BONES Scoop: Emily Deschanel Talks the Intense Season 8 Finale

One of BONES most notorious and deadly villains returns for a heart-stopping finale.  Pelant is not normally a name to send shivers down your spine, but as long-time fans well-know, that name should.  Super-psychotic, super-intelligent and utterly without remorse, Christopher Pelant (Andrew Leeds) is a sociopath you never want to ever encounter.  He has wrecked havoc in the lives of our beloved BONES heroes for over two years now and the latest person in his cross-hairs is Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz).  In a recent press conference call, star Emily Deschanel gave all the scoop on how difficult this latest encounter with Pelant is going to be and the emotional toll it takes on Dr. Temperance Brennan.

“Bones”

What can you tease about the return of Pelant as this time he seems to be using Booth to target Brennan?
EMILY: In this episode, Pelant returns.  Obviously the last time we saw him, Booth had injured him.  He shot him.  So it seems at this point, Pelant has set his sights on Booth now it seems.  Before, as you recall last season, he seemed to be targeting Brennan.  So it appears that he’s targeting Booth.  In fact, the body that we discover, Booth knew the victim.  It’s very close to home involving the FBI and a case Booth is involved with, and So it feels like it’s very targeted towards Booth and of course that’s terrifying to Brennan because she realizes that Pelant could get him, that Booth is in danger, and Pelant hasn’t gotten to any of us yet on the team.  He hasn’t really hurt us, but he’s really taking it up a notch this episode, and you’ll see how he affects their lives.

Brennan has proved that she would go to measures to protect somebody that she cared about because she stabbed a needle into the guy to get the location of the anecdote.  So how far do you think she’s capable of going to keep safe those that she really loves?
EMILY: As you see in this coming-up episode, Brennan is willing to go farther than she’s ever gone to protect somebody that she loves, and I think there’s really no bounds to her protecting—what’s another word to use because you can’t say certain things about the episode and your season…?  So you saw that she’s willing to go pretty far to save someone that she loves, and now you’ll see that she’ll do the same for other people that she loves to protect them, to protect her life with them.  I’ll leave it at that.

How much does Pelant’s return factor into Brennan’s decision about having a relationship with Booth?  Do you think it still would have happened if he hadn’t returned now?
EMILY: I think that Pelant’s presence and intense presence and targeting Booth and feeling Booth’s mortality and the possibility of him being in danger and the concept of even living without him kind of brings things to the forefront for Brennan when she thinks about Booth and Brennan’s relationship, and I think that she would be thinking about things in that way, but I think that Pelant kind of makes things happen more quickly and maybe in a more intense way.

“Bones”

What do you think about her mindset going into the finale especially when Pelant is attacking again?
EMILY: It’s scary.  They just thought that they were going to lose one of their own already with Arastoo, and Pelant is scary.  He’s somebody who’s brilliant.  Maybe Brennan’s a little bit smarter than him, but it’s hard to say.  She hasn’t seen somebody quite as terrifying and challenging as him and targeting them.  It’s pretty scary.   She’s been raising her child with Booth.  There are so many things that have happened in the last two years, and they kind of don’t really have a moment to think about their lives and themselves and their relationships.  You see Booth and Brennan get together.  They get pregnant right away and then have to raise a child together, and Brennan’s always been this person who said I’d never have children, I’m not going to get married, I’m not interested in that, and she’s kind of going along, but she’s not forced to really examine her life in that way and her relationships.  So when this happens with Pelant, it really forces her to look at her life and herself and her relationships and her feelings and why she feels certain ways about certain things and make her questions some of her core beliefs.  It’s a very pivotal time for her.

How personal this case is for the entire team, what can you say about what goes on at the Jeffersonian in the season finale?
EMILY: In the season finale that was important. We may see multiple victims in this episode from Pelant.  It actually feels more targeted toward the FBI than the Jeffersonian, but of course, we’re partners with the FBI as a whole and then Booth being Brennan’s partner in life and in their work.  So it feels personal even though nobody seems to be specifically targeted at the Jeffersonian.  It’s really FBI, but we are working feverishly to solve this case, to find Pelant, to stop him however possible, to figure out what he’s doing because he always has a hidden agenda as we’ve learned.    He’s not just killing some person at random.  There’s a reason he’s chosen the victims he’s chosen.  There’s a reason he’s killed them in the way he has, and there’s a meaning behind it.  It affects not only Booth at the FBI.  It affects Sweets. Pelant is targeting Booth, but it’s affecting Sweets as well, and Pelant has taken information that he’s learned from Sweets and is toying with him as well while he’s on this killing rampage.  So Pelant also in this instance may be involving other people in his plot.  We’re trying to investigate and figure out how he’s doing it, and So it gets scary when he’s probably recruiting other people to do work for him.

