VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: For All Mankind’s Shantel VanSanten & Cynthy Wu Reveal How Joel Kinnaman Gagged Himself On Spaghetti

For All Mankind stars Shantel VanSanten and Cynthy Wu revealed their favorite scenes from Season 2 and what it was like working with co-sar Joel Kinnaman, in their new uInterview.

“In Season 1, it picks up where the Americans and the Russians are in a race to the moon, and the Russians actually land first,” VanSanten told uInterview’s Erik Meers, “and then it sets up this alternate history timeline, and basically you watch the way that by losing the moon America ends up gaining and winning in other places.”

Season 2, which dropped on February 19 on Apple TV+, jumps 10 years from Season 1, to 1983 when American astronauts must figure out how to move forward now that the Russians have a weapon on the moon.

The actress explained that one of the show’s creators Ronald D. Moore describes the story as “being able to have the space program we were promised, and the ways that we could have advanced social issues, women’s rights, technology for the better.”

VanSanten plays Karen Baldwin, married to astronaut Ed, played by Kinnaman. In Season 2, the couple adopts Kelly, played by Wu.

“It’s been wonderful just working with these incredible people,” she said, “and getting to tell the storyline of an adopted daughter.”

Wu described her favorite scene, working alongside VanSanten and Kinnaman, “I loved filming Episode 3 with Chantel and Joel … it was such a deep and meaningful episode for the characters to explore, and so that was such a treat as an actor to be in a room with such strong, powerful actors to play opposite.”

VanSanten gushed about the new dynamic between the family, now that Ed is back on Earth.

“It was such a different, wonderful dynamic this season for me especially to actually physically be in the same room working with him,” she said, “and then to add in the dynamic of having Cynthy come in as our adopted daughter, and to kind of create this family dynamic.”

She also revealed that Kinnaman is “such a character.”

“And when we were shooting the opening scene in Episode 1,” VanSanten remembered, “where we were having like spaghetti night dinner … and I remember he would just eat these mouthfuls of spaghetti, and so much parmesan cheese, and we kept telling him, ‘Okay Joel pace yourself,” he’s like, ‘Ah no, no, no we won’t be shooting this for long.’ Nine hours later he’s like ‘I might need a bucket,’ because this is getting extremely disgusting, having cold spaghetti and mouthful after mouthful every take.”