Entertainment
‘Ponies’ Stars Vic Michaelis and Nicholas Podany Break Down That Mole Reveal and the Choice That Changes Everything for Season 2
[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Ponies.]
Summary
The Peacock spy thriller series Ponies, set in 1977 Moscow, follows Bea (Emilia Clarke) and Twila (Haley Lu Richardson), two women whose husbands are killed under mysterious circumstances that lead them to become CIA operatives. Bea’s ability to charm and speak fluent Russian is a perfect complement to Twila’s fearless nature and street smarts, but their lack of experience while they’re learning on the job puts them in precariously dangerous situations. And if they’re going to have any chance at survival, they have to be able to trust the lead of the CIA’s spy division, Dane Walter (Adrian Lester), and his team.
As a member of that team, Ray Szymanski (Nicholas Podany) is Dane’s right-hand man while his wife Cheryl (Vic Michaelis) is a secretary for Shep (Andrew Richardson) at the embassy. But when Cheryl kills the nanny and is revealed to actually be the mole that everyone has been trying to hunt down, chaos and fire erupt at the CIA. What comes next will make for a very interesting Season 2, and I know my fingers are crossed that we’ll be hearing about a greenlight soon.
During this interview with Collider, Michaelis (Dropout TV, Very Important People) and Podany discussed their reactions to the way the season played out, how they view Ray and Cheryl’s marriage, getting to improvise and explore their characters together, that rooting for Cheryl’s success at villainy is just the most fun option, killing Eevi (Clare Hughes), how Ray might react to learning the truth about Cheryl, wanting to get out in the field more, what all of this could mean for a possible Season 2, and their most memorable moments with Clarke and Richardson. Michaelis also talked about whether Twila, Bea or Cheryl would make the best guest on Very Important People, and whether they tortured any of your castmates on set as much as Sam Reich.
Collider: First of all, congratulations on the series. It’s getting a lot of buzz and people, including myself, are hoping for a Season 2. If at all possible, I want to will that into existence, after the way the season ended.
VIC MICHAELIS: I so appreciate you saying that. We’re really hoping so. Every little bit of goodwill into the universe helps.
You can’t leave it there. It’s just not fair. That would just be rude, if you left it there.
MICHAELIS and NICHOLAS PODANY: (Both laugh)
Vic Michaelis Screamed on the Plane Trip To Shoot in Hungary While Reading the ‘Ponies’ Finale Script
“Truly, it was such a shock.”
Did you guys go into this knowing the full arc for your characters? How much did you know about where all of this was heading? Do you feel like you had any sense of where it would end up?
MICHAELIS: I signed on very late for this, so I got the scripts on the plane on the way to Hungary to begin filming. I was somewhere over the ocean, getting through the end of episode eight, and I screamed on the plane. Truly, it was such a shock, in the best possible way. It’s an absolute dream character for me to get to come in and be a little bit mean, but then also have a little bit of dramatic stuff to get to do and then also be the villain. It’s so fun.
PODANY: What’s amazing about that is just the fact that you found out that soon to filming. If you just watch the series back a second time and you watch Vic’s performance, you can see it. It’s brilliant. It’s so good on a second watch of going back through and going, “Aha!”
MICHAELIS: That’s really kind, but that’s the writing. Everything is there in the character already. It does logically make sense.
PODANY: A friend pointed out to me that you don’t like music. You say it gives you a headache when I turn it on because you don’t want music playing.
MICHAELIS: Yeah.
PODANY: My friend pointed that out to me.
MICHAELIS: I was so mad about the concert. I wanted to go to the concert.
PODANY: Yeah, it’s crazy.
Two unlikely spies navigate danger and betrayal in this wild ’70s-era series.
Vic, you’ve previously talked about how you think Cheryl thinks of herself as somebody that is powerful and holds weight in the world and has value to the people around her, but that that’s also not true. She sees herself in a way that doesn’t match her reality. How do you think she views who she is in her marriage?
MICHAELIS: I think she views herself as a literal perfect wife who has done absolutely everything and gone above and beyond for what she is expected to do, especially in Moscow, where you can’t go to the salon and none of those things are accessible to you. She’s in new outfits all the time, and I think she views that as her wifely duty. I really think that she thinks that a lot of being a wife is about the aesthetic and doing the wifely duties, and I think she performs those exactly as expected. She fills and checks every single box with her little gel pen. It’s that space between realizing that there are other things that you can’t necessarily quantify that go into a relationship and realizing that you have to continue building, and you have to earn those things. A lot of that space is where the current unhappiness is coming from, from Cheryl’s perspective. I’d be so curious what you think, Nick, on that.
