Add the subway to the list of places Idris Elba’s fans won’t want to bump into him.

“Season 1, if I got onto a plane, people were like, ‘Idris! Idris,’” the Hijack star tells Yahoo. “'Hmm. What are you doing here?'”

‘‘Just flying to my destination,” he laughs.

The nervous reactions stem from the debut season of the Apple TV+ series, which followed Elba’s business negotiator character, Sam Nelson, as he deescalated a nail-biting hostage situation aboard a commercial flight. In its sophomore season — premiering on Jan. 14 — the action shifts underground to the Berlin U-Bahn, where commuters are taken hostage during rush hour.

But it’s not simply a case of here we go again. Sam’s role on the train is far less straightforward than when he played the reluctant plane hero. Where he’s been since that flight landed — and how he ends up inside the train’s conductor control car — is a mystery the new season slowly unpacks.

Elba — make that Sir Elba, as it was recently announced he'll be receiving a knighthood in his native United Kingdom — says his job was to map out what Sam has been through since viewers last saw him.

“We all saw what happened in the plane, and at the end of the season, [he’s] gone,” says Elba, who also executive produces the series. “Everyone's like, ‘Yo, what happened to him?’ “For me, it was really trying to answer for the audience: Where has he been? What he's been going through? Why is he on this train in Berlin?”

The wear and tear is visible immediately.

“He’s gone through some stuff,” Elba says. “He's gray. He’s less manicured. I don’t think he's been doing the job where he needs to be presentable.”

Between Hijack and some of his other recent projects — including the psychological crime thriller Luther, which is getting a movie sequel on Netflix, and the 2025 disaster drama A House of Dynamite, in which he plays the U.S. president during a missile attack — Elba has become the king of the stress-watch. When we point it out, he laughs.

“I have this massive library of what stressed people do,” he says.

Through what he describes as haptic acting, Elba leans into small, physical reactions audiences instinctively recognize: clasping his hands, rubbing his face, catching his breath before speaking. They’re details that communicate emotion without dialogue.

“I try to guess, especially with Sam Nelson, what would people do [in that situation]?” he says. “Heroes tend to never have those moments. They're like, ‘I'm a hero’ and get straight in. But when you play a character in the middle of a stressful situation, the audience relates to him more if he looks stressed [through his physicality].”

After spending his days immersed in tension, Elba says unwinding requires a conscious reset.

“At the end of the day, usually it's play video games, [spend time] with my family, maybe have a drink,” says the father of two, who is married to Sabrina Dhowre. “Just something that feels like Idris, feels like me. I don't tend to watch films or television. I just can't get my head out of what they're doing versus what I'm doing.”

Music, however, remains his favorite escape — and it’s always within reach.

“Making music is often a really cool reset,” says the rapper and producer, who has his own label. “Because you don't know what you're going to make when you go there, so you really have to dive into that creative space. It’s good therapy.”