Jake Johnson doesn’t have high hopes for Minx season 3.
“By evidence of me cutting my hair short, I don’t [expect a renewal],” Johnson, 45, admitted during an interview with Deadline, published on December 21. The actor dubbed Minx’s overall fate as “unfortunate” because “there was a lot to that show.”
Minx originally premiered on Max for its first season in March 2022. In May of that year, the series was picked up for a second season. However, the streamer canceled the show in December 2022, while the cast and crew were in production on season 2. Starz picked up the series and aired its second season in July. A third season renewal has yet to be announced.
“I think the move to Starz — I think HBO kind of doing their HBO thing or HBO Max, whatever it’s called now — I think that was brutal for [the show],” Johnson told Deadline. “Then, I think the strike coming out right as we were trying to promote it. … My guess is you can’t beat something up that many times and keep going.”
He added, “I really loved the cast and the crew and the writers. It was a great group, but I don’t know.”
Johnson starred as Doug Renetti, a publisher who teams up with Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) to create the first-ever erotic magazine for women. Michael Angarano, Jessica Lowe, Oscar Montoya, Lennon Parham and Idara Victor also starred.
Johnson previously explained that he decided to take a chance on the show because it was “one of the best things that I’ve read in years,” the actor told Us Weekly in April 2022.
“It’s about a young female writer [Lovibond] who wants to do a magazine, like a very feminist magazine, but she can’t get anybody in 1972 to publish it,” he explained of the show. “So, she pairs with me and I’m, like, a smut publisher, but I want to use her feminist take. And I want to get that dialogue out there, and I want to get that writing out there to women, but I want to have male models in the middle of it. I want it to be basically Playgirl before Playgirl.”
While the fate of Minx might still be up in the air, it’s safe to say that Johnson will keep looking for new TV roles.
“I love television. Television, I think for me, I will always like it more than films because I like working with the same people and I like stories that build,” he gushed to Us in the same interview. “People talk about [New Girl’s] Nick Miller a lot and what they like about him. Well, part of that is we had seven years to develop that character. Characters can change and grow. So, for a movie, you have an hour and a half and then they are gone.”
