Fringe • Pilot • FOX • Warner Bros. Television and Bad Robot Productions
Kevin Blank, Visual Effects Supervisor
Jay Worth, Visual Effect Coordinator
Andrew Orloff, Visual Effects Supervisor
Johnathan Banta, 2D Lead Artist
Steve Graves, 3D Lead Artist
Jonathan Spencer Levy, Visual Effects Supervisor
Scott Dewis, 3D Artist
Steve Fong, Compositing Artist
Tom Turnbull, Visual Effects Supervisor
The good folks over at SlashFilm just announced Fringe's slate at this month's infamous San Diego Comic-Con (which should really be renamed Media-Con in this day and age).
Everyone's favorite Australian actress, Anna Torv, celebrates her birthday today.
Yesterday, Anna Torv spoke with a handful of journalists, including our own Adam Morgan, and spilled some details on her character Olivia Dunham, Fringe's upcoming episodes, as well as her past experiences on the show. We got a chance to ask two of your submitted questions, right around the 13:30 mark (listen for the proctor introducing Fringe Television). Anna was very careful not to give away any spoilers, but she does hint at some things to come.Click here to read the transcript of the interviewOn the Observers:"We're shooting the final episode at the moment, and we're starting to get more of a glimpse into what their function is."On Olivia and Peter:"I hope they stretch [their romance] out as long as possible. I think that's what makes it fun."On her favorite scene:"We shot a scene recently in Walter and Peter's hotel room, where we've just discovered some things about Olivia's past. I loved shooting that. It was the first time where I felt Olivia inched her way towards that dynamic between Peter and Walter. But I can't say anything more!"On the potential move to Canada:"I love New York. It will be really sad to say goodbye to all these guys that have put their blood and sweat into this season."
Tomorrow afternoon, I'll get a chance to ask the talented (and beautiful) Anna Torv a few questions about Fringe, thanks to the generous folks at FOX.
Anna Torv is featured in the April 2009 issue of Allure magazine, under the Beauty Reporter section as "Allure's Face". Anna talked to Hanna Morrill about her accent, Fringe gore, Joshua Jackson, and Cate Blanchett.
Q: You work most with Anna. What do you think of her as an actor and as a person?Congratulations and best wishes Anna and Mark!
A: I think she's just a fantastic actor, and I really like working with her, because she has such a solid idea of what's going on in a scene and what her objective is and what she's going to do. Yes, I've enjoyed working with her, and as a person, she's just delightful.
Discovering new layers of her character (Olivia)
“Oh it's great because it's television so you don't really know when you start. You just do it episode by episode, and we don't get the episodes, say – we don't get them, you know, much ahead of time so every time you read it oh, my God, and that – really, oh, and then you sort of try and put it in, but it's – it's fun.”
[The Dreamscape Spoiler Removed]
[In Which We Meet Mr. Jones Spoiler Removed]
Olivia's relationship with Walter Bishop (John Noble)
“I think Olivia waits for everyone to prove themselves to her, you know, before she kind of jumps in or, you know, really gives them all of herself, but I think definitely there was a sweet scene, I know in one episode where she sort of, Walter's the only one she confides in and I think when Walter's lucid, you know, I think absolutely he's got that kind of like mentoresque, fatherly – yeah, he's like the wise one, isn't he?”
[The Equation Spoiler Removed]
The science of "Fringe"
“They justify it really well, you kind of want to get online and find out if it’s actually possible, what’s actually possible and what isn’t but that’s the bit that I love about the show because I think that, you know, I can give it just the information that we get at the moment like if it’s totally okay and everyone is fine with knowing that we can clone sheep and ten years ago that was frightening, I kind of think “What are we capable of? And why don’t we know? Who does know.”
Decoding the FRINGE phenomena."On news stands Thursday." -- Fox's Fringe BlogEdit: Spoiler TV scans the full article.
