Shadow and Bone returned for Season 2 and brought back fan favorite characters from Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels. The series follows Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) as she works to destroy the Shadow Fold, a mysterious shadowy wall that cuts her country in half. Along the way, she makes friends who join her in her fight and enemies who are eager to lure her to the dark side. After a successful and beloved Season 1 that introduced the world to Alina, The Darkling (Ben Barnes), Mal (Archie Renaux), Kaz (Freddy Carter), Inej (Amita Suman), and Jesper (Kit Young), the second season brings the whole cast back with more new faces to explore the Grishaverse.
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We spoke with Amita Suman who plays Inej Ghafa, the expert thief also known as The Wraith. Inej works alongside her associates Kaz Brekker and Jesper Fahey, and also meets Nina Zenik (Danielle Galligan) and Wylan Van Eck (Jack Wolfe) this season. As a member of the Crows, a group of criminals who inhabit the island nation of Ketterdam, Inej is Kaz’s right-hand woman with a serious affinity for knives of all kinds. We spoke with Suman about her work on Season 2 of Shadow and Bone. We discussed deleted scenes, the potential of a spin-off Six of Crows series, we dove into the scenes she shares with Carter in the second season, and we talked a bit about her career and her aspirations for future roles (yes, I fully support her as Lara Croft).

COLLIDER: I just want to say congratulations on Season 2, it’s a beast. You are consistently one of my favorite performances on the show, and I just had such a great time watching you perform in this role. I know that there were some deleted scenes that were in this season, and I’m curious to hear if there are any scenes of Inej’s that we didn’t get to see make the cut.

AMITA SUMAN: Oh wow, that’s a question I’ve never really been asked before. I mean, it’s a very, very good question. There [were] a lot of deleted scenes that obviously didn’t make it to the show because we had to fit it in within a specific timeframe. There is one scene that I was quite sad to see, and Kit was as well, in the last episode before Inej’s departure from the Crows. Me and Kit have this really beautiful goodbye scene, so it’s Jesper and Inej, and we really looked forward to it. We did the scene, we felt really… It was a really bittersweet moment, and unfortunately it didn’t make it to the final part because of timing. But there was a lot that was cut from the last episode. I will say that, hopefully I can say that.

Image via Netflix

Oh, wow. I mean, I would love to see that scene, but maybe we’ll see it in a potential Six of Crow spinoff. I know some of those scripts have already been written, and we’re just waiting on news. Have you read any of them and if so, what do you think about them?

SUMAN: Okay, so obviously it’s no lie that the scripts have been written. We have the producer, Eric [Heisserer], amazing producer, who’s already said it. I don’t know what I can tell you, but I’ll say I have read them and I cried, and it’s probably one of the best scripts I’ve been sent for a series. And right now our focus is Season 2 of Shadow and Bone, and we are very reliant on the numbers, and it’s doing really well. It’s still in the top 10 so far, and it’s on the second week. We all really, really, really, really want to do it. These characters are so loved by the fandom, but new viewers as well. And yeah, that’s all I can say. There’s a focused episode … Ugh, I’m going to say something I’m going to regret, or get told off for, but that’s all I can say.

That’s okay, that’s totally fine. I think it’s safe to say that this show has an incredibly dedicated and passionate fan base, just a community of fans who are very in love with your characters. How has your experience with the fans shifted from your time when you were starting out in Season 1 to where you guys are now?

SUMAN: I’ve been very, very blessed because my fandom, I mean, I don’t know what I did to deserve so much love and support, and so much just like love. I mean, I know I’ve already said that, but they really are incredible. They really are passionate. And fandom had already been there from before the show even existed, from the books, because Leigh Bardugo has written such incredible books, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, for obvious reasons, being my favorite. They came out many, many years later, introduced to these completely idiosyncratic characters. And I understand why the fandom love it so much. And I think if Six of Crows does happen, there’s obviously no confirmation of that, it’s such bulletproof material. I want to keep feeding the fans as much as they want to see, well, the content.

Well, I’m in the same boat as you. I’ve read all of the books that Leigh Bardugo has written in the Grishaverse, and I love the Six of Crows duology the most. It’s my favorite. And Crooked Kingdom makes me cry every time I think about it. But just leaning into some of Shadow and Bone Season 2, I really want to talk with you about some of your bigger scenes, specifically. So you and Freddy, you play Inej, and he plays Kaz. I almost just said Kanej, which is-

SUMAN: Oh, you could say that. I know what that means!

