And in the case of the Toledo Truth Teller’s scruffy-sexy new editor-in-chief Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleason) and ambitious reporter Mare Pritti (absolute star Chelsea Frei), maybe even an actual romance in Season 2!

“We were all kind of trying to figure out…how far to take it and where it would end,” explains co-creator and EP Greg Daniels of the delightfully bingable first season’s slow-burn situation between the two, which culminated in a season-finale kiss “for research purposes” at the Ohio Journalism Award. “We knew basically that it wanted to be a sort of a glittier celebration kind of thing and that that would be a good backdrop for something interesting to happen romantically, but we didn’t really know how far or where it was going to be until the week we were shooting it.”

A loose spinoff of The Office — Oscar Nunez reprises his Dunder Mifflin grump Oscar Martinez, who is once again vexed by the same documentary crew that haunted him in Scranton — it was recently announced that Peacock’s Emmy-deserving comedy will drop its second season on September 9. According to the streamer’s release, “In Season 2 of The Paper, after sweeping the Ohio Journalism Awards, Ned searches for a journalistic crusade, coming for a local private club and jeopardizing the paper, while he and Mare try to figure out their attraction.” In addition, Sabrina Impacciatore‘s chaotically hilarious Managing Editor Esmeralda Grand “struggles to find her place, and the staff gradually mature as reporters.” And for real, if you have not caught up on this show, get to getting… Impacciatore is up there with Christine Baranski, Megan Mullally, and Melissa Peterman, when it comes to stealing scenes.

The good news is you don’t have to wait all summer for some time with the team: We got an early edition with Daniels, his co-creator and co-showrunner Michael Koman, Frie, Nunez, Impacciatore, and Melvin Gregg (who plays smoothly dim ad-salesguy Detrick Moore) when they hit Austin’s ATX TV Festival in May. In addition to giving us their takes on their own characters’ antics, including Sabrina’s campaign to convince Ned that Mare was asexual and Melvin’s messy breakout with a colleague, Nunez was able to explain to us how his alter-ego has grown since his Michael Scott era.

“You assume I’ve grown,” he deadpans. “Dangerous game, my friend.”

“I don’t know..,you know what? I think he’s always been a pragmatist and he’s in a new town and he just hopes for the best,” continues the comedic livewire. “And so I think it’s a plus for him to even make friends at this new place, begrudgingly [and] despite himself, because no man is in an island. You can write that down! I think I just said that, never heard it before!”

As for what they all hoped to see in a second season, Daniels and Koman confirmed that they’d already wrapped filming and were deep in the editing process at the time of our interview. But they had taken steps to keep the ensemble in the loop.

“Before we started Season 2, [even] before Season 1 came out, we had meetings with all the cast,” Daniels revealed. “They came in and they sat with all the writers and we brainstormed stuff together and they could say what their hopes for the character were. And we tried to make that part of our thinking so that we’re all on the same page.”