The Four Seasons, adapted from Alan Alda’s beloved 1981 film by series creators, showrunners, executive producers, directors, and writers, Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield, returns to Netflix on May 28th for an eight-episode second season.
Coming off a hard year, the longtime friends carry on their tradition of vacationing together, now with a baby in tow. Season two picks up with the core group—Kate (Tina Fey), Jack (Will Forte), Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), Danny (Colman Domingo), Claude (Marco Calvani), and new addition Ginny (Erika Henningsen)—as they journey from the familiar comforts of the Jersey Shore and upstate New York to a remote mountain town in Italy. With warmth and wit, personal blind spots surface as they each grieve their late friend, Nick (Steve Carell), and embark on new adventures.
Both heartfelt and hilarious, The Four Seasons explores the highs, lows, and humor of enduring friendships and love. Along with the fun, this season sees Danny and Claude grapple with issues such as whether to have a child or not and how to navigate the reality of caring for aging parents.
Ahead of the season two premiere, Tina Fey reflects on the decision to incorporate a queer couple in the show at a time when there has been a stark decrease in the number of LGBTQ+ characters on television. In its Where We Are on TV 2024-2025 report analyzing LGBTQ+ representation, GLAAD notes a 48% decrease on broadcast and a 53% decrease on cable over the past two years. While also taking streaming into account, at least 41% of the LGBTQ+ characters counted will not return due cancellations, endings or limited series format.
“It was really important to me to have a gay couple as part of this friendship group because my own real-life friendship group is mostly gay people, having worked in TV and film for so long”, Fey shared with The Queer Review. “I definitely wanted to represent the types of people that I’m friends with and I think Marco and Colman as Claude and Danny are so lovely and so easy together.”
“I’m sorry to hear that there’s a downtick in the number”, adds Fey, “but I feel like they are a beautiful pair and hopefully representing their community well.”
Fey also hopes to make an emotional impact on her gay friends with this season’s storylines. “I get to have some heavy duty friendship talks with Danny this season and it definitely reminds me of all the men that I’m so very close to in my personal life. Hopefully they will cry when my friends see how much I love them by telling them through Colman Domingo.”
For co-creator Lang Fisher queer representation on the show was never in doubt. “We were obviously inspired by the original movie starring Alan Alda and Carol Burnett, but we wanted to update it and to make it for now. So there was no question that we were going to have a same-sex couple. I think it’s important to show a gay couple that have the same issues and problems that all long-term married people have.”
“Colman and Marco play this couple so beautifully”, Fisher enthuses, “because they can bicker and have these funny disagreements, but there’s clearly so much love between them. It’s important to show anyone out there that this couple is just like other married couples. They’ve been together forever, they love each other, and they’re plugging along like the rest of us.”
“If you look at our writers’ room”, adds co-creator Tracey Wigfield, “Two out of our seven writers are gay and in long-term relationships, so it just made sense to make the show representative of what our real lives are like.”
As for Marco Calvani, he tells The Queer Review that portraying Claude opposite his screen husband Colman Domingo as Danny, makes him feel “incredibly honored and blessed.” Adding, “It’s rare to see the portrayal of a middle-aged gay couple on TV navigating those challenges and realities of their life at that moment. Especially after losing a friend, you ask yourself bigger questions, and Danny and Claude are considering growing their family because they feel like they should leave some sort of legacy behind. They feel like having a child would give a different kind of meaning to their life and their love, which is an existential question, if you think about it, beyond being gay or straight.”
“As a middle-aged gay man, I feel incredibly proud to be given this opportunity”, reflects Calvani. “I’ve also been learning so much by being Claude. Sometimes I think our writers are witches in the most beautiful way because they are able to tap into our real existences and bring parts of it to the scripts. There were moments where it felt almost cathartic to play those words and those scenes.”
When it comes to feedback on his character from viewers he has encountered, “the best moments have come from straight cis men”, Calvani shares. “They’ve been saying things like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so Claude. I really relate to you.’ So it feels like we’re doing something right and that we’re pushing the boundaries of representation.”
As for future vacation destinations on the series if a third season is green-lit, might a jaunt to Fire Island or Provincetown be on the cards? “Marco did pitch that we should go to P-town with Danny and Claude’s other hotter friend group”, shares Fey. “I don’t know, we’ll see.”
“We have talked about that”, adds Lang, “because Tina actually vacations a lot in Fire Island.” While Wigfield has a more exotic gay destination in mind, “Mykonos, if we can get them to send us there!”
By James Kleinmann
Season 2 of The Four Season launches on Netflix on Thursday, May 28th, 2026.
Watch the full interviews below:
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