Here are some comments drawn from a conference call with Fringe creator J.J. Abrams and Joshua Jackson, who plays Peter Bishop on the show. The discussion took place a week before Fringe's premiere.
Most of the questions were for Abrams, who spoke about Fringe as sci-fi, the show's cinematic style, reducing the in-the-club feel caused by long story arcs, and his ideas about casting and writing for the characters.
J.J. Abrams on Fringe and the election: The show is obviously coming out at a time when every week we read or hear or see about some kind of potentially horrifying scientific breakthrough. The reality is that we are in a time, whatever party is leading the country, where science is out of control. Having said that, it wasn't created to mirror the election, all I'll say is hope is a good thing.
Joshua Jackson on returning to TV after five years: It was this project specifically that drew me back to TV. Frankly, first it was the quality of the script, which is now our pilot and the density of it. And the fact that even while it was a totally satisfying story unto itself, you can see that it was laid in there, the potential for a whole world, a whole universe of other stories.
TV is exhausting. It takes a little while to recover, but … I try not to live my life as much as possible defining myself against something. So I wasn't really too worried about coming back and being labeled as "Pacey" or as that guy from Dawson's Creek because that's really an actor's job. If I get labeled as that, it's probably because I'm not good enough to define myself as something else.
Jackson on Peter's relationship with Olivia and Walter: While there's a lot of stuff going on with Peter Bishop, what I'm finding is a lot of the fun of playing him is … the relationship basically which boils down to being a translator more often than not between Walter, who is brilliant, but sort of half cracked, and then Olivia, who is an intensely no-nonsense type person. She's not the type of character that you would sit down and have a lyrical, philosophical conversation with. She's very much a "Just the facts, ma'am" type of person.
And you bring this other character, this "Peter" character, into that world who has to try and be the go-between, and initially the extremely reluctant go-between who's really only brought in by happenstance and then can't get himself out. Ultimately what that boils down to in my mind is a very typical dysfunctional family.
Abrams on the relationship between Peter and Olivia: There's no doubt going to be a sort of slow burn relationship that develops between the two of them. I don't think it will happen exactly as you might think. There's a lot going on their lives on the show that are more urgent issues, but there's definitely going to be over time a relationship between the Peter and Olivia characters.
Abrams on casting Jackson: I've known Josh a little bit for a long time back in the days of Dawson's Creek. I was doing Felicity, so we were sort of in that same universe. I've always been a fan and loved his sense of humor and also the gravity that I thought that he could bring to something, even something as soap operatic as the stuff you were doing on the WB. I felt that same way about when I was working with Keri Russell. As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is. I always felt that Josh had that ability. I'm thrilled to finally get a chance to work with him.
Abrams on corporations in Fringe: The show doesn't quite hit on the corporate conspiracy aspect, as the pilot might suggest, but there definitely is an ambiguous role that is played by Blair Brown. She works for a company that it's much more important, the relationship between her boss [William Bell], who we have yet to meet, and Walter, John Noble's character. Their back story, how they ended up where they are, these are things that are much more about the characters than about a sort of cliché, cynical look at corporate culture. Having said that, I don't trust corporate culture at all.
I feel like there are so many entities that are powerful and far reaching. So while it'd be easy to not ask those questions and not scrutinize, to me there have been a few instances where I've looked at things that certain corporations have done and I just can't help myself and think, "Okay, wait a minute. What's the real agenda there? What's really going on?" It's hard to believe that there isn't some kind of interesting, compelling intrigue happening behind the doors of those corporate headquarters, so it's an intriguing idea.
Having said that, it's also been overplayed and done a million times so if you don't have something interesting to say about a corporate culture, conspiracy, you probably should say nothing. But it is, for whatever reason, it is interesting to me.
