'The Chair' Canceled: Why Season 2 Isn't Happening
The Chair, a Netflix drama starring Killing Eve's Sandra Oh, is unlikely to get a second season. The show slipped through the Netflix cracks after debuting in August 2021, with the streamer forgetting about its existence after it debuted to a muted audience response. In February, Oh told Variety she never got called about playing Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim again.
Oh played Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim, the new English department chair at a New England university. Kim was the first woman chosen for the role and tries to help a young colleague, Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah) score tenure. Jay Duplass played Bill Dobson, Kim's friend and colleague whose wife recently died. Bob Balaban, Everly Carganillia, David Morse, and Holland Taylor also starred in the six-episode first season.
The Chair also had top-shelf talent involved behind the scenes. Amanda Peet created the show with co-writer Annie Julia Wyman. Peet made her debut as showrunner. Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff (who is married to Peet) and D.B. Weiss were among the executive producers. Daniel Gray Longino, who earned Emmy nominations for Portlandia and Sacha Baron Cohen's Who Is America?, directed every episode.
Although the show scored an 85% fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, the response from Netflix subscribers was little more than a shrug. The series was only in Netflix's global Top 10 for one week after its Aug. 20, 2021 release. Audiences watched 14.02 million hours in its first full week of release. By the following week, it disappeared. The Chair also disappeared from individual country Top 10s within 19 days.
It's likely that The Chair was canceled, but Netflix never announced it. Oh has plenty of other projects in the works, including a Hulu movie co-starring Awkwafina. She told Variety she loved making The Chair, but she hasn't been offered to play Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim again.
"No one's called me, so I'm guessing that's not happening," the former Grey's Anatomy star told Variety's Awards Circuit Podcast. "I would have loved it, because I just thought that there was so much material there to potentially explore. Because the setting and the characters were established... I'm just happy that it happened, it was a great experience. But I am sad that it's over."
Weiss and Benioff have an overall deal with Netflix. Their next series, The Three-Body Problem, is based on the novel by Liu Cixin about a Chinese physicist in the middle of a vast conspiracy. Benedict Wong, Eiza Gonzalez, Tsai Chin, John Bradley, Liam Cunningham, and Jovan Adepo star. Netflix hasn't announced a premiere date yet.