J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek make space travel look easy in Prime Video's Night Sky

It's no big deal, just find a portal to another planet in your backyard!

By Katie Chow  |  April 7, 2022 | 8:49pm
Aux News Night Sky
J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek make space travel look easy in Prime Video's Night Sky
Night Sky Graphic: Prime Video

Space travel: what if it wasn’t all about making complex calculations and being on the cutting edge of technology? In the new Prime Video show Night Sky, a means to get off-world could be right in your backyard.

Starring J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek, the eight-part series follows a Midwestern couple in their 70s who have a portal to another planet hidden in a shed on their property. Franklin and Irene York have been enjoying their retirement with regular jaunts into space, where they passively take in the extraterrestrial landscape from an observation chamber–until the mysterious Jude (Chai Hansen) ends up in their Illinois home.

The portal is a secret that the Yorks have been hiding for 20 years, and the chemistry between the veteran actors became a crucial element to the story.

“One of the most important things was going to be selling the length of that relationship on screen,” writer Holden Miller says in an interview with Town & Country. “Unsurprisingly, they were both able to do that right away. The sense of shared history between those two characters really sings, and the feeling that they’ve been in this marriage for that long–all credit to Sissy and J.K. It’s really the beating heart of the series and they were both incredible to work with.”

Love stories featuring older couples have been at the heart of some of the top sci-fi projects already released this year. Burt (Christopher Walken) and Irving (John Turturro)’s forbidden workplace romance brings warmth to the emotionally detached world of Severance, while Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) pursue each other across the multiverse in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

“Aging is a completely universal experience that hopefully we will all be lucky enough to experience and think about,” Miller says. “It was a way to access a lot of the themes that we were interested in: mortality, love, family dynamics.”

All eight episodes of Night Sky will be released on Prime Video on May 20.

 
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