A personal take on hotels, power dynamics and why The Night Manager Season 2 dropping in January has us all counting down the days.
What if your quiet night shift suddenly turned into an espionage thriller? That’s the thought I couldn’t shake after finishing The Night Manager. And now that Season 2 is officially landing on 1 January 2026 in the UK (and 11 January internationally), I’m already counting the days. It’s one of those rare shows that doesn’t just entertain you — it makes you feel seen in ways you weren’t expecting. Especially if, like me, you’ve spent years behind hotel desks or anywhere the “public face” of hospitality lives.
Why Hospitality Workers Feel Weirdly Seen by This Show
Anyone who has ever worked front-of-house — hotel, restaurant, café, hostel, anything with a lobby and a bell — knows exactly what I mean. There’s the “you” that walks into work, and there’s the character you become the second you tie your apron or clip on your name tag. Your smile suddenly becomes customer-service certified. Your tone? Polished. Your posture? A posture you’ve never used in your personal life.
Watching Jonathan Pine glide across that glamorous hotel lobby in perfect emotional neutrality felt almost… educational. Like: ‘Ah yes, the ancient art of pretending you’re not irritated, confused, or emotionally unravelled’. A skill we hospitality workers master not through training, but through sheer repetition and caffeine.
Of course, Pine’s version of emotional labor escalates into espionage, illegal arms dealing, and life-or-death situations. My shifts, thankfully, involve nothing more dangerous than an AC not working or that one “just one small favour to ask” right when the printer chooses violence and there’s 5 people queuing to see you. But it was that exaggerated, dramatic version of our everyday façade-wearing that got me.
Because the show doesn’t just ask whether we can separate ourselves from our roles — it shows what happens when the role starts to swallow the person whole.
What Sociologists Goffman and Hochschild Knew About The Masks We Wear
Arlie R. Hochschild explained this perfectly in her 1983 book The Managed Heart, where she defines emotional labor as the work of managing our feelings to fit a job’s expectations. She writes:
“When the job requires one to produce an emotional state in another person, it is the worker’s own feelings that are called into question. The emotional facade that the worker displays becomes a mask, concealing the feelings that the worker actually experiences.”
If you’ve ever worked a morning shift after crying the night before, you know exactly what she means. According to Hochschild, we’re basically actors — just without Oscars, trailers, or the paycheck to justify the performance. What we do have is coffee. Buckets of it.
And even before Hochschild, Erving Goffman was already thinking about this in the 1950s. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he compares everyday behaviour to a theatrical play:
“In everyday life, as in the theatre, the individual presents himself and his activity to others, guides and controls the impression they form of him…”
What fascinates me is that this was written in 1959, yet it still feels completely relevant in 2025. We perform because that’s what the role demands — and guests rarely see the person behind the mask. Which begs the question: Where does the job end, and where do we reclaim ourselves?
The Moments That Remind Us We’re Still Human
I remember checking in a couple from a culture where women were so far down the social chain they weren’t even allowed to stand beside the man as he spoke. The first time I saw it, my chest just dropped. She looked so small, so muted. It went against everything in my bones.
So I did the only thing I could do without risking my job: I addressed her directly as I explained the As and Bs of the hotel. Not to challenge their dynamic, but to at least acknowledge her as a human being who existed in the conversation. A tiny rebellion, maybe. But an important one.
That’s emotional labour, too. Or as Hochschild puts it:
“Emotional labor is the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; emotional labor is sold for a wage and therefore has exchange value.”
Translation: we are paid to smile even when our heart is busy doing something else entirely.
And then there’s the celebrity thing. A friend of mine works at a five-star hotel where huge artists stay. She can’t react. She can’t comment. She can’t even blink differently. She must embody “unimpressed elegance” at all times. Meanwhile, I’d be backstage in my own brain screaming, “OH MY GOD, IT’S THEM.”
But she didn’t. She understood the mission. In her uniform, she wasn’t a fan—she was hotel staff, serving the client, and nothing else. And that’s the uniform effect: once you’re wearing it, you’re not you. You’re the hotel’s avatar (or something).
How Strong Can the Facade Be?
So, back to Jonathan Pine, Our Patron Saint of Composure. In Season 1, he slips so deeply into performance that it becomes his survival strategy. Watching him stay composed while dealing with dangerous guests makes my own experiences — like the men who every now and then pretend not to understand my accent — feel both ridiculous and relatable. Because even then, I stayed professional, pleasant, borderline serene.
That’s the thing: we get used to performing even when the guest is being mildly rude. Pine just takes it to Olympic level, that’s all.
And Season 2? From what we’ve been teased, it looks like the façade we saw him displaying might start to fracture under new pressure. And honestly, I’m ready. Nothing hooks me like the moment a character’s emotional mask starts slipping — especially when I’ve worn my own for entire eight-hour shifts –releasing tension through the TV? Me? Nah.
If Season 1 held up a mirror to hospitality workers, Season 2 looks ready to crack the mirror and let us see what’s underneath. I can’t wait. And I’ll be watching it with the same energy I bring to a reception shift: fake-happy, caffeinated and slightly dramatic, but ready for anything.
Little Chilean 