When The Night Manager’s second season arrives, probably around the middle of next year, its previous award-winning director will not have her name on the credits.
Oscar winner Susanne Bier helmed the first season into a hit that debuted on the BBC and was sold to more than 180 countries. Stars Olivia Colman and Tom Hiddleston are set to reprise their roles but the director will be Georgi Banks-Davies.
Bier told The Sunday Times newspaper that, although she enjoys the challenge of making TV series (she also directed The Undoing and the forthcoming Netflix drama The Perfect Couple), she did not want to sign up for season two of adaptation of the John le Carre novel. She said:
“I’ve never done the second season of anything. I guess I’d feel, ‘How do I do this differently,’ which is what I’d be scared of — but not in a good way.
“I’m not ruling out that I’d ever do a second season of something, but my instinct was to not do it.” She added that she was happy with the choice of a female director for the show’s second outing. “That was really important because it’s such a male story that it needs to have a balanced perspective.”
As well as The Night Manager, Bier previously directed The Undoing, and the film Bird Box. She won her Oscar for the 2010 Danish film In a Better World. The Perfect Couple, starring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber and Meghann Fahy and Eve Hewson, comes to Netflix on September 5.