Pelant is one of the most unique villains BONES has really ever seen because he’s a little bit nerdy but that doesn’t make him any less deadly.  So where does he rank among the villains that the characters have faced off with over the years?
EMILY:  I find him terrifying in his calm, steely way about him.  His nerdiness — you’d think would make it less scary, but I think it makes it more scary, and if you know the guy who plays him, Andrew Leeds, he is like the friendliest, sweetest person. So it’s just really strange.  Some of the actors had never met him and I ran into him with Tamara Taylor who plays Cam Saroyan, and she said “oh my gosh, he’s so different from his character.”  She had no idea.  She’d only seen him on screen.  So I thought that was very interesting.  But I think we’ve gotten better and better with our serial killers, we’ve gotten better and better.  That sounds like such a silly thing to say, but to me, it’s more terrifying. You have this brilliant person who’s able to really get around the law in so many different ways whether it’s getting out of an ankle bracelet or finding ways around not being able to use computers and changing his name and identity and changing the records of DNA so that he is known as a completely different person.  That is so terrifying and so brilliant that I think I’d have to rank him as the number one for serial killers.   The Grave Digger was terrifying and that Brennan and Hodgins (TJ Thyne) being buried alive was pretty terrifying, and you have Gormogon which was very scary, but I rank Pelant as number one right now.  Hopefully, we keep building upon things and make them scarier and scarier, if we have more serial killers that is.

Do you find filming emotional scenes more challenging?
EMILY: It depends.  It really depends on what it is.  It depends on the emotion and the way the scene is written and the circumstances.  I find it challenging to switch tone like we do on our show.  It’s definitely challenging to go from comedy to humor and lightness to sadness.  It really depends on the particular scene and what it is.  Sometimes emotion comes easily for me and sometimes it’s more challenging whether it’s because we are laughing and being light a moment before or for whatever reason it’s not as — So it really depends on the scene what the challenge is, but I think changing tone really can be very challenging for me and it really depends on the scene for me and what it’s about and why. I think that when you’re supposed to have emotion out of nowhere, that’s challenging for me.

“Bones”

Can you talk about the change between the relationship between Brennan and Booth with Sweets this season since he was staying with him and now he’s gone?
EMILY: Well, we had a fun kind of parent/child relationship for a while where we had Sweets staying with us.  He’s kind of like our child in a way, or we’re kind of treating him that way, and we don’t believe he’s able to move out on his own and then he does.  So we as Brennan says in an episode, he’s the only person that she could think of living with them ever.  He’s a person that Booth and Brennan both like equally and where you can qualify emotions.   So I think they’ve become very close with Sweets having lived with him, and I think it’s hard when he moves out.  It’s hard when he’s dealing with stuff from feeling affected by Pelant as well in this coming episode.  We feel it when he’s affected.

BONES has obviously been tremendously successful.  Why do you think it resonates with viewers.  What do you think the appeal has been for them?
EMILY: People ask me this question or similar questions and it’s hard to have an answer, but I can guess that the reason why it’s been a popular show is that it has a lot of different things for so many different people.  When people are interested in solving a case and they like the puzzle of that or somebody’s interested in the science or somebody loves watching the kind of repartee between the characters or the sexual tension between Booth and Brennan or between other characters., the dynamics of the relationships of the characters whether they’re friendships or partners in life or partners in work and there are some episodes that seem like a farce and some episodes that seem like an action film and some that just seem like a good old-fashioned mystery, and I think that it offers so many different things and that can be a negative thing for us and it can be a positive thing for us, and I’ll have to say that I think that may be a reason why we’ve lasted for so long, but it may also be why we’re not the number one television series on TV, but it can work both ways.

