The fifth and final season of Fox’s critically acclaimed and fan-favorite sci fi series Fringe begins on September 28th, 2012.
In the concluding episodes the Fringe team, Walter Bishop (John Noble), Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and Bishop’s son Peter (Joshua Jackson) must take a stand to protect the world against the Observers, who in the future will become ruthless rulers.
Joshua Jackson and Anna Torv spoke with the TV Critics Association about the end of their classic series.
How do you want to see your characters end up?
Anna: It’s really funny for me this season because usually we don’t know anything, but we have a little bit more of a clue as to what’s going to be going on this year.
What that’s done is it’s made me stop thinking of possibilities and focus on what we’ve got.
Joshua: Yeah, they’ve been incredibly forthcoming with everybody in the cast this year, and we have more scripts and we have more information as a cast and as a crew.
So instead of [figuring] out where we think the show is going to go, now we know.
I certainly feel like the benefit of that knowledge gives us all the opportunity to do, I hope, our best work. It gives us a chance to really go out strong.
What has it been like working with John Noble?
Anna: I don’t think that there’s a person that works on our show that doesn’t have the utmost respect for John as a person, but also as a performer.
For me, watching John, and watching Josh as well, both being more experienced than I was when I first joined the show, taught me how television works and how as an actor you attack it.
Joshua: I don’t know how many more superlatives I can throw at John, because I have a major man crush on him. (he laughs)
The process of working with him has been this beautiful process of discovery, as we’ve tried to work out this father-son relationship.
He is a wonderful man and performer.
Joshua, everybody but you on the show has gotten to play multiple characters. Is that something you would have liked to do?
Joshua: Yeah. I’ve seen some of the joy that they have had creating these other fully realized characters. But it’s nice to have a day off once in a while, and I watch them do nine-page scenes off of themselves, and I’m not jealous of that at all.
Anna: That’s not fair when you’re in the room for some of those nine pages.
Joshua: Watching you having to work with yourselves, I would go, ‘Wow, that’s really impressive.’ But having to watch the person speak to air and then speak back to air, I could do without that process.
What is it like playing all those variations on a character?
Anna: I love it. The more engaged you are in what you’re doing, the busier you are, [the more] fun it is.
Can you compare the feeling in these last few weeks on Fringe with those last few weeks on Dawson’s Creek?
Joshua: In an odd way, I’ve been given a really rare gift my two times on television, because we knew going into the final season of Dawson’s Creek that it was the final season.
It give us the opportunity to tell it in a way that we can be proud of as we walk away from it.
It’s not bittersweet for me, because all shows end, and we can actually enjoy that ride off into the sunset.
