FRINGE: Joshua Jackson Talks Story Over Glory; How Peter Destroyed Henry

In a recent interview Joshua Jackson described how much Peter we can expect to see in the early innings of season 4. He also offered his thoughts on who Peter really belongs with and whether or not he knew that he had a son before going all BBM on the other side. Mild Spoilers follow the jump.

Jackson says he’s currently in less episodes this season than last:

Currently? That would be less. But I don’t make those decisions. Our show is not a star-driven show, it’s a character-driven show. I mean, I’m assuming since they want me here, I’m going to be a part of Fringe. In fact, I know they want me to be a part of Fringe, but I know they also want to tell the story in the best possible way to tell the story. That’s why I think it’s ballsy, precisely because it’s so unusual to take one of the three leads in your show and to break them out of the show. And then show what it’s like when he’s not there. It’s just something that you don’t really do that often. Particularly on network television where a lot of it really is personality-driven. There’s a lot of nervousness about upsetting the apple cart. To have, like I said, the balls to really honor that… That cliffhanger was so big that if they half-assed it in the beginning of Season 4, I think our audience, who has been so good with that, would kind of smell the suck on that. They’d be kind of disappointed that we gave them this big thing, and then we didn’t actually go after it. And we went after it. I think that’s super cool.

Does Jackson still believe that Peter is more attuned to Altlivia than Olivia?:

I would revise my [previous] opinion now given the story that we’ve told last year. I think he has a more natural attraction for the other Olivia. But the fact that he was willing not only to kill her but to sacrifice himself ultimately for his love for Walter and Olivia, I think that speaks to the depth of his commitment. So I think over the course of last year, in the way that they wrote those scenes where Peter tells Olivia and the pain that she goes through, I thought they wrote those scenes really well because he dealt with it in a very menschy way. As opposed to getting defensive or being pissed off or being self-pitying, he just sort of took it, and that, to me, was the first time I saw that Peter really cared about Olivia in a romantic way rather than just a big brotherly sort of way.

Surely baba Henry doesn’t exist in the newly activated timeline, but does Jackson think that Peter ever knew about his son?:

I think Peter already knew. I think at the end of last year when we were fast-forwarding to 2026, that Peter had lived all of those years in between. He had made the decision to destroy the other universe, and it strikes me as unlikely that while he was making that decision nobody said, “And by the way, you’re killing your lover [and kid] on the other side.” So I actually think that he’s aware of that. Because the only guy that we saw when he came back was just that glimpse, and he had to get like, “There’s a bridge here. Don’t kill each other while I’m gone,” before he disappears. So, I think he’s keenly aware of that.

You can read the full interview at IGN.

Tagged as: Interviews, Joshua Jackson, Spoilers