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Joshua Jackson on the Return of Fringe

BuzzSugar — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:31:51 PST

On Tuesday, Fox's executives deemed Fringe to be "a keeper" at the TCA press tour. A bit later, Joshua Jackson stopped by Fox's all-star party to chat about your favorite sci fi show's return after American Idol on Jan. 20. He didn't spill too many secrets, but he did hint at what's coming up in the second half of the season. Here are highlights:

On coming back for a new batch of episodes: "The idea around our set is that round two for us is really kind of like season two. The end of the 10th episode is really kind of a big cliffhanger: Olivia is left in jeopardy. So we come back just like you would at the beginning of season two, you resolve the cliffhanger, and all of the untied lines from those 10 episodes are tied up pretty quickly in the first few episodes back. And then we use that to launch us into the second set of stories. Also, we're coming on after American Idol, which is a much larger audience, so it gives us an opportunity to kind of reintroduce the characters. Once the John Scott character is out of Olivia's head, it opens her up to a wide variety of possibilities cause she's literally been carrying this man with her since the beginning of the show."
On learning Peter's secrets: "I know the smaller character things, not the big, story, plot-driven things, because this is a JJ [Abrams] show. . . Peter's history, who Peter is, Walter's history, how it is that he seems to be so centrally involved in all of those mysteries - all of these things are slowly revealed. What we're shooting right now is actually a big reveal of how Walter - it's not incidental that Walter has knowledge about each one of the cases that we've investigated so far."

To hear what he thinks of the father/son relationship, his feelings about JJ Abrams, and whether he gets Lost scoop, just

On Peter and Walter's relationship: "I never thought the father-son dynamic would be as rich as it's been so far on the show, to be perfectly honest. I was skeptical of it because I thought that could really get into melodrama and over-the-top but John Noble is fantastic, he's just great, and he takes what could be a very crazy, over-the-top character and always finds some sort of human center to it, so when you see him trying to relate with his estranged son, it's heartbreaking."

On working with JJ Abrams: "He drives you crazy, and that's why you watch his shows. I say you, but I mean us, because I'm the same way. . . I am a big Lost fan, and how sick is this? I don't even get any inside information on Lost. You think you'd get inside the family and you'd be like, 'OK, so what'd they do?' No idea."
On giving Peter a reason to stick around: "The concern amongst everybody, myself included, was you can only go so far on the 'Peter's here to be a babysitter' thing, because at a certain point this very selfish man would just say, 'f*** it, I'm out of here.' And then you had that episode where he gets abducted by the Observer and Walter tells him, 'Son you may or may not have died,' or 'You may not be yourself,' and that's a pretty good hook. Also, he may not like to admit it, but he's human and he wants to take care of his dad. At the core of it all there's a very simple emotional story going on: Peter is an abandoned child who has a chance all these years later to build some sort of relationship with his father. If you took away all of the science fiction, that's a workable story in and of itself."

Photos courtesy of Fox

Dollhouse Pilot Being Reshot - But Whedon Says Don't Worry

BuzzSugar — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:30:07 PDT

On the (completely awesome - more about that later) set of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon gave reporters at the TCA press tour an explanation for his recent revelation that his highly anticipated new series is reshooting its pilot. The same thing happened with Whedon's Firefly the last time he worked with Fox - but Whedon told reporters that Dollhouse is in no great danger.

When Whedon turned in the first episode to Fox, "I could sense some hesitation about what I'd given them, and I understood why," he said. "I believe that first story works very well, but I also believe that their concerns about the audience coming into that world a little more simply were valid."

So, rather than try to re-cut what he'd already shot, Whedon proposed keeping that episode as a second episode and creating a new pilot that would introduce the characters in a slightly different way. "There are a lot of aspects of how [the characters] interact that we were planning on showing, and so what's a nice one to put up front?" Whedon said. "It was kind of nice to do a dry run and then say, 'What is absolutely the most iconic way to introduce this character, and this character, and this character?'"

Eliza Dushku, who was also there to show reporters around the set, joked that they also needed to reshoot because she didn't wear her leather pants in the original first episode (though her character did, apparently, make good use of the co-ed showers Whedon had built on set - and will again!).