This season has shown a lot of personal growth with Brennan where she’s been gaining a bit more self-awareness.  How do you think these developments strengthen her character and how do you think this makes her more compatible with Booth?
EMILY:  I think becoming self-aware, no matter who you are, I think is always a positive thing, and I think that it may, to Brennan has seemed like a weakness, to be more vulnerable and open emotionally before, but now, hopefully she’s realized that it actually can be a strength and that it can make her stronger for having opened up emotionally and showing some vulnerability and admitted that she’s not always made of steel.  I think that it can always help her relationship when someone opens up more and becomes self-aware, and so I think it definitely benefits their relationship and it’s also a wonderful thing for somebody to try and change themselves to help their relationship and themselves.  I think it’s a wonderful thing and just the fact that she’s even trying to do that is a great thing and hopefully Booth sees that and appreciates it.

After two seasons, are we going to get closure on the Pelant storyline or is there a chance that he might come back next season?
EMILY: There will be some closure, but the story is definitely ongoing.  That’s kind of a tricky answer, but I don’t know how better to answer it.  The story continues into next season.  That’s not to say that we haven’t captured him in some way by the end of this season, but with Pelant, it’s never as simple as we think as we’ve learned.  He’s changed his complete identity.  He’s very tricky.  He’s very wily in his ways.  So the story does continue with Pelant into season nine.

To see if our heroes come out of this latest encounter with Pelant unscathed, be sure to tune in for the 8^th season finale of BONES on Monday, April 29^th at 8:00 p.m. on Fox.  And remember:  evil never truly dies.

Where to find this article:

 

http://www.thetvaddict.com/2013/04/29/bones-scoop%C2%A0emily-deschanel-teases-tonights-intense-eighth-season-finale/

 

 

Shining the Spotlight on David Mazouz of TOUCH

David Mazouz

Perhaps one of the toughest jobs in Hollywood is one where the actor doesn’t get to say a word. Yet extraordinarily, the young actor David Mazouz manages to convey so much through facial expressions and body language in his scenes that one never doubts what he is thinking or feeling. In the series TOUCH, David has the auspicious role of co-starring with Kiefer Sutherland in scenes where David’s character Jake Bohm does not say a single word.

But in TOUCH, the story of Martin and Jake Bohm has captivated viewers who are intrigued with the journey of the father and son as they play pawns in a master game of destiny – or perhaps as David suggests, Jake is more like the puppet-master directing their lives for a grander purpose. For the theme of TOUCH is recognizing that through mathematics and numbers how each and every person on the planet are interconnection. It’s like seeing “the Butterfly Effect” each week as small movements set off a chain of events affecting so many lives – and usually for the better.

In a recent exclusive interview, David Mazouz candidly shared what it is like playing the omniscient Jake and where Jake’s journey will lead him this season in TOUCH.

“Touch”

What has impressed you the most about the second season so far?
DAVID: It’s about the relationship between Martin and Jake, and that it is getting stronger, which is really cool.

This season has gotten more action-packed, how has that been for you as a young actor? Has it been exciting?
DAVID: Yeah, definitely. Like when I’m reading the scripts, I’m on the edge of my seat the whole time and I think that the audience that is watching this season will be too. It’s just really fun. It’s so action-packed that the audience will just be wanting to see more. I was asking the AD’s for the scripts in advance because I wanted to read them so badly because it’s so good. I really like that, all the action-packed stuff and where everything is going.

Are you being allowed to participate more in the action, opposed to just being in the scene? Are you allowed to do stunts of your own yet?
DAVID: (Laughs) No, not really. I want them too, but they’re not letting me.

Last season, the questions were about “who is Jake and how is he involved in the mystery?” This season has made Jake more of a target and he’s in danger. What does that feel like for you?
DAVID: It’s cool. I just love the scripts and where they are going. I think that all the action-packed stuff is really coming from all that danger that’s happening. It’s exciting ’cause there’s this evil power that wasn’t there before in the story, ’cause in the first season it was really about Jake and Martin connecting with people and making people’s lives better. But now it’s about protecting themselves while making people’s lives better — and that’s really cool.

Have you insisted on having a bullet-proof vest if the show is going to keep making Jake the target?
DAVID: (Laughs) No, but I think he deserves one.

“Touch”

Is there going to be a point where we see Jake and Amelia work together a little bit?
DAVID: Definitely. Jake and Amelia are actually connecting through this inside-the-head type of thing a lot this season. They try to find each other in the beginning of the season, and they try to work together to make a lot of the things happen. Even though they are not with each other physically, they have the inner-communication (kind of like telepathy) and they kind of speak to each other like that. A lot of the things that happen are because of them working together.

