TV GUIDE: Fringe Oral History: Dual Universes Open Up a New World Of Possibility - Part Two
Jan 15, 2013
by Natalie Abrams
CLICK HERE TO READ PART ONE - Fringe Oral History Part 1: Building the world of "science fact"
In the second part of our farewell to Fringe, producers and cast discuss the introduction of the parallel universe, which opened up the world of Fox's sci-fi drama to new and exciting possibilities, including a new set of characters with names like Walternate and Bolivia that fans would — gasp! — actually come to love in the end.
TVGuide.com talked to stars John Noble (Dr. Walter Bishop, Walternate), Joshua Jackson (Peter Bishop), Anna Torv (Olivia Dunham, Bolivia), Jasika Nicole (Astrid Farnsworth, Kick-Astrid), Lance Reddick (Phillip Broyles, Alt-Broyles), Blair Brown (Nina Sharp, Meana), Seth Gabel (Lincoln Lee, Linc), series co-creator J.J. Abrams, executive producers J.H Wyman, Jeff Pinkner and Bryan Burk and Fox's Chairman of Entertainment Kevin Reilly about the bumpy road to the series finale. This is the second in a four-part oral history...
... TV Guide: Most of the cast now had to portray two different versions of their character.
Pinkner: "We got to do what you never get to do in television, which was introduce new versions of our main characters. It provided fantastic acting opportunities/challenges for many of our actors. It was a great playground just for imagination."
Abrams: "We didn't quite anticipate, at the beginning, how much time we'd be spending over there. That was a really fun thing to see them pull off."
Jackson: "When we first introduced the idea, it was a germ of an idea, and I think it developed into something else going into Season 3, which is where we really started to make those jumps across. The idea was, 'Why don't we, instead of just teasing it and toying with the idea that it's there, let's just do it. Let's just go over there!'"
Torv: "That was thrilling when that whole thing happened, and when we really made the decision to go over there for a bit. It was a different show. I remember especially in Season 3 when we would go over and we'd do alternate episodes in the alternate universe and then in our world, you'd walk in and it was new sets, I love working with Seth and Kirk [Acevedo] and that whole little trio. It was like a totally different show and also a really fun energy and a fun dynamic. I would be interested to see what that show would have been like and how that would have progressed."
Noble: "We've had the opportunity to step out and literally play another character, albeit with the same subjects and the same backgrounds. I think it was an enormous gift. I think probably more striking was the difference that Anna attempted to bring to Bolivia [the writers' nickname for the alternate-universe Olivia] from Olivia. I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, that's amazing!'"
Torv: "I just loved her."
Noble: "I loved playing Walternate, and one of my favorite scenes still is when the two men were together and just talking to each other. I have a very soft spot for those scenes."
Lance Reddick: "That was exciting for me, partly because Broyles was so much more in the field of action. One of the reasons why actors are drawn to the theater is because you get to do so many different kinds of characters. One of the traps in doing film and television is playing the same thing over and over again, so the opportunity to get to play basically five or six different characters, even if it's the same person, in a series is really great."
Jasika Nicole: "I think that alt-Astrid was perceived as being so very cold because she wasn't as emotionally available as this Astrid was, but it turns out that she just has a different way of communicating how she feels. I always knew that she was a good person. She was very dedicated to her work, and she didn't have time for socializing. Whereas the Astrid over here, I think the purpose of her is to be a caring individual, somebody that the other characters could open up to at various points in the different seasons."
Brown: "Yeah. I never asked if Meana [the alternate-universe Nina, who was very mean] was good or bad. I never asked because I didn't want to know. I wanted the mystery myself, because I thought it was much easier to play. It was interesting when I played Nina when Meana was pretending to be Nina, I had to be so careful that I wasn't going to give it away, because I wanted to leave clues. And it was like, no, the point is: No one should know! So sometimes ignorance is really helpful. If you just don't know, you can't ruin it."
Pinkner: "Ultimately Josh got to play different sides of himself too, though not in the same vein as our other actors did."
Jackson: "I am my doppelgänger..." [Laughs]
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO PROMO FOR THE TWO-HOUR FRINGE SERIES FINALE - AIRING FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013 AT 8/7C ON FOX.
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