‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ Season 2 Cast Talk Mental Health And Treatment

Nearly four years after we were first introduced to the enigmatic healing guru Masha (played by Nicole Kidman) and her controversial treatment methods in season one of Nine Perfect Strangers, Masha is back to her ways with an entirely new group of strangers putting their trust in her, as they each strive to rise above their current mental health issues.

Co-starring alongside Kidman are Christine Baranski, Annie Murphy, Mark Strong, Henry Golding, Murray Bartlett, King Princess, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Aras Aydin, Dolly de Leon, Lucas Englander and Lena Olin. Taking place at a wellness retreat in the Austrian Alps, Nine Perfect Strangers season two, which is now streaming on Hulu, features new stories of people from all walks of life, with universal themes of how past trauma, societal pressures and a questionable upbringing can directly impact one’s personal identity moving forward.

Sitting down for conversations with this fresh batch of talented and celebrated actors, I wondered what these creative individuals think about the use of micro-dosing and psychedelics within our real world and if their beliefs on these matters at all changed, following their experiences on this Nine Perfect Strangers series.

Murphy, who plays Imogen on Nine Perfect Strangers, said, “I am such an advocate for mental health. If you need therapy, go to therapy. If you need antidepressants, please take antidepressants. If you need to ask for help, ask for help. I think fairly recently, luckily the stigma for asking for help is starting to melt away, but then there’s this whole other avenue that’s popped up of the greedy capitalist side of things – the therapy for gain and therapy for manipulation. I think that’s the pocket that this show falls into – we never really know what Masha is up to and why she’s up to it. So, it was very interesting to think about that side of things with this show – but then hallucinogenics and that kind of thing, I’m such a subscriber. I’m so fascinated by all of the research that’s being done right now. I think it’s such a positive and fascinating path forward and through things.”

Baranski, who plays Victoria, said, “I totally agree with Annie. It has intrigued me. Whether I deep dive into it, I don’t know – but I’ve played two characters now who have taken psilocybin. I think we’re going to see more of it in narratives, because look what our show did – it allowed for some crazy scenes and crazy interactions and dangerous encounters, and that’s people under the influence. So, it makes for interesting storytelling. I think this show is sort of in the vanguard of that sort of thing.”

Playing Matteo on Nine Perfect Strangers, Aydin said, “That was a great script, I think, and all the characters have a lot of trauma. We should have to face it. In my personal life, I have a sister – she’s younger than me, maybe three years, and she’s a good, successful therapist. I think there is an important job for health, for brain, for heart, for the people. So, as a person, we shouldn’t run away from our past or sadness. It’s so important for a person, I think.”

Golding, who plays Peter, said, “I hear like ketamine therapy and those kind of dosage – not really hallucinogenic kind of therapy – it’s huge because some people have an issue releasing the information or whatever is sort of troubling them. I think to have a way of helping you ease or bring it out perhaps works for somebody. I’ve never tried it, personally. I haven’t done therapy, either.”

Richardson-Sellers, who plays Wolfie, said, “I think it made me more weary, because I think in the wrong hands, these things can be dangerous and can actually do more harm than good. This one, I think we’re saved by each other, almost – there’s a lot of mutual therapizing, self-therapizing that happens. For my character, Wolfie, some of the biggest breakthroughs actually happen because of some of the other strangers – not because necessarily of Masha – but then again, she’s got a bigger plan, so she has in that way constructed. We’re all invited for a reason, but I’m intrigued. I would do some version of it with the right leader.”

King Princess, who plays Tina, said, “Listen, I have a very complex relationship with Western medicine. I take it and I am on SSRIs, so I am somebody who relies on Western medicine, but I’ve also micro-dosed mushrooms and I find that I found it amazing. It was really helpful for me in my own mental health journey. What I like about this show – although I don’t necessarily advise a Masha situation – I think that it’s a really interesting conversation to open up about looking at historically, dating back thousands of years, how we dealt with medicine versus now, and how it’s so deeply monetized and that you can’t really trust Big Pharma. I think stuff like this is extremely important. I think people have the right to go and find alternative paths, other than be handed some pills, and I think that the world would be a better place if we did a little more mushrooms.”

Playing Agnes on Nine Perfect Strangers, de Leon said after King Princess, “She said it so well. I totally agree with her, 100%. I mean, Big Pharma always has to make money – and psilocybin, as well as cannabis, it’s always been there as a medicinal tool. It’s very natural but because of capitalism, it’s not available to everyone. I am all for this kind of treatment, absolutely.”

Bartlett, who plays Brian, said, “I think anything that can help people deal with trauma, moving through whatever is blocking them, so long as it’s not harmful to anyone else – that it’s done in a way that’s responsible and Masha is not running the show – I think is worth looking into. We all, I think, dug into what these kind of treatments are at the moment and there are several studies that have been done on psilocybin and other psychedelics that have been incredibly successful dealing with trauma and addiction, and dealing with severe illness. The proof is there, that this is sort of a gateway to dealing with those kinds of things in a different way, or a way that really hasn’t been explored because it hasn’t been allowed to be. So, it feels very current in that way and I think in the backdrop of this show being about people dealing with their trauma and trying to move through it and move beyond it. I think that’s something that’s super relatable and then using this kind of method brings it into the present in a really beautiful way, I think.”

Strong, who plays David, said, “Well, I’m a fan of wellness retreats, if you’re going for health and medical reasons. I mean, being locked in a room with nine people all doing psychedelic drugs you’ve never met before is my idea of hell – how that would release anything that’s useful – but if it’s about massages and shiatsu and hydrotherapy and stuff like that, I’m in.”

Playing Helena on Nine Perfect Strangers, Olin said, “It triggered a lot of things and it made me think about things I hadn’t thought of before. I think the whole search for your soul, search for your spirit, search for mental health is such an enormous part of our lives, and it’s becoming so important. I think that we all have our individual ways of looking for mental health. There’s so many colors of it, like there’s insanity – like true, pathologically insane – then we’re totally helpless. There is help, but it’s hard to find and it’s expensive. Then, where most of us are, that we’re just not okay and it takes different shapes or forms, and it forms into monsters. Then, we have to battle ourselves and we’re trying desperately to find a way out of it. It’s an everyday fight and we all have our individual ways of trying to solve it.”

Englander, who plays Martin, concluded by saying, “For me, I definitely – it changed me. It changed my perspective on especially social anxiety and on the sense of that you want to belong to something that maybe you don’t even have to belong to, that you can just be yourself. Playing Martin, to me, to be honest, he’s the furthest away that I’ve ever played for myself, but he also carries all these aspects that I have of like wanting to belong to a certain group, of wanting to be seen, of wanting to be loved. With him, I really understood my own social anxieties and what they actually do to a room, and what they do to me in that room. I learned to therefore accept social anxieties of others, because we sometimes behave in really strange ways. It’s not because we’re trying to be important, or take over space – it’s just because maybe we’re so freaking stressed out by the moment. And so, it gave me a lot of love for that – within others, as also within myself.”