Welcome to Pure Fringe

Fringe - John Noble

John Noble talks about his character Walter Bishop on FRINGE. I can see John Noble doing a great job with that part on Fringe. - FoxBroadcasting

Joshua Jackson: Beyond the Fringe

From ice-hockey-playing child star to Dawson’s Creek pin-up, Joshua Jackson has walked the streets of Hollywood in a back-to-front fashion. From movies to TV and theatre, and then back to movies, in recent years he has managed to avoid the mainstream hysteria courted by other actors of his age and caliber. But that could all be about to change. The 30-year-old Canadian is embarking on a TV series journey that could be the making of him, all over again. As the star of J.J. Abrams’ new pilot show, Fringe, he should be preparing for a media circus. Bryan Cairns caught up with him to find out how he got involved…

These days, most of your credits are for feature films. What attracted you to the TV series Fringe?

Very simply, the appeal is good work with good people. The script is excellent and the character is Indiana Jones-ish. The whole piece is slightly darker than that but the character is adventuresome and smart. Usually on TV, you can be the smart guy but you have to wear glasses and sit in the car or you can be the adventuresome guy and look like Superman and be a lunkhead. This is a nice change.

You can’t really get any better than J.J. Abrams as a producer on television or film. Alias was pretty damn good, Lost is excellent, and Felicity was good as well. He’s definitely made his mark on television. That is the difficulty of television, maintaining quality and being able to keep cranking these things out. That is the thing that has held me back over the last few years from working in television, is knowing the amount of work that goes into it and how difficult it is to keep something good, fresh and interesting for the audience.

Source

It seems to me like it will be a tough road for Joshua Jackson to go from Dawson’s Creek pin-up to star of Fox’s Fringe. Should be interesting to watch and see how Joshua does on Fringe.

The following is a quick video interview of Anna Torv (Olivia Dunham):

Fringe - Interview with Anna Torv

Anna Torv talks about her character FBI agent Olivia Dunham on Fringe. Even if you’re not interested in Fringe or in the shows Fox is launching this fall, you can still enjoy Anna Torv’s accent. - FoxBroadcasting

Fringe Joshua Jackson

Joshua Jackson talks about his character Peter Bishop on FRINGE. Joshua Jackson calls his character a “really dumb smart guy.” I’m not sure what he means by that, but I kind of feel like I should take offense when he says that. - FoxBroadcasting

Can you talk about how your character, Peter, gets sucked into this paranormal world on Fringe?

He is drawn in because of his father [a research scientist who’s in a mental institution, played by John Noble]. Fringe isn’t like The X-Files, which dealt with the paranormal. The basis for this show is hard science but taken to a sci-fi level. So at some point earlier in Peter’s father’s life, before he had been institutionalised, he had been conducting these far-out fringe science experiments. His experiments [are now of interest to the FBI] and they need access to him. I get drawn in to break him out of his shell.

J.J. always weaves these complicated and intriguing relationships. How does Peter get along with his team mates?

Well, you just hit the nail on the head. The relationships are very multi-faceted and complicated. Usually, on a TV show, you get the geek, the jock and the hot girl. On this show, each one of these characters is allowed to have many of those facets inside of themselves so the relationships are constantly changing depending on the situation…They’re unusually deep and rich for a TV show or a film actually.

So is Fringe the new X-Files or Lost?

Lost is a thing unto itself. I don’t know if there will ever be a TV show like that again. Even if Fringe has that success or level of engagement with the audience, this isn’t a mystery show. When it comes to Lost, people are obsessed with peeling away the layers and trying to get one step ahead. While there are mysteries inside our show and will certainly be ongoing elements, I don’t know if it replicates the intrigue Lost has.

If you remember at the beginning of X-Files, it was all about Mulder having to find his sister. That was the driving force and then there was all these strange paranormal things happening around them. This isn’t that show. Because it’s science based, taken to the level of science fiction, there will never be the werewolf episode, we will never have a Jigsaw Man unless there is a scientific explanation, which would be a bit of a stretch.

Source

In an interview with Joshua Jackson, Total Sci Fi pulls out some interesting comments from Joshua about the security of the Fringe script. I guess it’s understandable why the networks like Fox want to keep the Fringe script secured, but it seems like it’s almost impossible to keep it from getting leaked. There are spoilers all over the internet and Fringe is no exception. Just do a quick search and you’ll see a long list of spoilers for your viewing pleasure.

Either way, the following interview with Joshua Jackson about securing scripts in Hollywood is quite interesting.

Had you auditioned for a J.J. Abrams project before?

I had auditioned for Star Trek, which I think was sort of my audition for the series. Nobody will say that but I think that is the truth. As much as I am enjoying working for J.J. and Bad Robot right now, he is like a hunted man. Everything that he does or writes down, people are trying to get on the internet. I have never dealt with so much security. My script has my name printed on it, they have to change the letters inside the script to serialize them so they know who leaked it in case it gets out. I also had to sign a non-disclosure agreement for when I get my script every week.

Lost has certainly struggled to keep that top secret element as well.

In a perfect world, hopefully Fringe is that good and obviously that is a high water mark with the Bad Robot people. J.J. promotes from within his own company and the guys at Lost are brilliant. Everything they’ve done with that show is brilliant and the hardcore fanbase is rapid and probably a little unhealthy [laughs]. That being the case, when you can get people that engaged in a show, it just allows you a certain freedom. Most of TV is pretty thin but Lost is incredibly detailed because they know people appreciate it.
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You read for the role of Batman that ultimately went to Christian Bale. Did you also meet the producers for the upcoming Justice League movie?

No, I wasn’t in Los Angeles and in the crazy world we live in with all the Harry Knowles [type journalism] the script could never leave the office. For the X-Files movie, I went to meet [producer/director/writer] Chris Carter and asked if I could read the script. He said, “There is only one script and it is in a vault in my desk in my office. There are no pages to read.” I’m like “Okaaaay…”