Lila and Lenú’s friendship strains and strengthens in the new trailer for Season Two of My Brilliant Friend, based on the second book of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, The Story of a New Name. The show returns to HBO March 16th.
The new trailer opens with a harrowing scene in which Lenú (Margherita Mazzucco) pays her first visit to Lila (Gaia Girace) following the latter’s honeymoon with her new husband Stefano (Giovanni Amura). After answering the door with sunglasses on, Lila removes them to reveal a black eye and tells Lenú, ”I’ve been wrong about everything.”
From there, the clip teases the ways the two friends’ lives diverge while never fully splitting. As Lenú excels in school and begins to see a path out of their small Naples neighborhood, Lila bucks against an increasingly abusive and overbearing Stefano while trying to find ways to assert her own freedom.
Most of Season Two of My Brilliant Friend was directed by show runner Saverio Costanzo, although Alice Rohrwacher was also brought on to direct two of the eight episodes.