This interview was conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike.Foundation is quite literally one of the biggest, most ambitious television series of all time. From the start, creator David S. Goyer had an eight-season vision for the epic writings of Isaac Asimov, whose Foundation stories include dozens of major characters and a multitude of planets, political organizations, religious and scientific groups, and class statuses. The Apple TV+ adaptation is so vast, that the entire first season almost feels like a pilot episode, stacked with exposition.

Now the second season is airing, and it’s clear that things are in motion. The world of Foundation is developing, and the new season begins with a major time jump that takes viewers 138 years after Hari Seldon’s psychohistorian protégé, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), went into cryosleep. Poly Verisof, who we saw in the opening scene of season one as a young boy, is now an old religious leader with the ebullient joy of a Hare Krishna on a good day, and is played by the delightful Kulvinder Ghir. Poly awaits a spiritual kind of return from Hari, after seeing his consciousness leave the Vault in the season one finale. Hari Seldon, even if he may be just digital at this point, is still causing a ruckus.

Llobell and Ghir spoke with MovieWeb about the labyrinthine plot of season two and what it was like to step into their Foundation characters after such a huge time jump.

Lou Llobell Gets Lovingly Lost in Foundation

Foundation is as intricate as a computus, a gargantuan structure with myriad moving parts. How do you act in something like that, when there are so many characters (and so long a span of time)? How does an actor situate themselves in a scene and know what’s going on around them? How does one stay afloat? “To be honest, I don’t always, and that’s okay,” laughed Llobell. She continued:

Sometimes you don’t stay afloat and you drown, and you just have to figure it out, and pick up and try and figure it out and get back on track. So then that’s okay, and I think that’s a natural human response. It’s kind of what Gaal does on the show as well. She falls and stumbles and gets right back up and carries on and takes what she’s learned, and she keeps moving forward. How forward? The actor explained how he situated herself in such a vast character arc. “One step at a time,” said Llobell. “It gets way too complicated. We’re lucky if we get [scripts for] all our episodes before we start filming most of the time, and they obviously evolve and change. But we fundamentally know the arc of the story for that season, before we start, and that’s great because you see the big picture. You see how every single storyline makes sense with each other. But yeah, I can only think of one story at a time, one day at a time. It’s my philosophy in life.”

Related: Exclusive: David S. Goyer Previews Foundation Season 2 and What He Learned from James Cameron

There was a benefit from having so much more going on in season two, though. When asked what she was most excited to do in the new season that she didn’t in the first, Llobell answered, “Act with lots of people, acting opposite loads of people. Having scenes with Hari and Salvor was great, because there’s three people in a room and not just me and a hologram. And scenes with Rachel House […] you got to really be surrounded by lots of people, which is a vast contrast to season one.”

So for those who plunged through the first season and are now watching weekly episodes of this second one, we wondered what Llobell was most excited for them to see. “Everything, honestly,” said the actor. She continued:

It’s just such an epic, incredible experience, and it’s such a joy to watch. It’s just gotten bigger, and it’s safe to say it’s so special and so much better than the first season, and the first season was brilliant to me. So I’m excited for everyone to just be invested and get to meet all these new characters, mostly.

Kulvinder Ghir Talks Joining Season 2

The young actor Jairaj Varsani played Poly in season one of Foundation, which put Kulvinder Ghir in the odd situation of molding his character off of a child actor’s performance. “You have to see the performance, because we need the continuity of what’s there,” explained Ghir. “I did look at the character at the age of 12 and 14. And it was interesting, what the actor had created at that time as a young man. When I looked at it, there was always a desire from him of wanting to know, and knowing, and answers, and that’s what I wanted to carry forward into Poly when he turns into a man of 148 years old.”

Ghir continued:

There is a line in there, he says, “I think I’ve lived so long because I always wanted to see what was on the other side of the mountain.” So the want of knowledge was important to Poly, and because that knowledge left him in a place where he was able to question not only his own existence, but the existence of the universe itself. And these crises, when they happen, [the questions] are — why, and who, and for what reason. “But at the same time, I wanted to make him very human. I’m not saying that he’s not human, I wanted him to be very grounded, to be part of a society,” continued Ghir, who obviously has an intelligent yet gentle grasp on his character. “Whereas in his beliefs — why is there Foundation? Who is it for? — he believes in humanity and the progress of humanity, but he believes in, at the same time, equality and fair play and justice. He has that knowledge because he wants peace within the universe itself.”

Related: Foundation’s Jared Harris Unpacks the Complexity of His Role in Season 2

“Because what tends to happen here, in any format, in any existence in humanity, when war happens, who does the killing? Who does the fighting? Who does the dying? It’s the people, not the politicians. In that sense, he’s their voice. And that’s what I felt I wanted to bring into Poly as well. That idea, those questions.”

“In the universe [of Foundation], as vast as it may be, these political ideas lie in each of these planets, whether it be socialism, whether it be capitalism, whether it be communism. Yet the idea of democracy, and the view of being able to say what you feel, [Poly believes] you have every right to do that. But at the end of the day, he doesn’t want death. He doesn’t want the killing. He finds there’s injustice for people who haven’t done anything wrong. Why should they be dying? That’s what he believes Foundation should be. Obviously he wants to sell that in the religious form, but it’s quite scientific. He deals with facts and proof.”

“So it’s not the supernatural that he wants,” concluded Ghir, “it’s progressive. And he proves that and shows that, how progressive humanity has gotten. And, in the reality of today, we can see it happening. So, as much as it may be 30,000 years ahead, the seeds are laid today.” Similarly, the seeds of Goyer’s massive Foundation epic are being laid each week as we speak.

The first two episodes of the second season are now on Apple TV+, followed by new episodes of Foundation weekly every Friday through September 15.