Whedon and Dushku both seemed confident, and while I won't give away too many details from the set tour just yet, I will say that it was a very expensive-looking place that Fox clearly has a great deal of money invested in. But I'm wondering if this news makes any of you out there feel nervous or wary about the show's future. (If something bad does happen to the show, of course, there's already a legion of fans waiting in the wings to save it . . . )

Photo courtesy of Fox

TCA Tidbits: Kal Penn, The Office in Space, and More

BuzzSugar — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:31:01 PDT

Today, FX takes its turn onstage at the TCA press tour, so I should have lots to share later on about Damages and The Shield. But before I get into all of that, there are a few fun tidbits from the first day that I wanted to be sure to mention:

Kiefer Sutherland appeared briefly to chat about 24 (and was pinned against a wall by a throng of reporters almost immediately upon arrival). I've been watching the preview for this Fall's prequel on our hotel's closed-circuit system, and it seems to include Jack Bauer liberating a bunch of African children with his bare hands. Not that I'm complaining.
I never thought I'd be in the same room with Karl Rove - and I also never thought he'd be relatively non-confrontational. Instead, it was Fox News's Chris Wallace who laid the smack down on reporters during the Fox News session; I told Citizen the story.
It's strange to come out of a TCA session pumped for a show that doesn't really exist yet, but the new Fox show I'm most excited about has to be Boldly Going Nowhere, which the network is developing for midseason. Fox's entertainment president, Kevin Reilly, described it as "The Office in space - petty jealousies and incompetencies on a long-term mission to wherever they're going.
Also, Kevin Reilly and his fellow Fox exec Peter Ligouri have the best hair of all TV executives. Just sayin'.

Lots more - including carnival games with Kal Penn (I have video evidence!) and the trick to being a Fox animator - so

Fox has a show called Secret Millionaire, and it's going to be very, very weird. The premise: Millionaires go out into poorer communities to, er, see how the other half lives; later, they reveal themselves to be secretly rich and bestow a giant check on someone. This being Fox, reporters spent a good portion of the session asking if there was really a twist in which various embarrassing challenges would need to be performed before the money could be collected.
If you're an animator on a Fox series, it helps to be named Matt or Mike. Of the nine people on the panel featuring the executive producers of Fox's five animated shows, five of them had one of those two names. Also, this seems to be the animator uniform: gray or medium-blue jeans; gray, black, or navy T-shirt or polo; gray, black, or blue blazer. It was one long line of monochromatic clothing, with the exception of that one guy in white:
Like last year, Fox threw its party at the Santa Monica Pier - and Joss Whedon was, quite literally, acting like a kid at a carnival. He bolted around from ride to ride (Molly and I joined him on the Sea Dragon) and seemed particularly excited about getting a group together for the bumper cars.
Speaking of Molly, she casually informed Kal Penn that she was going to beat him at one of those games where you have to squirt a water gun to make a character run up a rail - and she wasn't joking around. Watch:

You can't hear it, but in that last bit at the end, he acknowledged her obvious carnival-game superiority.

With ABC, CBS, NBC, The CW, and Bravo coming in the next few days, I'm wondering: What do you most want to hear about from TCA?

Photos courtesy of Fox

So You Think You Can Dance: Jessica's Out!

BuzzSugar — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:30:50 PDT

Big news for So You Think You Can Dance fans from Monday's session at the TCA press tour. Jessica King, who slipped into the top 10 last week, is out with an injury, and Comfort's taken her spot in the competition.

Nigel Lythgoe wouldn't be specific about the nature of her injury or the time that it happened - though he said he hopes Jessica herself will be available to do that on the show this week. Comfort hadn't left LA yet when Jessica had to drop out, and she was back in rehearsal as of Monday morning.

In fact, all of the top 10 dancers were in rehearsal, which was a bit of a bummer, since I'd really been hoping to check out Twitchington in the flesh. Instead, we got a foxtrot from Kourtni and Matt (who really are that tall) and a solo from Thayne (who really is that smiley) before Nigel, Mary Murphy, Cat Deely, and Mia Michaels took the stage for some Q&A. Some highlights:

Mary explained that she'd been using her "hot tamale train" expression for years to describe dancers - typically fiery ballroom dancers. The hot tamale train typically doesn't pull into the station during more emotional performances, no matter how much Mary likes them; she's usually too close to crying for that. Also, if some couple gets two tickets on the hot tamale train, that means Mary thinks they're headed for the finale. Now we know.
Mia doesn't think she's a mean judge. "I'm just being very honest," she said. She insisted that in rehearsals she's "Mama Mia" and the dancers look to her for tough love.
When the choreographers work with the dancers, they have an hour and a half on Friday and three hours on Saturday - and that's just about it.

For a little more - including a new pairing Nigel accidentally revealed - just

Courtney and Joshua will be dancing together! Woohoo!
Nigel was still obviously upset when asked about Robert quitting earlier this season. "No dancer should quit," he said. "At any point. Ever." He said he'd be curious to see if Robert backed down from his potential dance battle with Phillip Chbeeb next. Ouch.
Nigel's philosophy on SYTYCD, American Idol, and other shows where the audience votes: "The public often get it wrong. But at the end of the day, they sort of put it right - it's along the way they get things wrong." He used as an example Tamyra Gray getting kicked off Idol but Kelly Clarkson rightfully winning.
Nigel noted that that the past two years, the finale has pitted a brilliant dancer (Travis, Danny) against a brilliant performer (Benji, Sabra) and the performer has come out on top.

Photo courtesy of Fox