Walter is certainly a unique character. How do you approach the part and how much fun is it to play?
It’s as much fun as it looks like. It’s an absolute hoot. It’s obviously got serious aspects to it, but I treat it as a hoot to play the thing. Preparation, well, that’s probably the hardest bit, getting the timing right and doing the preparation on the scientific work. But working on Fringe is a great job. I mean, it’s a great group of people to work with, and amazing scripts from the minds of J.J. Abrams and other people. They’re geniuses. Living inside their heads must be a very strange thing to do because they’re always coming up with something different. Overall, fantastic experience.
As a cast member, do you find it sort of challenging to follow all the twists and turns?
Yes [laughs], absolutely. But I could also say that, as an audience member, I enjoy reading and watching things that make me concentrate and, you know, that’s what Fringe does. I watched an episode [last] Tuesday night, and I was in it, but there were things I missed, and I said, what was that? What did they say there? It’s fascinating to be watching something that does require concentration.
Walter certainly has his light side, but he can also be very dark and almost scary, which we learned when it was revealed that he drugged Peter as a child. How do you balance such opposing traits in one character?
I guess [a darks side] exists in all of us. But with Walter — because of who he is, how bright he is and how disturbed he is — it just sort of surfaces a bit more often and a bit more radically than it does in most of us. I don’t find it that hard to find. I mean, taking each moment when I’m doing a scene, I [think about] what he’s gone through at that point, and sometimes those reactions just come out, to be honest with you… out of the character’s frustration or out of his greater purpose, out of his madness. But it’s certainly interesting to play, and it shocks the people I’m playing with at times. You see these shocked reactions from the other actors, but that all makes [for] some good fun too.
How important is the father/son relationship between Walter and Peter, and do you expect the dynamic between them to shift or change in any major way? Could Walter ever become a bit more normal?
From my point of view — and I think Josh Jackson will back this up — the thing that has held our interest most so far has been that relationship. And, as actors, we’ve probably talked more about that, Josh and I, than about anything else. We understood from the very beginning how complex these things are between men — I mean, I am a father of a son, and fortunately I have a very good relationship with him — But it was something that touched us and interested us both. We just kind of feel that it’s special to do that sort of thing and feel a bit of responsibility to try and get it as right as possible. Judging by the feedback we’re getting, it’s working and it’s resonating with a whole lot of people. And we’ll continue to do that. It’s not going to turn into any sort of soft, “Oh, I understand, and now I know I love you” time, and walk away into the sunset. But they’ll continue to grow. The depth of their relationship will continue to grow. There’s no question about that.
Do you think, in Peter’s mind, there might have ever been a competition between him and his father’s experiments to see who got Walter’s attention?
Given a task, Walter is incredibly focused, and other things become secondary. And a lot of people in our society are workaholics and find it difficult to split their time between their work and their families, but this is an extreme case of that. When he’s on his science, he really doesn’t have time for this squawking child next to him or for the wife.
What about Walter’s relationship with Olivia and Astrid? As he’s growing closer to Peter, he seems to be growing closer to these two women as well.
Yes. It’s been one of the things that has had to come slowly. We have a man who… I don’t think he would have ever been particularly good with women, you know? I think he would have been a pretty horrible husband, not because he’s a bad man, simply because he wouldn’t have thought to be nice. Then he comes out, and he’s confronted with these two girls, and he doesn’t know how to talk to girls, so it’s taken time to learn. He still can’t remember Astrid’s name, which I have to say, one of the great joys is working with Jasika [Nicole] on that whole name business. She is such a funny girl. I can’t wait to see what [the writers] come up with for her eventually, because she’s a very, very funny woman. And the [relationship] with Olivia is fascinating because that’s far deeper. My sense is that Walter starts to feel almost paternal towards her. But obviously you can’t go into that path, and just on occasions I can see that Olivia wants to ask Walter something, but then she’ll back away. Somewhere down the track, I think that there will be a coming together of those two. I don’t know this for a fact, but I just feel it’s inevitable. I think it’s something that Walter and Olivia will need to do.
Do you think we’ll ever see any scenes between you and Blair Brown?
Absolutely has to be. I mean, apart from the fact that Blair and I want to work together. That’s just a personal thing. But she’s already been interviewed and said, “Yes, Walter and Nina used to be together.” She’s invented this whole scenario. The first time I ever met the woman, we did a read through and she said, “Well, down the track, I can see that we’ll finish up having a big go of it.” She’s a very funny woman. That’s the theory, that somewhere down the line, maybe they were even together, which is absolutely feasible. And it’ll be, I’m sure, a very interesting challenge working with Blair Brown. She’s a smashing actress.
Speaking of theories, how much thought have you given to the whole idea of “The Pattern” and what “The Pattern” is?
We don’t know. I don’t know what The Pattern is. Walter doesn’t [know], and that kind of works for me. I don’t particularly want to know what’s going on in terms of the writers’ minds. A little bit is revealed, and these writers have a plan that could last one, two, three years, or however long it lasts, and they will bring that all to a conclusion at the right time. We can’t reveal everything now because where do you go then? So there’s a long way to go.
Well, Walter is obviously very grounded in the mythology between William Bell and Massive Dynamic. Will we see more of that play out in upcoming episodes?
There’s going to be a growth in that in the mythology. It’s not going to be laid all out for everyone to find in one episode. Of course, J.J. won’t do that. And in fact, one of the things that [the writers] also do is they keep the process pretty organic, and as things happen in their mind, the characters will evolve. They keep [the script] open to evolving as they go along. We’re constantly getting rewrites. Sometimes just before we go on set, we’ll get a rewrite because they’ll have a better idea on what line to say there. I personally love working that way.
And in the lab?
You know, he solves these extraordinary things either because he had done them in the past or because he simply has the intellect to think now. We’re getting more episodes where Walter hasn’t done [the] experiment [before], but he has the mind to be able to see a way through it. That’s the sort of thrust of things you will expect to see in the future
What do you look forward to?
Deepening of the relationship with [Peter], of course. There’ll be a lot more of this. As you go through, you know, this season and the next seasons after that, you’ll see the ensemble of actors interact a lot more than maybe we’ve seen at present. The relationships with the Olivia character will become more like relationships do when people know each other for a while and start to kind of have an investment and care for each other. We certainly will see that in the first episode coming back next year where we all bond together to support Olivia, and she for us. So that’s the kind of thing you can look forward to.
And one of my favorite games at present is to try and make Broyles laugh because Lance Reddick plays [the character] to a tee. So I go out of my way whenever I have a scene [with him] to try and make him laugh. Of course, as actors, we have great fun with this because, in rehearsals, I succeed. But as soon as the cameras roll, there’s no way. It’s going to be absolute headlines across the nation one day: “Broyles Smiles”!
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