PODANY: I think we, as a marriage, are so comfortable in the arguments and in the disagreements. That’s how life works and that’s how our marriage is. I would so much rather be content in that than rock the boat and risk any kind of discomfort in my personal life, especially because Ray’s job is so deeply uncomfortable for who he is, as a person. I think having a very stable place to come home is the only thing he wants. If it’s Cheryl being mad at him all the time, then that’s what it is and that’s okay by him. I think he’s a very lost guy who needs to stay present and in the situation he’s in. Otherwise, the entire Jenga tower would just topple, and that would be that.
‘Ponies’ Co-Stars Nicholas Podany and Vic Michaelis Believe That Ray and Cheryl Really Do Love Each Other
“There is some love liquid there, underneath it all.”
What did the two of you most enjoy about finding and exploring the relationship between your characters? What was the best part of having each other to find that with?
PODANY: When I first read this, I was like, “How will this character ever work?,” in terms of Cheryl. This person doesn’t really seem to have a redeeming quality.” And then, at the first table read, it immediately clicked. I was like, “Oh, my God, she’s an icon. She’s a housewife diva. You root for her and her and her antics and her feeling of being unjustly treated.” And so, the very first day that we were shooting at the Christmas party, just immediately Vic went into improv. They were like, “Okay, just improv your way into the scene,” and every single take was a brand-new way to get under Ray’s skin and to devalue the romantics of the relationship. It was amazing because all I needed to do was just smile and laugh. It was this brilliant thing that Vic brought to the character and to the set. Oh, my God, it was all them. It was insane.
MICHAELIS: No, that’s not true at all, but that’s so kind. [We] had a conversation really early on that I think was really informative and will be the base moving forward. I think these two do love each other. They’re just so lost as to how to communicate that to each other anymore. It’s that status quo and that being the most important thing, but if you really were to strip all that away, there is a base that’s green and boiling. There is some love liquid there, underneath it all, that is beautiful.
PODANY: Give them therapy for five years and they’ll figure it out. There are moments in the show where we get to show that. They’re fleeting, but those were my favorite scenes.
MICHAELIS: It was great. It was awesome.
Creators Susanna Fogel and David Iserson unpack the finale’s biggest gut-punches, Bea and Twila’s new leverage, and why trust gets messier.
Vic, to get a little silly for a minute, would you want Twila, Bea, or Cheryl on Very Important People, and who do you think would be the best?
MICHAELIS: Oh, okay. That is really tricky. We’re talking the characters? The character is getting in hair and makeup as another character. Cheryl would try the hardest, that’s for sure. But Cheryl would also be really concerned about doing it wrong, in my opinion. So then, that leaves Bea and Twila. Nick, what do you think, gut reaction?
PODANY: Cheryl.
MICHAELIS: No, not Cheryl. Cheryl, I genuinely think, would be an untenable guest. She’d get on set and be like, “I’m not putting that on my face. There’s not a chance.” She would refuse to cooperate. I think Twila, in the opposite direction, would have some of that because she wouldn’t care enough. So, I think that maybe leaves Bea. I think Bea would earnestly be a quiet hitter. A homerun, but it’s so quiet.
Vic, did you torture any of your castmates on set as much as you torture Sam Reich?
MICHAELIS: I’d constantly set traps for people on set. They’d be like, “Let me out of the tree” and I’d say, “No. Not until you give me a dollar.” It was really fun though. Everybody was so wonderful and so sweet. It’s such a cliche, but we really had such a good time. We sang a lot of karaoke. Nick, at one point, set up a live band karaoke for us, where he just learned a bunch of music in a week. There’s a band in episode four at the party, and that band turned into a real band.
PODANY: I got this band of these great Hungarian musicians to come to this club, and I got submissions from the entire cast and crew of songs that they wanted to sing and we set up a band. We literally had the best time.
MICHAELIS: It was great. It was amazing.
‘Ponies’ Star Vic Michaelis Thinks It’s Fun To Root for the Villain
“It was so fun.”
Everything really comes crashing down in the finale. One of the biggest questions this season, with who is the mole, is answered and we learn that it’s Cheryl. Vic, how did you feel about Cheryl having the tracking device taken into the vault to then have it explode and destroy all that evidence? When your character does something like that, do you cheer on their creativity or do you want to scold them for their bad choices?
