An Inside Look at Season 2 of 'American Crime': 'It's About the Cascade Effect'

Can you handle the truth?

That’s one of the probing questions in the upcoming second season of ABC’s acclaimed drama American Crime. So is, “What exactly is the truth?”

Season 2 brings back many of the first season’s cast members, including Felicity Huffman and Emmy winner Regina King, though in entirely new and different roles. Lili Taylor plays the mother of a high school boy (Connor Jessup) who claims he was sexually assaulted by members of a private school’s championship-winning basketball team.

In this exclusive behind-the-scenes featurette, the show’s cast and crew talk about how that accusation sets off a “cascade effect,” as creator John Ridley calls it, in the community. Huffman, as the private school headmaster, and Timothy Hutton, as the team’s coach, have their views on how to handle the situation, which runs up against how Taylor’s mother wants to deal with it.

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“She’s coming up against the police who don’t believe her, she’s coming up against other parents, the school who doesn’t believe. She’s coming up against social media,” Taylor says of her character. “It’s pretty heavy.”

Just as it did in Season 1, American Crime isn’t holding back in taking on some of the most sensitive topics of the times.

“It is about class. It is about orientation. It is about the spaces that we as adults try to create for our children,” Ridley says.

American Crime Season 2 premieres Jan. 6 at 10 p.m. on ABC.