'High Fidelity' Season 2 Would Have Focused On Da'Vine Joy Randolph's Cherise

Once Rob (Zoe Kravitz) finished counting down her Top 5 Heartbreaks in Hulu's High Fidelity series, what else would there be to explore? Future seasons planned to take the focus away from Kravitz's lead character and turn it to other scene-stealing supporting characters, according to a new report that gave details on what a High Fidelity season 2 would've looked like had it not been unceremoniously canceled by Hulu after one (critically praised) season.

The second season was set to give the focus to Da'Vine Joy Randolph's Cherise, the breakout character based on Jack Black's role in the John Cusack film. This is according to Kingsley Ben-Adir, who played Rob's ex-boyfriend Mac in the series. Ben-Adir told the LA Times that Cherise was set to receive the entire spotlight in the second season, and not just the single episode she got in the first season.

"Annoyingly, Season 2 was really gonna be a Cherise-focused season. She was gonna become the lead of the show, and the story was leaning toward being about where she'd come from, her heartbreaks and her family background."

Ben-Adir revealed that Kravitz, who executive produced the series and wrote an episode, and the creative team had been mulling several ideas on how to expand High Fidelity beyond its source material of the 1995 Nick Hornby novel and the 2000 movie starring Cusack. The first season covered the beats of the well-known movie, reinventing the story with a more diverse, contemporary spin. The second would have taken it further beyond the source material by giving Cherise a season-long arc like Rob had gotten in the first season.

It might've been a successful season, if we could have seen it come to pass. Randolph's Cherise, a witty music lover who works at Rob's record store and dreams of forming her own band, became a fan-favorite — much like how Black's character became a breakout of the 2000 movie. Randolph, a Tony nominee who also stood out in Netflix's Dolemite is My Name, appreciated the chance to bring a character to life that broke stereotypes for Black women.

"It was really great to have that opportunity to play a character who is authentic and, on top of that, a woman who is unapologetic and says what she feels," Randolph told the LA Times.

But alas, we won't be able to see this play out, and High Fidelity will be relegated to the ranks of millennial one-hit wonder, following its cancelation by Hulu, which had taken on the show after it was passed on by Disney+. That may be the biggest heartbreak.