subconscious. I would take a friend to go swim to a lake, and then we would bring sandwiches and books and sketch pads. We would spend the whole day swimming when the sun’s out, and then drawing and reading when the sun’s away behind clouds.

What would you like to read? I just finished Miranda July’s short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You . I’m She’s so unbelievably brilliant.

I remember this one quote she had, “If I did not define myself for myself, I would be crunched into the fantasies of others and eaten alive,” which is just so apt. I’m Paul Kalanithi. It was a book published posthumously.

He’s a neurosurgeon who developed stage four metastatic lung cancer, and it’s about how his relationship with time changed as he was dying. That’s a lot of heavy stuff. Do you to stay away from comedy and the light stuff because you do that in your job, do you think?

I think part of it is, but I love watching animated comedy shows. I love animation. It’s one of my favorite art forms.

But I feel like so much of me is made of grief, and it’s where so many of my interests lie. I don’t necessarily have the scar tissue in me. I just don’t have the feeling where I want to be away from it.

I really like thinking about death because I think it was such a fear, an acute fear for so long, so now it’s just where my body and brain live. Are you a person who gravitates toward dark stuff, or are you not really like that?

I’m a little bit of both, but I always find it interesting given your job, that’s why I ask.

Some other comedians have shared that since it’s your job, they tend to not engage outside of it. That’s definitely part of it. A lot of my funniest friends don’t watch comedy at all, especially not when they’re performing comedy, when they’re acting in a show.

When I watch a lot of comedy, it can feel a little dissociative. It’s not even comedy, it’s when I watch a lot of really happy things. It’s the happy more than the comedy.

It’s not the comedy because I actually watch a lot of comedy. I watch a lot of stand-up too. It really is the happy more so than the comedy.

There’s something about the stuff that lives more in the in between and the gray or the darker that just feels more, I don’t know, yokes you to the present. These are supposed to be the fluffy questions. ( Laughs ).

We made it a little darker. It’s OK. ( Laughs ).

How do you continue to love comedy and writing even though it’s work? With comedy and with acting, how I keep it alive is just really trying to remember what true connection and true presence feels like because those for me are the moments of magic I’ve experienced in the world.

Those moments take it away from it being about my job too.

It’s like when I see someone in a scene I think is so much funnier than me, when I’m in an improv set where I really feel like I’m in the group mind of a machine, when I’m performing with my comedy partner, when I’m devoted to the art of it and what actually makes me feel devoted to the art of it is connecting with a person or a group in a really full bodied whole way and being.

Those moments are the moments I think keep the magic alive.