Anna Torv has just returned to her Manhattan apartment from another demanding shoot on the set of Fox’s new suspense series, “Fringe” (Tuesdays, 9 p.m. EDT). But her workday is not done.
“I have to cram pages of dialogue for tomorrow,” the actress says on the phone. “And I have to learn a couple of lines in another language so they don’t sound like gibberish.”
What language is that, Anna?
“I don’t think I can say,” she responds. (more...)
You get that a lot when asking about “Fringe.” The series, from TV’s uber-producer J.J. Abrams ("Lost), is shrouded in mystery.
Each episode delves into a shocking underworld where weird science meets the supernatural. Both in its dark tone and its suggestion of massive conspiracies afoot, “Fringe” is reminiscent of “The X-Files.”
“It’s all very, very top-secret,” says Torv, who stars as buttoned-down FBI agent Olivia Dunham. In two weeks she’s done more for the pantsuit than Hillary Clinton ever did. “We get the scripts and everyone is gagging to find out more clues. We sit around trading theories.”
Olivia is charged with cracking these occult cases. Her helpers are an eccentric scientist (John Noble), who has spent the last two decades in a mental institution, and his reluctant handler and son (Joshua Jackson of “Dawson’s Creek").
“Fringe” is off to a healthy start. In fact, this week’s episode had 47 percent more viewers than last week’s debut (13.4 million vs. 9.1 million) - a boost attributable to its lead-in: the season premiere of “House.”
Snatches of foreign dialogue aren’t the only language barrier Torv faces in playing the role. The newcomer must also erase all traces of her Australian accent. There’s a coach on the set to help Torv and Noble (also an Aussie) sound American.
“You get into a groove and it becomes less cumbersome,” Torv says. “Every now and then you slip up. You always lose it when you have to scream loudly or get emotional.”
After years of restrained dramatic roles in Australia and Britain, Torv is delighted to suddenly be an action star.
“I love running and jumping,” she says. “The days that I spend (shooting scenes) in the lab, I get edgy and agitated. I’d rather be out in the street chasing people.”
Just being selected for the part was something of an adventure.
“We had been searching for our Olivia for along time,” says Alex Kurtzman, the show’s cocreator and executive producer. “We got down to a scary place - three days before the pilot was scheduled to begin production.”
The casting director brought in a tape of Torv, whose last name reflects her father’s Estonian heritage, auditioning for another show. The producers were so impressed they immediately arranged a transpacific teleconference so they could watch the actress do some scenes from the pilot.
That cinched the deal. Torv quickly secured a visa and flew off the same day to Toronto to begin shooting.
“Given the fact that Anna literally had a day and a half to prepare for the pilot,” says Kurtzman, “she did an extraordinary job. And she’s growing into the role more and more each week.”
Things haven’t slowed down since production of the series shifted to New York.
“I had five days to get it all sorted out - to get a Social Security number and find a flat,” says the actress, who looks like Cate Blanchett on the show, but more like Claire Danes in real life.
She loves what she’s seen of New York, but she really hasn’t had much of a chance to explore her new environs yet. “I leave my house, get in a van, go to work, get back in the van and come home to sleep,” she says.
Nor has she had time to savor her instant stardom. “All the billboards (promoting the show) went up this month,” she says. “I was lamenting the fact that my mom wasn’t here. ‘Look, Mom!’ But I’m glad the show is finally out there. It means I don’t have to explain what it’s about anymore.”
Torv wrapped her role in “The Pacific,” next year’s WWII miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, before being cast in “Fringe.” (The 10-part HBO saga about three Marines was shot in Australia.)
But she has no other projects on the horizon. In fact, she is flabbergasted at the very idea.
“Oh God, I’m not thinking beyond tomorrow,” she says. “I’m literally going day to day.
“I remember when we were shooting the pilot, the lovely Joshua Jackson would say to me, ‘Nothing prepares you for American TV.’ And I was like, ‘I’m sure.’ And now I’m saying it to myself every day: ‘Nothing prepares you for American television.’ “
Actor Joshua Jackson was left with a bloody nose after a dangerous stunt on his new TV show sent him rushing to the emergency room.