There’s been a rumor that the producers put out there that Jake may actually speak this season, can you talk a little bit about that?
DAVID: I don’t want to give too much away. But I will say that Jake does evolve a lot in the second season.

Is that exciting for you as an actor, seeing that kind of growth for your character?
DAVID: Yeah, ’cause Jake in the first season, he would once in awhile smile, but really for the most part he was blank-faced without having any emotion and just kind of there, writing things down and rocking back and forth. But this season, you’ll be seeing him doing things that he would have never done in the first season. So that is really cool as an actor.

It was surprising to see how open Jake was to meeting new people, like befriending the girl at the pier and going on rides. He just seemed to be willing to experience more and be more involved in life.
DAVID: I think the whole moving to L.A. kind of changed who he was a lot. ‘Cause if you think about it, the time period between the first and second season is immediate. But I think that car drive from New York to L.A. was really something that bonded Martin and Jake, and Jake evolved a lot during that car ride.

“Touch”

What do you think was the emotion Jake experienced when he reached out to touch his dad’s hand like that at the end of the first season?
DAVID: It’s the love and trust between them. Because Martin loves Jake and Jake loves Martin, and maybe he can’t show it like a regular kid would show to his parents of how he or she loves them. But Jake definitely loves Martin, and Martin loves Jake — or he wouldn’t be such a great dad, doing all this stuff, following all these numbers, which is just a one out of a million chance of actually being something true. For Jake to write down a number and it happens to be the same. So it’s obvious that Martin loves Jake. But I think their relationship goes to more trust and love. They are trusting each other more. Like in the first season, Jake wasn’t sure if his dad would keep him when a lot of people were telling him not to. But now Jake knows that he can count on his dad. So I think he trusts him more. So I think those two elements are really what’s going on.

For you, what do you enjoy most working on TOUCH?
DAVID: That’s a hard one ’cause everything is so awesome. But I think the people would have to be the best because the cast and crew, everybody is just fantastic. Like Kiefer [Sutherland] bought me a guitar for my 11th birthday last year, and he’s a pretty good guitar player. He taught me how to play a little bit. He also taught me chess and a little bit of boxing. Then my wardrobe person on set is kind of like my life-coach, basketball coach and friend. He’s taught me a lot of pointers. Then the make-up person on set, we have a secret handshake together and every episode we add another step. In fact, we took a video of it and it’s now almost two minutes long. And the props guy, he is awesome. Since we’re on location a bunch in our scenes, he goofs off with me and shows me all these things, like we made paper airplanes and we went to the top of the stage where they hang everything and we threw them down, and we had a contest about whose when the farthest. Then we had dodgeball fights. Also my studio teacher is amazing. She’s so awesome. She communicates so much and teaches me so many things that I’m not even learning in school, and I always get ahead. And we always ride around with our bikes around the stage at Fox. It’s all just fun. I think it’s just awesome.

“Touch”

Then if you wanted to tease a little bit of what’s upcoming for the fans, what can you share?
DAVID: Just that there’s a lot more suspense, a lot more action-packed, with a lot more characters. Everything gets a lot more complicated, a lot more serialized, and that’s really cool. So I think the audience can look forward to being on the edge of their seats this season — and that’s fun. So just keep on watching!

To see exactly what David and Amelia are cooking up for everyone and if they can out maneuver the AsterCorp villains, be sure to tune in for all new episodes of TOUCH as they airs Friday nights at 9:00 p.m. on Fox.

Where to find this article:

http://www.thetvaddict.com/2013/02/22/touch-david-mazouz-interview/

“Touch”

Executive Producers Tim Kring and Carol Barbee Invite Viewers to Rediscover the Miraculous World of TOUCH

Last year a special young boy proved that with one single touch he could send ripple-effects throughout the universe and bring about miraculous achievements. For being at that right place at the right time set off a chain-reaction of events across the globe to bring about a greater good. Watching such a young boy, who seemed unable to speak, yet who own presence could affect such a positive outcome was captivating. Returning for its second season, TOUCH takes fans and viewers back into the intriguing world of Martin and Jake Bohm. Starring Kiefer Sutherland and David Mazouz, their character’s strong bond of love and struggle to communicate was both joyous and celebratory. In a recent press conference call, executive producers Tim Kring and Carol Barbee shared how the second season expands the Bohms’ world as they ry to elude Aster Corp and those who would seek to harness Jake’s precognitive abilities for their own evil purposes.