Yeah. I just want to discuss the thought process behind your two characters. When you guys are interacting with each other, what kind of dialogue do you guys have? I’m thinking specifically of that first scene that we see them together after she gets attacked by the Taxidermist, and they have that conversation. Did you guys talk about the feelings that go behind those types of scenes?

SUMAN: Yeah, we do. Both of us respect our characters so much, and Freddy loves Kaz as equally as much as I love in Inej. So, when two people who work like that come together, it’s all about the work. It’s all about giving service to these characters, to their backstories to the writing, to the moment as well.

Specifically in that scene, I remember reading it and thinking, ‘What a beautiful scene.’ Even though these two are arguing, they’re still trying to connect on an emotional, which they do, but on an intellectual level. And that’s what they really, really struggle with. And I remember filming that scene specifically, just remembering that day at the very beginning, the words, I felt like I just wasn’t doing enough, or I wasn’t giving it enough service, and there was no way I was going to let that happen because the scene meant a lot. So me and Dani [Galligan], we ran outside and started punching the walls and just try and let the words sink in rather than just float around me, and feel all of the intensity that Kaz and Inej have. And then I went in and worked from a very different place, from a different mindset.

But that scene was important because Season 1 viewers are questioning, ‘Are they friends?’ Obviously they’re friends, but is there something more? And that’s the way we wanted it to be, just because it was a prequel to the books, certain events hadn’t happened yet, their relationship is still being developed. And then in Season 2 we wanted to show that progression. They’d already been through so much, and they have this presence with each other. I mean, even at the beginning of that scene, I felt so in touch with Kaz’s character. Every time he walks in the same room that Inej is in, she knows it, she senses it, you see her breathe as soon as Kaz walks behind her.

So there’s that mirroring of body language, but not necessarily mirroring of the words. And that’s something quite… It’s a really fun thing to play. And Freddy’s just so, so good this season. I mean, the moment he walked into her house — that’s not her house, oh my God — the moment he walked in when we were meeting everyone, and we were talking to the directors, and Jessie [Mei Li] was there, and he opened that door, I just knew this was Kaz, straight away. And we hadn’t had chemistry reads. So finding out how we work together on set has just been a very organic experience. And yeah, I love working with him. I think we work really well together.

Image via Netflix

And I’m curious, you got to say one of Inej’s iconic lines—

SUMAN: Ah!

— which is, “I’ll have you without your armor.” Listen, when I saw that happen, my heart was just… I was going through a wealth of emotions at that point. I mean, I can guess from your reaction now, but I want to know what your reaction was when you saw that in the script, and how was it on that day actually filming that scene?

SUMAN: Yeah. When I read those words when reading the script, I was just like, ‘Oh!’ I got this intense knot in my stomach just because these are the iconic lines. And then I was getting a little bit worried, thinking, ‘Okay, some events on the books haven’t happened yet in the show, but the lines are still being said.’ I trust the writers completely, they’re absolutely amazing. So it was figuring out how to still be as honest as I possibly could to that moment with the importance of the show, if that makes sense.

And me and Freddy, we were really nervous. We were really, really nervous, just because we just wanted to give it our all and just be as honest to the lines as possible. And I got in the car when finishing that scene, I just said, ‘Oh my God, I could’ve said it this way. I could’ve done this, and I could have done that.’ But I’m glad to see that the fans are happy because that scene, to both of us, meant a lot. It was such a bittersweet scene of so badly wanting him, but also understanding his trauma and still her wanting to find… She didn’t leave because she couldn’t be with Kaz anymore, she had to leave to go find her brother. And that’s a good enough reason to leave.

Yeah. I mean, I think I feel like Inej, besides Kaz himself, she probably understands him the most out of anybody else in the world, just by osmosis and being near him. I thought that was really interesting when you guys filmed those hallucination scenes, and seeing her realize that it isn’t him because of that moment where he’s leaning in to go kiss her, and she’s like, ‘Oh no, he would never do this. We are not at this point yet.’ What was that like? Obviously, I feel like it might have been a little bit… It felt like maybe you were jumping into the future a little bit almost with these two characters because you’re not there yet, but what was it like both reading that part in the script and also just getting into that moment together?

SUMAN: Yeah, I was really excited when I read that. I kind of stopped breathing when that part came up, I was just like, ‘Wait, what? This is… Wow.’ I think that scene was really important just because, to portray chemistry between two characters who just don’t physically touch, who have traumas, who find it so difficult to communicate— Their love language is, I would say, acts of service. And I think that scene was really, really important. And to me, what was even more important was remembering Inej’s trauma in that, because we don’t really touch it. I mean, we touch upon it in the show, but it’s not as clear as it is with Kaz’s backstory and all of this. And that’s not to do with the writers, that’s just because you can’t have every single backstory in every season. There’s not enough space.

