The season finale of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, “Racing for Pinks,” was released on Paramount+ today and it sets up some excitement for Season 2. The episode ends with the introduction of Frankie Zuko, presumably the older brother of Danny Zuko, the iconic character played by John Travolta in the original Grease movie. While the show hasn’t been officially renewed yet, fans are holding out hope that this isn’t the end of the prequel. In honor of the finale, ComicBook.com caught up with Marisa Davila (Jane Facciano) and asked if she’s heard of any Season 2 plans. Davila said she’s heard “positive” things about the show’s future and she’s “hopeful,” but she still doesn’t know for sure. As for Frankie Zuko and Jane’s future, she has some ideas…
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“I have so many things,” Davila said when asked about her hopes for Jane. “I’ve spoken to Annabel [Oakes], our creator, and I’d love to build my sister relationship more with Frenchy. We have those very cute bits and moments throughout the season, but I think … I am a younger sister. I have an older sister in real life, and the amount of history that we have as sisters, so many sister fights, and so I want that from Frenchy and Jane.” She added, “I’ve been taking tap classes since I got back from Season 1 because it’s one of my favorite dance genres, and I’ve been obsessed with it as a kid, so I’ve just been brushing up on that, and hinting to the creators that I would like a tap number.”
Davila continued, “And then in terms of just Jane, I want to see what she does in her role as [class] president for now. We’ve seen her fight to win, and then not win, and then finally get the position, so what is she going to do with it now? Is she going to make the right decision? Is she going to get overwhelmed and influenced by other people to make different … politics are messy, and does she really know what she’s doing? She’ll probably learn along the way … and there’s something else that I asked Annabel about, too, I was like, ‘We didn’t really ever see them doing homework.’ I was like, if I did any of that in high school, I would have an F in all of my classes. So maybe I could attend some actual classes. Who knows? It’s really not up to me. Plus, I trust the writers.”
Marisa Davila on the Frankie Zuko Cliffhanger:
“I think I found out … so strangely enough, the last two episodes of our show were done … we were already over, we were supposed to be done in June. We were already overshooting into July. We were running low on our budget. We were just scrambling to get it done,” Davila explained. “So the last two episodes of our show, we did not have a table read for, at all … I went to lunch with Alethea [Jones], one of our executive directors the other day, and I told her, ‘I just got the screeners for the last two episodes,’ … At that point in the season for me, if it wasn’t a scene I was in, I didn’t read it. Because if Jane’s not there, she doesn’t really need to know what’s going on, otherwise a director would tell me.”
Davila continued. “And also there just wasn’t time for that. And so I got to watch everybody else’s scenes, that I not only wasn’t present for, but also hadn’t read, and … oh, it was amazing … but I’m pretty sure I found out about that Zuko detail in the last month when I read it by myself, and we weren’t reading it as a cast, and freaked out.”
She added, “And what happened on the day was … I don’t know what they have planned for Frankie Zuko, and my history, I know it’s very heavy, but what we decided to do is, we shot two alternate endings, which was just the way I reacted to seeing him. So I reacted to him once in a very fond way of seeing him, and then confused, but then I reacted another time where I was very angry. And then based off of them trying to predict how they wanted to write Season 2, they chose the appropriate reaction. I didn’t even know what they were going to choose. Which, now watching it as an audience member was like, ‘What does that mean? Which one they picked?’ So we’ll have to see. We have to have a Season 2 to find out.”
The first season of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is available to stream on Paramount+.
