Billie Eilish could be in line to join Amazon Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith for season two, according to recent rumours.
- READ MORE: ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ review: just like marriage this TV reboot has its ups and downs
Deadline has reported that Amazon MGM Studios is looking for actors in their 20s to play John and Jane – the roles are described as being leads and on one-year deals.
While it’s unknown as to whether any formal offers have been made, some big names are being rumoured, with Eilish among them. The megastar, best known for her music career, made her acting debut in Swarm, also on Prime – and again co-created by Donald Glover.
The first season of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which Glover created alongside Francesca Sloane, followed two strangers, played by Maya Erskine and Glover himself, who are paired as a married couple when they begin careers as spies, taking on the aliases John and Jane Smith. All eight episodes were released on February 2 via Prime Video.
In the season one finale, John and Jane get into a gunfight, and the episode is left on a cliffhanger with audiences not knowing whether they survive.
So far, Glover, Sloane, Erskine and bosses at Prime Video have avoided questions about whether the two will be back for season two. Sloane said, “If we tell you too much, you’ll know early if they survived.”
And when Sloane was asked whether the show could become an anthology series like Fargo, which Sloane also worked on, she simply said, “Maybe”. The new Jane and John are said to be different characters rather than direct replacements for those played by Glover and Erskine, indicating that the two could reprise their roles – the set-up of the show has multiple Janes and Johns.
The show is inspired by the 2005 movie of the same name, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was originally announced to play Jane, but left in 2021 due to creative differences with Glover, leading to Erskine’s casting.
In a three-star review of the first season, NME said that it “has its ups and downs” and added, “Though they lack the red-hot chemistry of Pitt and Jolie, the relationship between Glover and Erskine feels genuine. An episode midway through finds them free of their murderous day job and able to just hang out. They bicker about his noisy eating habits and debate who gets cooler as they age (they agree it’s Dolly Parton and Sade). It almost feels like a shame when the covert missions come back into play.
“And therein lies the problem with the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith; fans of both Atlanta and Pen15 have seen this couple do much more personal, unique and intriguing work elsewhere. In comparison, this all feels a little cold-blooded. Good for a hired gun. Less so for a TV show.”
Eilish, meanwhile, hit Number One in over 20 countries with her third album, ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft’, in May, and is currently touring North America in support of the record, before heading to Australia and Europe next year.
The album received acclaim from critics, and NME gave it a four-star review, writing: “Billie came into this process with aspirations to find herself, creatively and personally: ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ remains distinctly unique, a portrait of a singular talent entering young adulthood, exploring her queerness and experiencing the emotional thrill and (sometimes) catastrophe of chasing passion or falling in love. In trying to write an album for herself, she’s made one that will resonate harder than anything she’s done before.”