In the second season we have a new setting, a lot of new characters, and a new story. Could you talk a bit about this sort of reinventing of TOUCH for the second season?
TIM: We start the season off very much where we left off the season at the end of Season 1 so that if you watched the season finale we will pick directly up from that and continue the story that we were telling at the end of the season. Again, if you were a loyal viewer of the show you will have noticed that the show started off in a kind of standalone nature where every episode had a beginning and middle and an end and things were sort of tied up. By the end of the season we had introduced a more serialized engine to the show, and we ended the season with Kiefer Sutherland’s character taking his son and running, basically on the run, and coming all the way to California in search of this mysterious girl names Amelia. We sort of introduced the idea of this mystery girl early in the season, in Season 1, and by the end of the season we are in Los Angeles on the journey to finding her, and that connects us up with Maria Bello’s character, who is Amelia’s mother. That’s where we pick up the season. In many ways everything changes from the first season to the second season in that we took the entire storyline and took it from New York City to Los Angeles, and that entire world and all the characters that were in that world are starting pretty much fresh in the second season.

 

“Touch”

Is the show going to remain heavily serialized that we get in these first two episodes or are you also going to be bringing back some of like the feel-good reunion love connection type of intertwined story that you used to have in the first season?
CAROL: It’s a combination of both. I’d say this year the stories—there are three main stories that are all serialized in their own way, and they’re all barreling towards one another so that there comes a point where they all intersect, and that’s where the major thrust of the action is. We have a character who is one of the special people like Jake but he’s bent on tracking them down and doing harm to them so we’re watching that happen and seeing who he is able to get to and who he’s not, and obviously he’s coming for Jake. And then we have the character Guillermo Ortiz played by Said Taghmaoui. He’s fantastic. He gives such a drive to this season. We have another character who is played by Lukas Haas, and he plays Calvin Norburg who is a genius who has been doing the work and trying on an analog level to achieve the kinds of results with numbers and patterns that Jake is able to do naturally. We have him also on Jake’s trail. Anyway, these three stories sort of barrel towards one another. There are still those connections that happen around the world. Some of them are much darker this year because of the story with Said, but it’s much more of a page-turner. It is serialized. Every episode does feed in to the next.
TIM: I think what happened at the end of last season or towards the end of last season, by introducing this nefarious villain in this corporation Aster Corp that we introduced, and by raising the threat to Jake and to people like Jake it really dictated that was the direction we were going to go in in the second season. Once the mistakes had been raised it was very hard to sort of back off of that, and it dictated a much more serialized storytelling that we’re doing in this season.

Was that change sort of planned or was it sort of in reaction to something?
TIM: Well, we did start as a sort of standalone show because, frankly, we wanted to make sure that we got viewers when new viewers were sampling it at the beginning of the season. We wanted to make sure that people weren’t thrown off of the show because they didn’t know what was going on. But we started introducing the idea of a serialization really early on. In the very first episode after the pilot we introduced that there was a mysterious person in this room in the board-and-care facility, and we slowly started to leak out who that was, and by Episode 6 when Danny Glover’s character was killed we knew that he died in a way that was mysterious and it was attached to this corporation Aster Corp that he seemed very afraid of. I think it was a very subtle burn, a kind of slow fuse that built to the last three or so episodes, and by that time the show had morphed in to much more of a serialized show, and then picking up where that left off we kind of picked that up in a full blown way. It was designed but a bit subtle for the audience I think.

Coming off of the television series 24, did you feel any sort of added pressure to sort of put Kiefer Sutherland in more action packed type situations?
TIM: Well, I don’t know that it’s pressure. I think it’s an advantage to have somebody who has that in his wheelhouse and this character was always designed to be an every man who was put in extraordinary circumstances and forced to become much more of an action kind a guy than Jack Bauer ever was. In other words, Jack Bauer his backstory was much less of an ordinary guy; he was sort of built to be that guy. This guy was not built to be that guy. He was a reporter and a family man but he’s thrown in to these extraordinary circumstances, and I think it’s really just using some of the skill sets that come along with somebody like Kiefer.

