Last year, a little show about an unstable hacker took the world by storm. Mr. Robot defied expectations, and made its star, Rami Malek, a household name. Now with season two on the horizon, it premieres on Wednesday, July 13 on USA, all eyes are watching to see if it can do it all again and continue to propel conversation forward just as much as it did in its first outing. But don't worry, the cast isn't sweating the pressure too much.
"That's a lot of pressure, right? To have a show you thought wouldn't reach many people, might not, might just be a cult hit…to have garnered the attention we have and the critical acclaim is something that is very powerful," Malek told E! News. "It's something you get really excited and proud of, but then it humbles you because it's like, 'How are we going to do this all over again? How can we?' So there was a lot of pressure, but I swear it was the first day we shot the second season and we fell right back into place. Everybody was in there, they knew what they had to do."
In the USA series, Malek plays Elliot, a hacker who orchestrates a massive attack on a company that sends the economy into a tailspin. He's also dealing with the fact that he's been working with his dead father (Christian Slater). Yep, Slater's character isn't real. Trippy stuff that certainly complicates the story.
"We're in such good hands with [creator] Sam Esmail…he's been prepared for this whole journey really from the get-go, so that's been wonderful," Slater told us. "The writers, after season one, they took time and wrote the whole season out so that way when we came back to work we were all on the same page. We all sort of knew what our journeys were going to be and it just made it that much more of a unique and exciting opportunity. There was less anxiety around it because Sam was so prepared."
Click play on the video above for more from the cast.
Mr. Robot returns Wednesday, July 13 on USA.
(E! and USA are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)