The former Dawson's Creek star plays the son of an eccentric scientist in new series, Fringe. However, his return to the small screen was short-lived when he had to be taken to hospital after a copper wire was shoved up his nose for a scene, hitting a vein and jeopardizing his role.
But he's convinced the show will be a smash, telling the National Enquirer, "I can now say that I have literally put my blood into this show."
Crave Online: How many episodes will you be writing yourselves?
Roberto Orci: We'll see. We did the first one after the pilot to sort of show out how to do it in an hour format. Now Pinkner and the staff, it's going to be their turn.
Alex Kurtzman: It's funny, we were not planning on being that involved day to day and what happened of course is that we totally fell in love with it and so it became impossible not to be. Jeff Pinkner runs the day to day and he's doing an unbelievable job so we're there just to kind of help him in whatever way we can.
Crave Online: What was the idea to make cows a running theme?
Alex Kurtzman: Actually, the funny thing about the way that the cow came into the show is we were writing a scene and I had this instinct that something weird should happen in the scene. I was like, "We need some element in the scene." And Bob said, "What about a cow?" That's how we work. One of us will raise a question and then one of us will start pitching out answers. Suddenly we had a cow that actually weirdly organically had a real fit in the show. That's how the cow came about.
Crave Online: Do you think by episode 13 or 14, you'll run out of cow stuff?
Alex Kurtzman: We might run out of cow stuff. We might. You've got to use the cow very specifically, very sparingly, although you can never have too much cow, can you?
(more...)Screenwriting duo Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are quickly becoming Sci-fi gurus. After a stint on Alias, they landed the job of bringing Transformers to the screen. Now they have its sequel, the Star Trek prequel, and the new TV series Fringe all going on this year. The duos watched Fox PR bring cows to the streets of San Diego during this summer's Comic Con to promote the show's oddball themes.
Crave Online: Are you J.J. Abrams's go to guys now?
Alex Kurtzman: That's certainly a really nice way of putting it. I think we just really like working together. It's easy. We have an immediate language, an immediate understanding. We have all the same references. We grew up loving all the same things and so it's easy. When you're doing these kinds of shows which are challenging, you really want someone who just understands the language of it immediately.
Roberto Orci: Oh, we do one together and one apart. It's like we're dating without commitment. We see other people.
Crave Online: Does he have a mandate for a kick ass girl in every show?
Alex Kurtzman: I think we actually all gravitate towards women for some reason as protagonists of our shows. I couldn't exactly tell you why. I think maybe because in a man's world, especially in the world of a federal agency, you are pushing a lot harder, there is more of a struggle. That's always interesting to us.
Crave Online: How many episodes will you be writing yourselves?
Roberto Orci: We'll see. We did the first one after the pilot to sort of show out how to do it in an hour format. Now Pinkner and the staff, it's going to be their turn.
Alex Kurtzman: It's funny, we were not planning on being that involved day to day and what happened of course is that we totally fell in love with it and so it became impossible not to be. Jeff Pinkner runs the day to day and he's doing an unbelievable job so we're there just to kind of help him in whatever way we can.
Crave Online: How do you balance the standalone episodes and major story forwarding ones?
Alex Kurtzman: I don't want to give away too many of the individual story plots but I think it was very important to all of us to make sure that each episode feels like a standalone. Yet you will know that there is a much bigger mythology that kind of runs across both the season and the series. So while a problem will be set up and a problem will be solved in each episode, there are larger mysteries that play out.
Crave Online: Does it have to be one or the other?
Roberto Orci: No, it can be both. For example, the pilot, there is an arrest, there's justice, you catch somebody but clearly there can be more going on. That's a great template for how if you want to see more in what the episode is, you will. But if you're my father in law and you just want to see an arrest and you want to see justice, you'll see that too.