 

“Touch”

What can you share about the differences for the production design between this season and the first one?
TIM: The show is going to look a little different just because we are shooting it for Los Angeles. In the first season we actually shot everything in Los Angeles no matter where we were, if we were in Africa or Japan or wherever. We were actually within 30 miles of our offices here, and that became something that was actually very difficult to do because we’re in sunny Southern California but we could never say that we were in sunny California. By moving the storyline to Los Angeles it made it much easier for us, production wise, to actually point the camera in any direction and say that we were here as opposed to some other part of the world. But the production design on this how has always been very challenging in a really good way because we depict so many different places, and we work with this incredibly talented team. One of the things that we try to do is move as quickly as possible so we designed the shooting style that allowed us to use a lot of natural light and a lot of natural locations. In other words, if we have a scene that’s set in a bicycle store then we go to a bicycle store and we shoot there rather than making one ourselves and having to pay for all that. That’s sort of the style that we adopted and we took that to kind of new levels this year by really designing a shooting style that allowed us to move very quickly.

From the beginning, the whole center of the show is how people connect with each other. How people touch and inspire each other. Do you think that will get lost in the second season?
CAROL: I would say that while the season starts off with Martin on a mission and there’s danger involved last year it wasn’t dangerous. He was being sent on these missions by his son that helped people find each other and helped things happen, but it wasn’t necessarily dangerous. By the end of the last season it was dangerous and he had to go on the run. We got that ball rolling downhill. He’s on the run and it’s dangerous; people are after them, but then those connections do start to happen again so that part of the series does not get lost. It definitely comes back in to it, and also within those stories that are barreling towards each other even with the danger there will be those touches that happen around the world. I think that the audience will be satisfied because they’ll actually have both.
TIM: The truth is there will be less of that idea of sort of disconnected people who somehow connect up at the very end of the episode. Because of the nature of the very high stakes that are driving the main story it’s sometimes very hard to jump off of that train and on to a story that doesn’t have a lot of stakes to it. I think once we start down this hill I think people are going to be pretty hooked on the idea of finding Amelia and what it all means and who is behind all of this. My feeling has always been that we can always—while there are still parts of that in this season we can always come back to that, and I think once the danger is lifted then we see sort of glimpses of how we’re going to come back to those kinds of stories.

What were some of the challenges for the making of TOUCH for this season?
TIM: Because we cram a lot of story in to one episode it’s always challenging to make a show. Every show has its own challenges, but I have to admit this year was much less challenging by being here. One of the challenges that you have is the kids in the show, both David and Saxon (who plays Amelia) are both under 16 years old, and so because of that we’re limited by how much time we can actually film with them, and they have to be in school for a certain number of hours during the filming. Whenever you have children playing a major role you always have the challenge of dealing with that. But we try to put as much production value on the screen as possible so there are always location issues. Los Angeles is sometimes difficult location wise because people have gotten used to the fees that are paid to park trucks and all of that kind of stuff. That’s why you see a lot of production leaving Los Angeles because it’s expensive to film here. We have the same challenges that everybody else does.

How do you think fans will react to the new more serious storyline this year?
CAROL: I think the audience is going to be thrilled. I think it’s a real page-turner. It’s sort of a thrill ride this year, and you’re watching Kiefer Sutherland, who people love to watch on a mission. You’re watching him on a mission and he’s got a great storyline. I think people are going to really hook in and really enjoy it and take the ride.
TIM: I can’t really stress enough that the loyal viewer of last season I think will find this very seamless because there has just been such a natural progression on this story, and especially towards the end of last season. All of those things were rewarded; you were rewarded for your loyal viewing. All those sort of hidden Easter-eggs start to show up about Aster Corp and about the 36 chosen ones and all of that mythology gets flushed out in a really big way in the second season. You’re very much rewarded for having been there from the very beginning.

 

“Touch”

How big of a difference and how true to life is that all of a sudden Jake can now speak? How is that going to play out and does that raise Martin’s expectations that his son is finally coming back to him?
TIM: Early on we’re preserving the idea that he doesn’t speak. Nobody sees that in the first part of this season, and so when that happens and if it happens we’re still not talking about right now. But there certainly is a new kind of form of communication, and I think the last minute of the season finale of last season really points to so much. Not only are you introduced to this brand new very big character (Maria Bello’s character) but Jake actually takes his father’s hand for the first time and touches him so the idea of touch actually becomes this very big move forward in their relationship. In the second season we’re going to play with that idea of their ability to communicate with each other a lot, and so I think people who felt maybe frustrated that there was little communication are going to feel a lot less frustrated by the ways in which Jake communicates to his father without speaking are going to really increase this season.
CAROL: I think we’re also playing with an evolution in Jake and in people like Jake so it’s also rooted in the mythology of the show as to what is happening and how quickly it’s happening or how slowly it’s happening. But they’re sort of raising something in each other and we’ll see that develop as we go along.

