13 Reasons Why: We sit down with series creator Brian Yorkey

Controversy continues to snap doggedly at the heels of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why. The adaptation of Jay Asher’s 2007 YA bestseller caused a sensation on its debut last year, though its chronicling of teenage suicide was decried in some corners as irresponsibly glamorous.

Twelve months later, the surprise blockbuster is back for a hugely anticipated second season. Katherine Langford returns as Hannah Baker, the high-school student driven to take her own life. As with series one, Hannah appears in flashback – this time via the device of a legal case taken by her parents against Liberty High.

Yet rather than dwell on her passing, the focus will be on healing and renewal says show runner and series creator Brian Yorkey.

“With season one there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny on us as storytellers,” says Yorkey of the controversy surrounding 13 Reasons Why on its debut. “Going into the second season we were determined to redouble our efforts to be as truthful as possible.”

Netflix had grand ambitions for 13 Reasons Why. Yet even the streaming giant was surely surprised by the speed with which the drama became a phenomenon. Yorkey was certainly shocked – even if, in hindsight, the public reaction makes a degree of sense.

“Netflix is able to release in so many countries in one day,” he says. “And because we’re on Netflix we’re able to tell the story in a way that we wouldn’t on an American network. We can’t do this anodyne story. It has to be truthful and hard to watch or kids will tune out. And we were as truthful as we could be.”

Yorkey and the rest of the creatives behind the scenes – including executive producer Selena Gomez – take their responsibility seriously. To that end, the new episodes are preceded by a public information address by the cast, in which viewers wrestling with depression or suicidal thoughts are advised to talk to their parents or seek professional assistance.

One of the major strands this year concerns Jessica Davis (Alisha Boe) dealing with the aftermath of her rape. Shooting was underway as Me Too became a groundswell – a peculiar experience for all involved.

“We had written most of the season when Me Too started,” says Yorkey. “It is going to feel very timely – especially Jessica’s recovery and the exploration of sexual assault. We said to ourselves, ‘Nobody is going to believe we wrote this before Me Too happened. Hopefully it can be part of the conversation for young people. Systemic sexual assault doesn’t just occur in corporate America. Young people go through this every day and it was important to address that.”

Going into the project, 48-year-old Yorkey had assumed the issues facing teenagers today were largely the same as those with which his generation had reckoned growing up. The closer he looked the greater his appreciation that, in this age of social media and ubiquitous technology, adolescence has become uniquely challenging.

“As an older person, you’re thinking, ‘Well, high school is always the same’. The truth is that, yes, some things are the same. But the intensity of social media, the pressure so many kids are under academically – that was eye-opening for me. I feel like I came from a slower time, when horses pulled wagons.

“Episode 13 of season one was traumatic for a lot of us,” he continues, turning to Hannah’s death scene. “The experience of losing Hannah was also traumatic for all of these kids, for this community. I think like them, we want to follow a course of healing from that. We want to see what happens next, how you live your life after that.

“When you talk about recovery, when you talk about healing, no amount of that diminishes the tragedy of what happened. But hopefully it helps us understand the larger picture of how we deal with tragedy and loss and move on from that.

“I hope season two ennobles and enlarges what happened in that episode at the end of season one. Of course it will be for every viewer to judge.” Last year the story was told from the perspective of high schooler Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) – Hannah’s friend and confidante, who became determined to unravel the mystery surrounding her decision to take her own life.

“Clay is trying to move on from the memory of Hannah,” says Minnette. “Trying to recover from Hannah and her impact on his life – trying to live as normally as he can. That’s not easy to do. When this new trial begins, it brings back old memories of Hannah, and brings him back to trying to find justice for her again. Whether he wants to or not, he can’t really help it.”

Unlike season one, the new run of episodes exists entirely independent of the novel. Pushing past the written word was, reports Yorkey, thrilling but also mildly terrifying.

“All of us working on the show became very invested in what happens next for all of these people who we’ve become so close to,” he says. “We felt there was so much more story to tell. It was a little bit scary working without a net. That said, without the book it was freeing. We could follow the story and the characters where they led. It’s like when you finish a book and wish you knew what everyone gets up to next. It’s us doing fan fiction – Harry Potter is going to show up at some point at Liberty High and think, ‘This is worse than anything at Hogwarts.’”

13 Reasons Why season two is on Netflix now.