From bridesmaids dressed up as nuns to pissing off drag queens in the queue for the club, instant TV classic Big Mood is back for a second chapter.
But the mood for season two is rather different to it's predecessor. Lydia West and Nicola Coughlan return, but as distant friends who were once inseparable. We witness something of a friendship break up, and a subsequent “will they or won't they get back together?” dynamic as the season progresses.
“I watched the screeners and I didn't realise how distant they are the whole series because we're in all the scenes together. I didn't see how much physical distance [there was between us],” Lydia tells Glamour. “There was this real conversation with our director [Rebecca Asher] that until the final episode, there was a divide between them.” Nicola adds that herself and Lydia – who play dysfunctional best friends Maggie and Eddie respectively – were barely in the same shot until the series was drawing to a close.
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“It's tough because I think we've all had those friendship breakups and it is really heart-wrenching," Nicola says. "You're just like, 'Oh, you're both imperfect. Just give one another a chance.'”
Season one of Big Mood quickly became a fan favourite upon its release in spring 2024, telling the story of the cataclysmic impact a person’s mental health crises may have on their friendships – on Maggie and Eddie’s close bond, more specifically, as Nicola's Maggie struggles with bipolar disorder.
Since Glamour sat down with Lydia and Nicola to talk about the first chapter, Lydia has become a mother of two and Nicola has helmed her own series of Bridgerton and starred in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. On the day I meet the pair, Nicola has also been announced to be starring in a the latest instalment of the “I am” anthology series, which will tackle the manosphere. The Big Mood stars sat down with Glamour to discuss returning to their characters, friendship breakups and remaining mental health stigmas that must be addressed.
Glamour: How did it feel to return to these characters, and to each other? What do they mean to you?
Lydia: I'd just come back from having a baby… Two babies. I was like, only Big Mood would get me. Maggie and Eddie's friendship just has such a place in my heart.
Nicola: I know.
Lydia: I feel really close to them.
Nicola: It's really, really nice. We have the most gorgeous director, Rebecca Asher, and the castmates on the show, they're just beautiful people… It felt like there was a lot more story to tell, so it's a real privilege to get to come back.
Glamour: We see friend envy too – with new character Whitney (Hannah Onslow) thrown into the mix. Was that fun to play? Have you ever felt friend envy?
Nicola: I'm very like that… If you're like my bestie, you're my bestie.
Lydia: Oh, really?
Nicola: Yeah.
Lydia: I had some friends like that, and I found them really intense.
Nicola: I know, I know.
Lydia: Maybe you were like that. I don't think you're like that now.
Nicola: It depends. I think I've gotten better for sure, but I think what I don't like is someone else assuming that my bestie is their bestie because I'm like, "Well, they're not. They're mine." Because I think when you pour loads into a friendship, it can be really hard to see. I remember being like 12, my best friend getting another friend and I was like, "She's going to not want to be my friend anymore."
But then you have to also realise that you can never... In any relationship, you can't give everything to one person. You're not going to be to all the same things. You're not going to feel the same way all the time. You have to know who you go to for certain bits.
Lydia: I think the relationship between Maggie and Eddie, Maggie knows Eddie so well, and I think that's what was very confronting and scary for Eddie… I think she's hiding from herself and then in gaining a new friend, it's like you can be a new person and a new identity. You don't have to expose what's going on with this friendship.
Glamour: Big Mood is written and directed by women, quite a feat in this industry. How does that affect the way it’s made and your experience on set?
Nicola: It's great. I mean, I've been very lucky I've had that experience a good deal.
Lydia: Working with women?
Nicola: Yeah, loads of different stuff… I think Rebecca's an incredible director because she started off as a script supervisor, and she's worked her way up through the industry. She has an amazing amount of knowledge about what every single person does on set… She knows everyone's name. She got everyone name tags made.
Lydia: I noticed the difference in working... I feel much more comfortable and much more confident speaking... This is something hopefully I can gain and take on to future jobs, but saying how I actually feel to women, I just feel it's safer. I think that's societal and also personal experience. Speaking to a male director or a male showrunner… It's been always just an element of holding back maybe a bit or protecting myself, whereas it felt like a really safe environment.
Glamour: The first season resonated with so many when it comes to the ways in which mental health and friendship can intersect – what mental health stigmas do you think we still need to work on breaking?
Nicola: I think bipolar disorder is very misunderstood, and it's an incredibly difficult thing to manage and incredibly difficult thing to treat because it's about finding a balance in medication. A lot of people who have bipolar say when they feel medicated, they don't feel like themselves. You're trying to manage the mania as well as the depressive episodes, and I think that's a really difficult and interesting thing. That's still, I think, really misunderstood.
Lydia: There's a lot of other mental health disorders that are treated with antipsychotics, and it's really hard to pin down... There's such a range of schizophrenia, there's borderline personality, there's bipolar, and a lot of them use the same medication. But it's finding that balance for a person, as we said, that can change your levels. Your blood levels change daily. I think it's really interesting and it's really important to just talk about more and put it in part of popular discourse because there's still such stigma behind medication.
Nicola: Huge.
Lydia: There's such a spectrum of mental illness that is still very, very stigmatised. Yeah, so there's a whole debate on the system and funding and support available. Shows like this, let's make more of them.
Nicola: Yeah, please!
Glamour: We see some true queer icons star in this season, including Munroe Bergdorf. What does that mean to both of you? Particularly you Lydia after the truly massive resonance of It’s A Sin, and Nicola after your amazing work campaigning for trans charities…
Nicola: It really feels like that is Maggie and Eddie's world that they live in, so it just felt really celebratory to have all those incredible people there. Munroe was amazing on camera, I thought.
Lydia: She was amazing… It feels like it's definitely our London, our scenery. A lot of these people are our friends and our community… I think what this show does is it is a show for the Millennial experience of now. I think there's a gap in the television market for it… You don't really see that on screen. I haven't. It's just real, I think.
Glamour: Lydia, you’ve spoken about taking time away from the industry during your pregnancy and to spend time with your family – how has it been coming back, as I know you’ve spoken before about the pressure to be career minded and “staying relevant”.
Lydia: After Big Mood season 1 came out, I fell pregnant. I gave birth to my first baby, and then I fell pregnant again… We were in discussions for season two, and I was like, "I definitely want to do it." They're like, "Okay, if we start in September, my baby will be here." My second baby was eight weeks old. It felt very safe, very familiar for me.
Nicola: You were amazing, though.
Lydia: And my babies could be there.
Nicola: It just makes you realise that this industry can be so difficult for working mothers, and to see you was amazing.
Lydia: There was so much support…
Nicola: But this should be the bare minimum, shouldn't it?
Lydia: I know… I felt like going back to work was like making a choice between you over your kids, and it's like, no. You can love your job and you can also want to provide. You can also just want to be out the house. There's so many reasons to work and it's important for women to hear that because I didn't hear that growing up.
The second season of Big Mood premieres on 16 April on Channel 4.