Crave Online: After doing Transformers and Star Trek based on classic properties, did you have an itch to come up with something your own?
Alex Kurtzman: We always do. Doing things like Transformers are great for their own reasons but yeah, you always want to invent something original. We actually just did a movie called Eagle Eye that we've produced and that was an original. It was actually an original concept from Spielberg and we kind of developed it with him. It's really gratifying to do that kind of thing.
Crave Online: How does it feel to be on the ground floor of Fringe versus joining Alias midway?
Roberto Orci: It's fantastic. It's also you can't blame anybody else. There's no, "Well, he didn't do this right on the pilot." Now if something is not appropriately set up or if the skeleton of the show is somehow off, it's going to be our fault.
Crave Online: What was the idea to make cows a running theme?
Alex Kurtzman: Actually, the funny thing about the way that the cow came into the show is we were writing a scene and I had this instinct that something weird should happen in the scene. I was like, "We need some element in the scene." And Bob said, "What about a cow?" That's how we work. One of us will raise a question and then one of us will start pitching out answers. Suddenly we had a cow that actually weirdly organically had a real fit in the show. That's how the cow came about.
Crave Online: Do you think by episode 13 or 14, you'll run out of cow stuff?
Alex Kurtzman: We might run out of cow stuff. We might. You've got to use the cow very specifically, very sparingly, although you can never have too much cow, can you?
Crave Online: How did cows end up becoming so weird, like since Twister?
Alex Kurtzman: I don't know, I think people love cows. I think they're just sort of fascinated by cows. Cows are a mystery.
Crave Online: We do slow down when we drive by farms.
Alex Kurtzman: We do. Yes, we do. We wonder what it would be like to graze.
Crave Online: Are any movies being pushed away to focus on this?
Alex Kurtzman: No, because there's two of us, we found a really good balance. It's one of the major benefits of having a partner. We find a way to do it all.
Crave Online: How weird is it to be at Comic Con and not talk about Star Trek and Transformers?
Alex Kurtzman: It's weird actually. It's very strange because all we want to do is talk about Star Trek but we can't. And Transformers, we're literally in the middle of shooting it. We finished writing it maybe a month and a half before. Literally we finished it and they started shooting it. I think maybe next year at Comic Con we'll have more to say about Transformers because it's going to be coming out right before Comic Con next year.
Crave Online: Michael Bay said he wrote some of Transformers 2 during the strike. When you got back were you surprised where the script had gone?
Roberto Orci: No, he just took our treatment and transferred it to screenplay format. He picked a few characters from Hasbro and wrote what kind of things he needed in production but he didn't write a script.
Crave Online: Were you involved in choosing new characters?
Roberto Orci: We were involved up until the strike and then shortly thereafter. Of course, it's a continuation of the first movie. It's the characters that we selected from the first movie in addition to some of the ones we wanted to see that we couldn't put in the first movie and some of them were even in our original drafts.
Crave Online: Was it fun to just pick through the catalog?
Alex Kurtzman: Actually, that's weirdly deceptive because it's really hard. It's hard. The more robots you have, the harder it becomes.
Crave Online: Some died, so they were eliminated.
Alex Kurtzman: Some of them died but there are literally hundreds of transformers in both the mythology and the toys. Really what it's about is figuring out who are the ones that are going to matter to the story? Who are the ones that are relevant to the story? The easiest thing in the world is to throw in all these robots but you don't want to do that if you can't make some kind of personal connection to them.
Crave Online: Is one of them a girl?
Roberto Orci: It's possible.
Crave Online: Are the hackers gone?
Roberto Orci: They will not be returning. We love them. If they would have fit, [we'd have them back]. Our lead for the movie is Sam and Mikaela. They are now going off, this is two years later. We didn't want to just bring characters back just to bring them back. They had to be organic to the story and they weren't.
Alex Kurtzman: Sam's going off the college and I can't say too much about Mikaela but obviously, the end of the first movie set up that they finally got together so now the question is are they going to be able to stay together.
