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Dominic Monaghan & Jack Davenport

19/09/2009

Dominic Monaghan & Jack Davenport Talk About Their Characters in a new interview by SciFiWire

“Yeah, I can’t tell you a huge amount,” Monaghan (Lost) said. “I play a guy called Simon who is linked through story lines with Jack’s [Davenport] character, Lloyd. He’s a very smart, intelligent scientist, and we begin the relationship with him under the impression that he knows more than he is giving away.”

The trailer suggests Simon may know the reason everyone in the world has blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, during which time they each have a glimpse of their future six months from now.

“He’s almost a kind of reveal, in a way,” Monaghan says. “Obviously, Joe [Fiennes] and Sonya [Walger] and John [Cho] and Jack kind of are telling the story in the initial episodes, and my character, Simon, is kind of in the wings a little bit, kind of waiting, kind of a reveal.

He’ll gradually be trickled in as the show picks up some steam.”

For his part, Davenport said that his character, physicist Lloyd Simcoe, is the only one taken from Robert J. Sawyer’s novel, on which the show is loosely based. “That’s right, he is the only character from the book,” Davenport said. “Yes, because obviously there has to be some kind of scientific explanation for all of this, and there’s a lot of science in the book, and the character is a scientist.”

But is he the same guy?

“He’s similar in the sense that his profession is the same, but obviously, what [series co-creator] David [Goyer] has done is extrapolated from the novel in a way that the connections between the characters are much broader and much wider than they are in the novel. You follow multiple storylines in this in the way that, in the novel it’s pretty much a single line.”

FlashForward debuts Sept. 24 and will air Thursdays at 8 p.m.

Source: Sci Fi Wire

Interview with Producers and Cast

09/09/2009

Here’s a cool interview with executive producers David Goyer and Marc Guggenheim and cast members Joseph Fiennes (Mark Bennett) and Courtney B. Vance (Stanford Wedeck). They talk about how they’re structuring the show, easter eggs (the kangaroo!) and how people will lie about their flashforwards.

Joseph Fiennes, who plays FBI agent Mark Benford, centers a team assigned to solve the blackout that includes partner Demetri Noh (John Cho); colleague Janis Hawk (Christine Woods); and their boss, Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance). They and the other characters, including Benford’s surgeon wife, Olivia (Sonya Walger), share their visions, but viewers see only bits and pieces at first, leaving twists and turns to be explored.

And “some people lie about their flash-forwards, so it’s a little misdirection happening,” Vance says. “It leaves the writers enormous latitude to tell stories.”

Click here to read the entire interview.
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Tags: Interview

Gabrielle Union Interview

09/09/2009

Gabrielle Union (Bad Boys 2) will appear in FlashForward at some point after the pilot episode. Since the announcement was made that she was joining the cast, we’ve since learned that she’ll be playing a defense attorney who is engaged to John Cho’s character (Demetri Noh).

In a recent interview with SciFi Wire, Gabrielle talks about working with John, their characters’ relationship, her character’s flash forward and the secrecy surrounding the show’s storylines. Check out excerpts from the interview below:

Gabrielle Union joined the cast of ABC’s upcoming sci-fi thriller series FlashForward after the pilot and told us that she’ll play a criminal defense attorney engaged to Demetri Noh (John Cho). She said the pairing of her African-American character and Cho’s Asian-American character was deliberate.

“The cultural differences with our families, not only blending families in the middle of a recession but blending families that come from different cultures and races and backgrounds, will definitely be explored,” Union said in an exclusive interview last week in Pasadena, Calif. “And, I love John.”

Union said her scenes with Cho focus on their relationship.

“[I've shot] a lot of time with John,” She continued. “We have a really good relationship. I’m so glad that they’re showing two people of color with, like, a really … loving and nurturing relationship. I haven’t really seen that on TV, and certainly not in an interracial relationship, very loving and sweet in a genuine sort of way.” (Major spoilers ahead!)

In the pilot episode, one flash forward saves a character from suicide. Others characters worry that their own futures include a relapse into alcoholism or an end to their marriages. Union’s not telling what she sees.

“It’s life-affirming, that’s for sure,” she teased.

Cho’s character sees nothing in his flash forward, leading him to believe he doesn’t make it to April 29. So far, this has not affected his relationship in early episodes, Union said.

“Well, he has not shared with me his flash forward, so ignorance is bliss at this point,” Union said.

Union came to FlashForward because of her previous relationship with ABC: She starred on the short-lived Night Stalker and guested on Ugly Betty, so the network wanted to get back in the Gabrielle Union business.

“They’ve been incredibly supportive,” Union said. “A lot of people give lip service to ‘We want to increase diversity,’ and then you just never see any people of color. They actually really mean it. If one thing doesn’t work out, they come up with more opportunities. So they’re like, ‘We want you back in the family,’ and by chance, the next day the Goyers [executive producers Jessika Borsiczky Goyer and David Goyer] called them, and they were like, ‘Do you think Gabrielle would ever be interested in returning to television?’ They’re like, ‘Funny you should ask. We just talked to her about this.’”

Since FlashForward has a long-term mythology that the creators are guarding closely, it’s one of those shows where even the actors don’t get information beyond the script they are shooting. That creates a challenging work environment for Union.

“It’s more hard that we are given very limited information, to the point where filming a scene, I think I have all the information I need,” she said. “We do a take, and they’re like, ‘Oh, nobody told her.’ Then they whisper it in your ear, and I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, that changes everything.’ So I’m literally getting information on a need-to-have basis. That’s more challenging. Literally, they tell me on a need-to-know basis.”