See an Exclusive First Look of Sissy Spacek & J.K. Simmons in Night Sky

What would happen if you had a portal to space in your backyard that no one else knows about? That's the broad premise of Night Sky, a compelling new sci-fi show coming to Prime Video in May starring Oscar winners Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons.

Night Sky follows Irene York (Spacek) and Franklin York (Simmons), an elderly couple in their 70s who have a "chamber" in a shed in their backyard where they can travel to another planet. On that planet, they sit in a room and look at the otherworldly sky, never venturing out to explore for fear of death. Yet, when Irene discovers Jude (Chai Hansen) up in space and brings him back down to their home in Illinois, their quiet life is upended.

"I love all sci-fi, but it can be very self-serious and very ponderous sometimes," showrunner Daniel C. Connolly tells Town & Country. "To present to an audience something that's a little bit more approachable and lived in was our guiding star as we went about creating the show."

Indeed, for a show about travel across the universe, Night Sky feels deeply grounded in reality. This is largely thanks to the performances of Spacek and Simmons—who are believable as a long-married couple keeping this secret. In the early stages of Night Sky's development, Connolly says their team had talked about Spacek and Simmons "as people we had in our mind's eye" for Irene and Franklin. To have the two legendary actors sign on, then, "was a dream come true."

"We just saw [Sissy Spacek as Irene] as we were writing the show," he says. "It was just so obvious. To have the actor say yes to that is such a validation. Both Sissy and J.K. are such consummate professionals and inhabited these parts from minute one that we started shooting. We couldn't be happier with the outcome."

Oscar winners Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons star as Franklin and Irene York.

Since Night Sky is at once a portrait of married septuagenarians and an epic sci-fi adventure, the key was making sure the family drama feels extremely lived-in, so the sci-fi feels more believable. "One of the most important things was going to be selling the length of that relationship on screen," writer Holden Miller tells Town & Country. "Unsurprisingly, they were both able to do that right away. The sense of shared history between those two characters really sings, and the feeling that they've been in this marriage for that long—all credit to Sissy and J.K. It's really the beating heart of the series and they were both incredible to work with."

Though character-driven family dramas and sci-fi mysteries are not typically combined they work together due to the performances of Simmons and Spacek, but also the constant intermingling of the magical and the mundane in the plot. "There's this toggling back and forth between in the story of the mundane of everyday life—going to doctor's office and food shopping—mixed with this beautiful escapist dream fantasy," Connolly says.

J.K. Simmons as Franklin York, a grumpy former woodworker.

The chamber in the Yorks' backyard "would be the most momentous discovery in the history of humankind," Connolly explains. But, Irene and Franklin’s attitude toward it is very blasé. "They've been doing this for twenty years and have never been able to make sense [of it] and have just never told anyone about it at this point, so why bother."

Placing a couple in their 70s at the center of the story was a deliberate decision. "Aging is a completely universal experience that hopefully we will all be lucky enough to experience and think about," Miller says. "It was a way to access a lot of the themes that we were interested in: mortality, love, family dynamics."

Night Sky's plot is driven by the big questions in life, Miller explains: "What does it all add up to? What have I spent my time doing? What do I wanna spend the latter parts of my time on earth doing?" Irene, in particular, struggles with why she and Franklin have access to this planet. She wants to understand “what to glean from it, what it's supposed to mean to her, what it means that she was the one chosen in her mind to see this, and what she's supposed to do with this,” Miller explains. When Jude shows up, it brings these questions into greater focus, and shakes the Yorks out of their everyday routines.

Sissy Spacek as Irene York, a retired English teacher.

In the second episode, the narrative spins out from the York home in Illinois and we meet Stella (Julieta Zylberberg) and Toni (Rocío Hernández), a mother-daughter duo who live in rural Argentina. No spoilers, but, Stella and Toni's story becomes a way for the viewers to understand travel through the universe and mythology of the chambers better. But, like Irene and Franklin's story, it's very much still rooted in a family drama.

"That storyline becomes a mother and daughter road trip, where the daughter begins to see her mom for who she really is in a way, and to see the world in a new way and to learn about her family's legacy," Connolly says. "At that tender age, when you're trying to figure out who you are as a person, here comes this thing out of left field that's really gonna throw her for a loop."

As the episodes unfold, the mystery of Jude, and the chambers, begins to unravel, and the aesthetics of the sci-fi remain key to the world-building of the show. Connolly emphasizes the sci-fi elements are meant to feel organic. “We wanted something that felt completely real, but unlike anything you had ever seen,” he says.

Their references for Irene and Franklin’s planet included the three-dimensional diorama of the moon at the Natural History Museum. They wanted to focus on the reality of the world, not something that felt computer-generated. They wanted the planet to have an “enigmatic quality,” Miller adds. For it to be both inviting and beautiful, but also mysterious and dangerous. “There is the idea that they have been sitting in these chairs for 20 years looking at it.”

"I don't think there's ever a wrong time for sci-fi stories," Connolly says. "Stories that allow us to escape or to have a brief respite from reality are really a means for us to better grapple with reality."

“There's something fitting in this show about sort of experiencing something incredibly momentous, but from a place that feels like it's your own bedroom,” Miller says. “It feels a little bit like what we've all been going through for the past couple years—what the uncanny mixing of those two things feel like. At the same time, while [Night Sky] is incredibly emotionally serious, and it has a warmth and a humor and an escapist quality—reminding us all the possibility of adventure in life, and the profundities that we're constantly grappling with”

“Obviously, most, if not all of us, do not have a portal to outer space in our backyard,” Miller continues, “but we all do have access to those same grand questions that these characters are grappling with. And it's the same ones that we all are.”

All eight episodes of Night Sky will premiere Friday, May 20 on Prime Video. Sign up for Prime Video

Emily Burack

Senior News Editor

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.