Did you feel like that was necessary for Martin to get something that he’s worked so hard out of this relationship with his son?
TIM: Well, you know the truth is when we talk about the audience like people want that we very much internally are sort of like the audience. I mean the writer’s room and all of us who are making the show often have the same kind of arch with the show that the audience does. Just when we start to feel like we’ve gone too far in this direction or too little in that direction I think it mirrors where the audience is. Listen, 13 hours of story is a lot of story, and when we all grow up watching movies 13 hours is a long time and so you do have to move things forward or else it starts to feel like there’s sort of a stall going on. I think people want things to move forward but they don’t want things to change too much at the same time so there’s always a balance with that. We’ve found a very subtle way for them to start communicating with one another in kind of new ways, and it really liberated us, and I think it actually liberated the actors a little bit in playing those parts.

Obviously there’s the underlying kind of sci-fi feel just in terms of what is going on with the connections and such. Will that be downplayed so it’s much more grounded this season or will there still be kind of elements that will make people that are maybe looking to the more sci-fi be able to still question whether or not these powers and these connections are something that might be unexplainable in that way?
TIM: I think that part of it actually sort of gets heightened a little bit this year, and I don’t know that I would call it sci-fi as much as kind of mystical or—yeah sort of it may be supernatural more than sci-fi yes, but I think it gets heightened a little bit this year when we dig in to the mythology of who Jake is. Why he is the way he is and why are there others out there? It’s not much of a spoiler to say that we do introduce this idea of this new character Amelia, played by Saxon Sharbino, she comes in to the show fairly early on in the season and is someone who possesses the same sort of abilities that Jake has, and so we dig a little deeper in to it this year, and we don’t shy away from it.
CAROL: And then the mythology of the numbers and what they all mean Jake has started those numbers from the first episode from the pilot and they continue. You will understand this season what they mean and what their power is so I think that also feeds in to the supernatural sci-fi element.

With Maria Bello’s character in the mix, how does she that affect the relationship between Martin and Jake?
CAROL: We had a lot of fun with the Lucy character, which was Maria Bello’s character, because she is a mother bear on a mission to find her daughter. That’s all she cares about, and she gets involved with Martin and Jake because they are also looking for her daughter, but along the way where they agendas collide she’s going to do her thing. All she cares about is finding her daughter so she and Martin come in to a lot of conflict along the way. What I love and I think what the writers—what we all really enjoyed writing was her relationship with Jake because Jake hasn’t had a mother his entire life. His mother died when he was 9-months-old so he now has this sort of de facto mom in the house, and she’s not your regular mom. She’s got a great way with him. She’s not precious with him and yet she’s very loving and accepting of him, and he really bonds to her. It brings a great element in there and it gives Martin somebody to talk to and to share things with. She’s somebody who is three years ahead of Martin on the trail of Aster Corp and these numbers and everything else so she knows things that Martin doesn’t know. It’s a great relationship with him but it’s fun to see them build this little family together.
TIM: And as we say they’re sort of part of the smallest private club in the world because they share this unique—these children with unique abilities. But yeah this idea that both of them have their own agendas for finding Amelia and that’s going to come in to conflict in the sort of Sophie’s choice of it all of what do you do when your own child’s wellbeing is at stake. Which side do you choose? That’s where we’re moving with that storyline.

Since Martin and Jake are on the run this season how important was it to tap in to some of the intensities that Kiefer was known for on 24? Was that a consideration for you guys?
CAROL: Absolutely. He’s great at it and I think audiences enjoy watching him trying to save the world and so yeah absolutely. It plays to his strengths and it also is what was required for the story that we’ve started.
TIM: Yeah. You know that really started in earnest in the last two hours of the season last year when he realizes that somebody is after his son, and he goes to these extraordinary lengths. In the season finale he goes and buys a gun from a pawn shop and goes in to the board-and-care facility where his son is prepared to use this gun to take his son and flee across the country with him. Again, it’s that every man aspect of what would you or I do in that situation and not Jack Bauer that makes it kind of interesting. When Martin first gets the gun in the season finale from the pawn shop he has to feel the weight of the gun in his hand because he doesn’t really—he’s not used to holding a gun, and that one moment I think really said a lot. It sort of told people instantly that this isn’t Jake Bauer doing this; this is a much more dangerous situation because he’s a bit ill prepared. So Kiefer’s able to tap in to the action stuff that he played for so long on 24 but he’s able to do it through the lens of somebody who is not trained in that. That tension I think is the part that’s fun to watch in Martin Bohm and not Jack Bauer.

