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— Mary Oliver, North Country

Hamish Linklater as Father Paul / John Pruitt in MIDNIGHT MASS (2021) Episode 5: Gospel

In that final AA scene — "the meeting," as Father Paul calls it — when everything that has been brewing all season long is now out in the open, the conversation erupts. Father Paul tries to get Riley to admit his jealousy over the fact that he can take a life, drink their blood, and not feel remorse, while Riley is plagued with guilt for killing the girl in the car crash. Linklater accelerates the rhythm of this situation and shouts at his costar, a moment that made it into the final cut of the show. Flanagan remembers it more as an explosion. "That only ever happened once that way," he says. "It knocked Zach back so much. To be sitting there with the same two actors in the same location and what is relatively the same lighting for a week, going through these long scenes, and to be able to surprise each other like that, that's really awesome to see."