MICHAELIS: It’s so curious. I have my own ideas, obviously, of how Cheryl ended up in this situation. From a person that is closely tied to this character and is, of course, having to root for their success because it is the most fun option in this situation, it was a ballet. By the time that device gets into the ambassador’s hands, all of a sudden, Cheryl can start showing emotion because it’s like, “I did it! Oh, my God, I did it! Here we go. Can you even believe it?” Personally, I think it’s kind of fun to root for a villain, especially in a situation like that. It’s so fun. Make more fun TV. I love this. It was so fun. It was so good.
Were you surprised that Cheryl actually killed the nanny? Do you think she knows more about the nanny than she’s saying? Was it just instinct? Was it a loose end? How did you rationalize that?
MICHAELIS: (Creators) David [Iserson] and Susanna [Fogel] have gone on record saying that they’ve left it ambiguous. But I think Cheryl kills the nanny, at the end of the day, for the family. I think that legitimately is the motivation there is because now, at this point, it is like looking down the barrel. I do think Eevi staying alive messes up her son and her husband and her life. I think she kills Eevi because if Eevi wakes up and starts talking, and they find out that Eevi was not the mole, that then can affect Cheryl’s family, and I think that is a motivation worth killing for.
The wife of the great khal has another husband to mourn.
Nick, at the end of the season, the CIA isn’t aware of who the mole is. Even Ray is unaware that it’s Cheryl. How will that affect things? How do you think he’ll feel about that? What do you want to see with him in Season 2?
PODANY: I think he spent the entire season being very stubborn to his own moral compass. I think he knows exactly who he’s loyal to. I think he knows exactly what this job means to him and what his family means to him. He’s got a list of people he trusts. And then, the rest of the world, no, but that list is stuck in his brain forever. For the rest of the characters, in this whole thing, we learn that the technique of being a spy always gets you in trouble, and yet Ray has lived with it and thrived on it for a long time. Given that he’s an analyst in the CIA, he’s not usually boots on the ground. He’s able to distance himself. So, it would be really cool to see him thrown into the middle of the action and learning that trust gets you in some real hot water in this kind of world. I’m really excited to see how his kindly manner will mix with that information.
The ‘Ponies’ Set Embraced a Vibe of Fun and Joy While the Cast Got To Play and Shake Things Up
“I adore every person in this cast.”
Aside from working with each other, you’re also sharing scenes with Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson. Do you guys each have a favorite moment or scene that you had with one of them from the season?
PODANY: The bubble, where it’s me, Adrian [Lester], Emilia and Haley, was the crew’s least favorite place to film because we wouldn’t be able to get through a scene. We’d just start laughing. It was really hard to get through sequences because the four of us would just have giggle fits all the time. I adore every person in this cast because of their work ethic, but also just this incredible capacity for fun and joy. I think trying to stifle creativity by making something really serious and really hard-framed and where you know exactly what you’re going to do in every take just completely stifles the joy and ultimately the beauty of the project. And so, my favorite thing about working with them was just the ability to fuck with things and have a great time doing it.
MICHAELIS: I love that. I didn’t know we could cuss. There we go. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I didn’t have a place for it, I just wanted to do it to make sure that was on record.
PODANY: I’m a pretty cool guy. I swear sometimes.
MICHAELIS: I didn’t know, but now I know. There you go. My favorite scene is also the first one that we filmed. It was me, Haley, and Tom [Stourton], who played George. In the second episode, we’re at this discotheque and we’re literally pushing through fog and into the discotheque, and Haley just leans over to me and goes, “This is a movie.” I feel like when you’re an actor, before you ever step on set, you have a dream of what filming a movie is going to be like and it’s often like you’re living in the final product that you’re seeing. And that was a moment where it really was like, “Oh, yeah, we are literally experiencing filming and simultaneously living a movie right now.” It really was absolutely crazy, walking through all this fog with all these characters pushing through, and then being in this bustling discotheque. And they actually had the sound on for the first little bit, so that way we could get the feel for it. A little movie magic, they don’t often have the sound on when they’re playing music, so that you can hear dialogue and stuff like that. It was incredible. It was crazy.
- Release Date
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January 15, 2026
- Network
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Peacock
- Directors
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Ally Pankiw, Susanna Fogel, Viet Nguyen
- Writers
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Carolyn Cicalese, Susanna Fogel, David Iserson, Adrian Lester, Emilia Clarke, Haley Lu Richardson, Jordan J. Riggs, Rosa Handelman
Ponies is available to stream on Peacock.