With the second season of TOUCH with the cast and its world expanding, are you doing anything different in terms of devoting specific things to characters to keep the original fans from first season involved and engaged?
TIM: Well, I think because we have a much narrower world and a much narrower cast in TOUCH than we did in HEROES it becomes easier to distill it down to it’s really just the two main characters that carry on from the first season. It’s just the father and son, and so in many ways it wasn’t nearly as difficult to move. With HEROES you’re moving a cast of ten or eleven people forward and if those characters don’t change then the audience gets very upset because nothing is happening, and if they do change then the audience gets very upset because they’re changing too much. You’re in kind of a strange bind in those situations. This I think was much easier because there were only two characters, and we knew who they were, and we knew a lot about them, and their dynamic does not change between them. It’s only the circumstances that they find themselves in. I don’t think it was nearly as challenging.

Can you tell us anything about any guest stars that will be on this season and if there were any guest stars that you would want to try to work with in the future?
CAROL: We’re thrilled with the performance Lukas Haas gives; it’s such a beautiful performance and it’s complicated and scary and odd so very happy with him. Said was fantastic. Going forward, Francis Fisher—
TIM: —joins the cast towards the end of the season about Episode 8 on.
CAROL: Right. So she’s significant in the cast.
TIM: D.B. Sweeney comes on board.
CAROL: Leland Orser is a wonderful actor and he joins as well. I’m trying to think who else.
TIM: Bodhi Elfman.
CAROL: Oh, Bodhi Elfman yeah he comes back as Avram.
TIM: He comes back as Avram and so that character comes back. I don’t know that’s about it.
CAROL: While we expended the world we did and we have multiple story lines, they all are serialized, and they all work all season long, and they’re all acting upon the Jake Martin story so it feels a lot more focused even though we have a bigger cast this year. They’re with us the whole time for the most part, and we were really, really thrilled with the cast we had this year.

What is the best part about bringing these characters to life and sharing them with everybody?
TIM: What’s really interesting—I mean I could go off in to a very big tangent here but I’ll go on a little one—is just the nature of making a show is very interesting in that the actors and the characters sort of meet you half-way. It’s a very organic process and things that you set out to do often times change because you start to see the possibilities that actors bring to things. That process is I think the most exciting part about making a series is that you can’t really dictate your will on it very much because it ends up being what it wants to be. For instance, you’ll get two characters together and decide that they’re going to have a lot of chemistry or that they’re going to hate one another. Then you get those actors together on the set and you realize it doesn’t look like they hate one another or they have no chemistry with one another, and so you end up having to change in midstream all these ideas that you had for the story. It’s I think what makes a show really exciting to watch is when an audience can inherently feel that there’s an organic process to the show. That it wasn’t just all laid out in a bible and that it actually has a kind of energy to it, and for me that’s the most exciting part about making a show. It’s just watching it change and having to be nimble enough to change with it.
CAROL: And I would say, to add to that, it’s been an amazing experience making this show. One of the things I love the most about writing this show is the variety of things you get to write about and the variety of stories you get to write about. Last season we had one main story with Martin and Jake, but there would be four or five sort of short stories taking place around the world, and we would just drop in to these people’s lives and pick up a little four, five, six beat story that then would connect them to other people around the world. As a writer that is just such a gift to be able to do that. This season we were still able to do that but we got to follow some of those characters through the whole season, and they were all very sort of diametrically opposed to each other so you felt like you were really writing a wide spectrum. It’s a great show to be able to write.

TOUCH returned with its 2-hour premiere for its 2^nd season on February 8^th, and continues Friday nights at 9:00 p.m. on Fox. If you missed any episodes, be sure to check out the Fox website for TOUCH at http://www.fox.com/touch/

Where to find this article:

http://www.thetvaddict.com/2013/02/15/eps-tim-kring-and-carol-barbee-invite-viewers-to-rediscover-the-miraculous-world-of-touch/