Bookie, the Max show centered around the life of sports betting, returns to the streamer for its second season. The cast and creators say they’ve upped the storytelling antics in the dark comedy that can serve as a precautionary tale about the dangers of placing bets on sports.

Bookie follows veteran Los Angeles bookie Danny (Sebastian Maniscalco) as the potential legalization of sports gambling in California threatens to upend his business for good. Maniscalco returns as Danny in the highly anticipated Season 2 of the Max series, and he said the character continues to dispel the stereotype associated with a person responsible for determining gambling odds.

The compassionate side to Danny

“Sometimes … he does have a compassionate kind of side to him, which, generally speaking, you don’t see in a stereotypical bookie,” Maniscalco told Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “A bookie is generally collecting money and threatening people if they don’t pay, and here in this season, I think Danny’s kind of … gullible, and that gets him into some trouble this season. So, not being as a hardened criminal as you should be in this business, I think Danny’s sensivity and compassion maybe gets him into a little bit of trouble this season, and him and Ray [portrayed by Omar J. Dorsey] are kind of in despair.”

For Dorsey, when it comes to his character in this second installment of Bookie, the word that comes to mind is caregiver. The first season was centered around the relationship between Danny and Ray. In Season 2, the pair find themselves navigating a pretty dangerous world without the usual support and guidance of the other.

“We didn’t see that last season, but we’ll see a whole lot of that this season, especially with Frank and the other people who come to live in his house that he thought he was just living in with his grandmother,” Dorsey said of his character’s compassionate side that will be on full display in Bookie‘s second season. “I think that his evolution this season … it stems from that. … My grandmother’s husband, fiance, or whatever — husband now — has a heart attack in the finale of last season, so now he is put in a position to be the person to help his grandmother out, and to help out her husband that he was never in before. … He has to put himself on the back burner a little bit to start taking care of other people.”

Creators on the show’s grey area

For Bookie creators Chuck Lorre and Nick Bakay, the idea of working in a grey area of morality was the driving force in the new season.

“For many years, I’ve really wanted to work in that grey area where people are not necessarily, you know, good citizens,” Lorre said. “I really didn’t know how to go about doing that, but the stakes are higher in that world. You know? It’s not, ‘Did Jimmy do his homework?’ That’s not the story. There’s much more consequence[s] when people are living off the grid and involved in even a mildly criminal activity. And I never knew how to do that until I saw Sebastian in The Irishman. I saw him in a scene with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, where he plays a psychotic gangster based on the character, the real guy Crazy Joe Gallo, and ‘OK, this guy’s got some serious chops.’ … He’s a stand-up comic, but he’s got chops as an actor. … But I didn’t feel I had the wherewithal or strength of character to write about a murderer. That’s best left to other people. … I don’t want to do that, and I presented this problem to Nick, and Nick said, ‘How about a bookie?’ and we’re off and running.”

Timeliness with changes in sports betting

With legislation around sports betting changing drastically across the nation, Bakay said the timing for a show like Bookie is almost perfect.

“We’ve been watching, like everyone else has, how the recent legalization of sports gambling is affecting everyone, and it’s fascinating,” Bakay said. “It’s kind of ruinous. Look at what it’s doing to athletes; they’re getting suspended. The [Shohei] Ohtani thing was kind of insane — an interpreter’s in the hole for $6 million. … So, it’s unfolding every week and not to mention what it’s doing to every citizen’s lives, you know. I think the timing of the show happens to be on top of some really interesting zeitgeist. We’re just trying to tell it from the human angle. We found these characters…we developed them…we fell in love with them. We’re just trying to take good care of them.”

Bookie Season 2 premiered on Thursday, with new episodes weekly leading up to the season finale on Jan. 30.

Sebastian Maniscalco

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