Crave Online: What was the decision to start two years later?
Alex Kurtzman: I think we just felt ultimately like any other way into the story felt like a cheat, that you needed to pick up where they left off and see what was happening with their lives now.
Crave Online: What have the transformers been doing on earth for two years?
Alex Kurtzman: Well, you'll have to see the movie and find out.
Crave Online: But it's addressed?
Alex Kurtzman: Yes.
Crave Online: Were you able to have any bigger ideas since they've established that it works on screen?
Roberto Orci: Yeah, the first movie was very much structured as a mystery, such that the transformers are revealed at sort of the midpoint. This time, this is a different structure. It's a different movie, it's a different story. The transformers are there from minute one and that's something that now we actually felt confident we could get away with because we saw that it could work and that you could have these sentient robots and you're happy when they're on screen.
Crave Online: My favorite scene is the backyard. Are there any great small funny moments in the sequel?
Roberto Orci: Absolutely. It's still a continuation of these characters. Tonally it's similar. If you like the first one, you're still going to get that intimate story of who Sam is and what he's doing but if you're a sci-fi fan of it, because we can start the movie much more transformer-centric, it's a more balanced story with higher stakes as many sequels tend to be.
Alex Kurtzman: I will tell you that a key to that was the parents. That was a really big part of it was the fact that he was hiding the robots from his parents. Those parents are just unbelievably great. They're so funny and so I think you will be seeing the parents again.
Crave Online: When you write a Star Trek script, how awesome is it to see J.J. built the set?
Alex Kurtzman: It's insane. It's just insanity. The fact that somehow we've inherited that mantle is insane. It's such a responsibility. We take it so seriously and between all of us, Bob and me and Damon Lindelof and Bryan Burk and J.J., there are different degrees of fandom and different degrees of knowledge and different perspectives on what Trek is. It's a really good mix of people because I think it will ultimately allow us to stay very true to canon and also bring something new.
Crave Online: Are you tempted to write in dramatic pauses for Kirk?
Alex Kurtzman: [Laughs] No, because the tricky part about it, and this is actually hard I think on all the actors, is the actors who played those parts in the original series and established those characters, are legendary. Everybody knows those actors and everybody knows those characters. So you have to be consistent with that if you are going to cast new people in those roles and yet, you have to bring something new to the mix. So the actors were walking this very tricky line of not giving a cartoony performance that's really mimicking the original actors, and bringing their own thing to the table.
Crave Online: J.J. was marveling at how you established Kirk and Spock's bond
Alex Kurtzman: It's the most gratifying thing I think for us about the movie is watching that.
Crave Online: How did you conceive of it and how was it never explored before?
Alex Kurtzman: We did a lot of reading of the books. I think we consider the books canon to a large degree so it's very important to us to stay consistent. But there is a bit of a hole and there's actually different mythologies about their history so it's a matter of staying consistent but also figuring out how you can play around a little bit anchored by the rules
We admit it; We're fascinated by Fringe... what makes the show so compelling for us... is the way that... it's actually the most upbeat and reassuring show you can imagine for mainstream America. Here're our top reasons why each episode of Fringe is an hour of being told that everything's okay, really:(more...)
- Everything Weird Can Be Explained Away
- Science Is Magic And Can Do Anything
- Corporate America Is On Our Side
- The Good Guys Always Win
Pinkner explained that not only will series stars Joshua Jackson (Peter [Bishop]) and Anna Torv (Olivia Dunham) host the rebroadcast, FOX will also show "the first act of episode two at the tail end of the pilot." The second episode, titled "The Same Old Story," will deal with an investigation into the deaths of a woman who experiences a vastly accelerated pregnancy and what the press release describes as a "senior citizen" newborn. FOX will start the ball rolling on the evening with an exclusive first look at a scene from The Day The Earth Stood Still, followed by a preview of 24: Redemption, the two-hour standalone special episode of 24 coming in November. -- Blog Critics
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