Brian Austin Green and Josh Friedman Interview

Keep reading for last week’s Q & A with Brian Austin Green (“Derek Reese” on Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Creator/Executive Producer, Josh Friedman…

And don’t forget to tune in tonight for the 2-hour season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on FOX!

Is there anything you can tell us about the upcoming season finale? Of course without giving too much away.

J. Friedman: A hard question; I’ll just say there’s a lot of chickens and a lot of roosting.

BA Green: You know, it’s funny, I was online last night going through some of the chats just to see what people were talking about, and this is one of those shows, unfortunately—I mean it’s unfortunate for me in the sense of whenever I do an interview that if you give any little bit of anything, people will talk enough about it that they’ll start to figure out what’s going on.

BA Green: So it’s a very fine line of what you can and can’t talk about.

J. Friedman: It’s cool. I’m kind of with Brian. I’m a fascist about spoilers. I’m the biggest pain in the ass to the marketing and promotion department, and I think they were very happy that I was on strike for 14 weeks. I seemed to be—

BA Green: … around you?

J. Friedman: Yes, they … whatever they want to do and since I’ve gotten back I get these little e-mails and they say, “Can we show this?’ And I say, “No.” If I had my way the commercials would be 30 seconds of black with the words “Sarah Connor” on them.

BA Green: I actually did a talk show one night and the only clip we could get of me on the show, because I hadn’t premiered on it yet, was the teaser from the episode before, so it was like “Next week on the Sarah Connor Chronicles” and it showed my running and fighting, everything that everybody else had seen. We couldn’t get anymore footage than that. I knew at the end of it all that was Josh’s doing.

At what point did you decide that the point that you’re reaching in the second episode on Monday was the right point for the finale and what sort of finale is it in terms of the tone you want to leave viewers with?

J. Friedman: Well, you know it’s serendipitous. I wasn’t there. I was on strike and so this is the number of episodes that we had reached; we had only written up to this number and produced up to this number when I went out on strike. So it happens that a lot of stuff locks in and comes together during these last two episodes and frankly, that’s just dumb luck. If we would have gone one episode more or one episode less I think it would be probably less satisfying.

Brian, do you know of any plans to keep you going in the second season at all, if there is one?

BA Green: That’s a question for Josh. I have no idea.

J. Friedman: All I’ll say is that I think Brian is doing an awesome job and I think he’s brought more to the series than I even imagined that he would. So I’m really happy.

BA Green: I can carry heavy things. I think that’s what—

J. Friedman: He moves furniture.

BA Green: I’m hauling furniture—

J. Friedman: He’s like a grip.

BA Green: I’m really helpful with cleaning days and stuff like that in the house.

J. Friedman: That’s why they kept him on 90210 so long actually.

J. Friedman: At some point he was just walking around carrying Shannon Daugherty’s gondola or whatever that thing is called.

BA Green: That should be episode one of season two, I’m just in the house with an apron on lifting furniture and just cleaning underneath things because I’m strong enough to do it. That would be awesome.

Brian, where was the future war battlefield location shot, and did you have a good time with that?

BA Green: Oh, I had a fantastic time with that and that was sort of shot all over. Most of the battle stuff was in downtown Los Angeles, and it was actually a concrete recycling factory. So it was helpful, they didn’t have to bring the actual cement in, just everything else.

Did you get to keep your outfit?

BA Green: I wish. Because if I did, I would actually have it on one of those mannequins in my movie room or something, here. It was the coolest thing ever. The blaster alone, the fact that I was the only one with a green scope on it was pretty cool. But there were a bunch of specific little things all through the costumes that—just little details that you really didn’t pick up, but everybody had Terminator Kills on their sleeve, these little badges. And they were just little Terminator heads but everybody had one for every kill. Some guys had one and I think I had seven, which was pretty cool.

What’s it like to be in a scene with an actress that really as a machine can’t react to you the way a normal actor would be able to react to you?

BA Green: Well, it’s fantastic for this job. Summer is so good at completely staying in those moments and I think that oddity is what sort of creates the tension and excitement in the scenes. You do scenes all day long with people that react and when you have somebody that just sits there and blankly stares at you they almost end up becoming these staring competitions. And Summer and I will sort of laugh by the end of them if we haven’t made it all the way through, just because it’s an interesting relationship between the two of us. They’ve both known each other for a long time and there’s a lot of tension within it.

Brian, what were some of the acting challenges you found for stepping into this role, and how does seeing your character grow and develop in the episodes you’ve done so far?

BA Green: Oh my God. That’s a very in-depth question. The challenges—I’ve got to say the biggest challenge going into the show was the fact that I was hired the night before I started work. So I really knew very little of the character except for the first script that I had in my hand, which is the first episode that everybody saw of my character. So the big challenge for me as an actor was the next day on set whenever I’d see Josh, just asking him as many things as I could. Just trying to get as many answers to questions as I could, because picking up a script and not knowing what happened before, and it’s like, okay, what the hell is a Turk and what—there’s so much involved in every script. The scripts are so detailed. And I really had no reference.

That’s been the hardest thing for me as an actor is trying to make sure that I have enough back-story to really understand what Derek is doing and what his thought process is. Development wise he went from living in the future where he was fighting every day to survive to now being in a world with a blue sky and grass, and fighting for a different reason. It’s at times just a huge rollercoaster for him. He still really has no grasp of it. I mean, he’s just coming out of nearly dying. So he’s got a lot of growing to do I would say.

Have you officially been renewed for season two yet?

J. Friedman: No. I hope so. Everyone’s sort of—the first year show is sort of the ritual for first year shows is to come back into the network and tell them what season two is. Things are just a little weird this year because of having the strike so we have to readjust what our season two plans are. We’re going to go in and sit down with the network and we’ll do a post-game on season one and talk about season two. They’ll make the decision. FOX, they haven’t made a decision on any shows yet. So I fully expect to get in there with them pretty soon and hopefully have an answer pretty soon because we need to start writing.

You said that maybe episode ten might not be a best start for season two, so are you planning on still integrating the last three episodes from this season that you never got to make, into the second season somehow?

J. Friedman: Well, that’s what I’ve been sitting around and I’ve been thinking about. Some of those episodes were—I can’t tell you what episode ten is, but episode ten was a fantastic episode ten and an absolutely horrible season premier for a season two. “….”, it is heartbreaking for me. I just wish I’d gotten—I really, really wanted to do episode ten, it was like one of my favorite ideas and I can’t do it. I really can’t do it because it would’ve been a terrible season premier. So you know—

J. Friedman: But it’s not doable. Yes it’s going to take some re-jiggering but I think there are ideas and beats from those episodes that we had planned and hadn’t filmed that will definitely be making their way in. It’s nice to—I’ve got a little perspective on the show and when we were working on episodes 10, 11, 12, 13, we had yet to air episode one. So it’s nice to actually now have seen the show and sort of educate yourself on your own show on what works and what doesn’t work. It’s like you have a second chance with a look at it.

Josh, originally you wanted to bring back Kyle Reese.. I was just wondering how did you plan on portraying that or how far did you have that mapped out before Derek joined the picture?

J. Friedman: I’m not going to say how I was going to do it but I had an idea but it was one of those things that probably worked really well on paper, and I could easily explain it to you if we sit down for ten minutes. But I think if it was probably something that was a bit of bridge too far for an audience, and again, Kyle is sort of a sacred cow and I think one thing to see him in the future and it’s another to see him in the present. I don’t know, I still hold out hope that somehow I’ll figure out to get him back, but every time I ever brought it up everyone looked at me like I was completely insane. I listen to everyone every once in a while when it’s unanimous.