So I wanted to really remember that and think she’s brave enough to start working on her trauma to try and heal from this. And I really love the line that Leigh Bardugo says in — I don’t know if it’s Crooked Kingdom or Six of Crows, but she said, ‘She would fight for him, but she could not heal him, and she would not waste her life trying.’ And that was really important in the last scene.

But going back to the hallucination of the first time he puts his arm around her waist, it’s this sensation of it’s Kaz’s hands around my waist, not somebody else’s. And this confusion of, ‘I like it, but I’m trying not to go into that Menagerie space of everything that happened there.’ And then when they get close, she’s scared, but she wants it at the same time. Even when she says yes, it’s like, ‘Yes, I do.’ And then he puts a waist around her, and then it’s trying to stop that feeling from coming around. But in that scene I just had to keep in character, saying, ‘This is Kaz, this is Kaz, this is Kaz.’ And give yourself into it. It was a really beautiful… It was one of my favorite, and it was my favorite scene to film because Inej doesn’t really get those kind of moments at all.

Well, I mean, just speaking about her trauma, that is something that I really liked about the dynamic between Kaz and Inej in the books, was that obviously Kaz’s phobia is more overt, but her time at the Menagerie is, I mean, it’s insanely traumatic. I mean, she was taken at such a young age. I was wondering, is that something that you’d be interested in exploring if you guys got further room to explore these characters?

SUMAN: Oh yeah. If anything, I think absolutely, I’ve been dying to do that. It shows a big part of who Inej is, and I try and remember it in every single thing that I’m doing. And sometimes I think, ‘Does it look a bit weird,’ just because new viewerships who haven’t read the books might not understand some of my choices sometimes, just because I have Inej’s trauma at the back of my mind. Not at the back, at the very forefront, actually. Every time she gets touched in the show it’s this inner battle that she’s having. So, of course I would, absolutely. Hopefully, if there’s another season, that happens. And I also, by the way, I understand why it didn’t happen this season. Like I said, everyone’s backstory can’t be done. [There are] so many amazing characters in the show, but I do look forward to it.

And just moving towards the end of the season, we see her leaving the Crows, temporarily I would assume, god willing, and she’s getting onto a ship with Mal (Archie Renaux) and Tolya (Lewis Tan) and Tamar (Anna Leong Brophy). There was a moment where I sensed a vibe between Tolya and Inej, and I want to know if I’m reading too much into it or if there’s a hint of something in the distance. Is there a romantic rival for Kaz in the future?

SUMAN: I think that’s completely down to audience’s interpretation. My character’s mindset in that scene was, ‘Okay, you need to find your brother and get going.’ Her heart is firmly set on Kaz right now. Yeah, I’d leave that to the audience’s interpretation of what they think of that moment. But I do understand the parallel of Kaz having his gloves on and then being offered a hand without someone’s armor, but in that moment, it wasn’t… Right now she’s hung up on Kaz and finding her brother, that’s all that matters to me.

Me too, honestly. I’m curious, is there a specific scene, it doesn’t have to be an Inej scene, but just a scene from the books that you would like to see play out that we haven’t seen so far?

SUMAN: Oh, yes. So many, so many. You have no idea. Literally the whole book. First time Kaz and Inej meet, obviously the incinerator scene. Ugh, my god, I would love to do that. A scene with Pekka Rollins (Dean Lennox Kelly), right at end where she threatens him, she scares the life out of him.

Image via Netflix

The best scene!

SUMAN: Right? It’s such a good scene. And that’s her, again, fighting for Kaz, without even him really ever knowing. Yeah, or the first chapter of Six of Crows, where they are having that standoff at the Harbor. What’s it called? Is it the Harbor?

Fifth Harbor?

SUMAN: Fifth Harbor, yeah, by the Fifth Harbor. I would love to say the line, ‘I like it when men beg, but now it’s not the time.’ I mean, honestly, just the whole bloody thing. Just the whole bloody thing, I’d love to do it.

Oh my God, I would love to hear you say that line. I forgot about that one. And then, is there a specific character that you didn’t share a lot of screen time with? Especially in this season, it was a very big cast, but is there somebody that you wanted to have scenes with that maybe you didn’t, or maybe somebody you wanted to have more scenes with?

SUMAN: Obviously would love a scene with the Pekka Rollins in the show, but we need Matthias (Calahan Skogman). We need Matthias to join the gang, it’s-

Oh God, you have no idea how much I’d support that!

SUMAN: It was so nice in the last scene when Kaz says, ‘As long as he stays out of trouble.’ And I have to keep reminding myself, ‘Inej, you don’t know this character. You don’t know anything about him.’ Even though in real life I know everything. So, that would be really lovely. I would love to have more scenes with Nina. I would love to have more scenes with the Crows, really. And I would love to have more scenes with Zoya (Sujaya Dasgupta).

Image via Netflix

Yes! I mean I think that could be very possible if we get more future episodes. And after these two seasons, obviously with a break in between and so many things happening, what’s your biggest takeaway from working on this project?

SUMAN: Wow, that’s a good question. I think the biggest takeaway is to always just be grateful. No matter what happens, just to be grateful for that time, grateful for the memories, grateful for the experience, and just forever be open, and just forever be learning. I know that’s a lot, because Season 2 really, it was the best experience of my life. But I think, like everybody else, we all have our moments of when we are all going through our difficult things. And I learned that I’m a lot stronger, mentally stronger, than I thought I was. And that’s a good lesson to take away.

Yeah, it’s a connection with Inej too. Her strength, that feeling of being so powerful I can imagine is bolstering.

SUMAN: Yeah, it is. And she never fails to teach me that, and she’s a constant reminder of how strong a person can be.

Looking into the future, obviously I saw you in the special episode for The Sandman. I was very excited to see you there. I was like, oh, ‘Hey, Amita.’ Are you interested in doing more things along the vein of fantasy genre, or is there an area of film/television that you haven’t explored yet that you’re really interested in doing?

SUMAN: I think, I mean, I never thought my casting would ever be in fantasy. I love fantasy. I really, really do. But I don’t want to be doing fantasy for the rest of my life on every single project. It’s a big, big love of mine. But I would love to get in the franchise of James Bond. I would love to do something as brilliant as The Notebook. I would love to do so many things, but right now it’s either… Or Lara Croft! I’ve heard rumors that they’re redoing it, or something like that, and I’m like, ‘Please call me, please call me.’ I don’t think they will.

I’ll put that energy out into the world right now.

SUMAN: And I think they’ll see my casting and perhaps be like, ‘Hmm, maybe not.’ But you never know, we can only hope. I mean, those three things would be a pretty big dream come true.

I mean, I think for Lara Croft you’ve got the physicality down, and you’ve got the hair. I mean, I don’t think it’s as far of a stretch as you think it is.

SUMAN: Thank you, thank you! You phone them up when you let them know.

Image via Netflix

I’ll support you in this, I’m here for that! And then just a final question that’s kind of silly. I know you are a well-known cake lover, a lover of cake. I want to know if you have any controversial or hot takes when it comes to desserts. Because I personally believe that chocolate cake should never be served with chocolate frosting because it is too sweet, but I understand that that is probably not a position that a lot of people agree with.

SUMAN: I actually agree with you. Believe it or not, I don’t like chocolate. It’s really, really weird. I can’t eat like a whole block of chocolate. Obviously chocolate bars, you have a tiny bit of chocolate, I just have to get past it and then what’s inside is amazing. But with cake– Okay, so I have this really weird formula in my mouth, where I have to have something sweet and something savory. No, no, something sweet and something bitter. I love cakes that’s got lemon on it and then some sugar, or salty and sweet at the same time. But do I have any weird cake things? I don’t know. Do I? Maybe I’m just too shy to tell you. I did one time have cake with a chili and I really liked it.

I don’t know, that’s a common combination in some parts of the world. But I mean, I will take the fact that you are very mild on chocolate, as I think that’s maybe more of a controversial taste.

SUMAN: I think that one is more controversial than the fact that I don’t like chocolate, yeah. I prefer a spongy cake with lots of icing. But not like the sugary icing, it’s more like a frosting. You know what I mean?

I like a cream, like something not too–

SUMAN: That’s it, cream. I don’t mean icing, with lots of cream. Yeah.

Not too sweet. That’s the shining endorsement my parents always give for what’s makes a good dessert, so I agree with them. Well, I really want to thank you for talking with me. I love your performance. I can’t say enough good things about it. And you’re right, your fans, I asked this morning if people had questions, and so many of them were just compliments about your performance, which are not questions, but I echo their sentiments. And I hope we get to see more of it.

SUMAN: Thank you. I really liked this interview. And thanks for sharing all the love, you have an amazing day.

Shadow and Bone Season 2 is available to stream on Netflix. For more on the series, check out Christina Radish’s interview with Ben Barnes here, and the Seasn 2 trailer below.