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By
Suzanne

Interview with Stephen Nathan of "Bones" on
FOX 9/30/14
This was a very enjoyable call. I love "Bones", and they
sure do a great job with it. I was a little upset at this
point because they'd just killed off Sweets, but I stayed
professional with my questions.... I had hoped to ask him
whether they would bring back Zack or not this season! That
would almost make it worth losing Sweets. Almost!
Final Transcript
FBC Publicity: Bones Conference Call
September 30, 2014/10:00 a.m. PDT
SPEAKERS
Kim Kurland
Stephen Nathan
PRESENTATION
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.
Welcome to the Bones conference call. At this time, all
participants are in a listen-only mode and we will be
conducting a question and answer session shortly. (Operator
instructions.)
I would now like to turn the conference over to our host,
Kim Kurland.
Kim: Hello, everyone, this is Kim Kurland with Fox. I’d just
wanted to thank you all for participating today. Hopefully
everyone has seen our season premiere episode of Bones and
we’re very excited for people to tune in this coming
Thursday for the follow-up to that episode and Stephen will
give you more about that on this call. So, Dan, I think we
can take our first question.
Moderator: All right, our first question comes from Meredith
Jacobs with TheExaminer.com. Please go ahead.
Meredith: Good morning, thanks for taking the time to do this
call.
Stephen: Hello, Meredith. How are you doing?
Meredith: Good, how are you?
Stephen: Good, thanks.
Meredith: So can you talk about having Booth and Brennan with
Sweets when he died?
Stephen: The entire situation for us was very, very painful
and we tried to treat it with as much respect and truth as
we possibly could and really focus in on what was going to
be the best for the show and most emotionally truthful for
the characters. And it seemed that Sweets and Booth and
Brennan had grown so close over the past three or four years
especially that it seemed as if they were the people who
should be there when he died. And it was also a very
complicated situation because Booth was having a huge crisis
himself and also Booth and Brennan as a couple with Booth
coming out of prison; and it really was a testament to
Sweets and to kind of the nobility of the character really
that his last words were about Booth and Brennan. His last
words were of concern for his friend, not in any way
thinking of himself. He was concerned for Daisy and at that
moment concerned for Booth, that Booth didn’t lose faith,
that Booth didn’t lose hope in the world and that the world
actually was a good place, even as he was dying.
I think it really encapsulated Sweets as a character as well
as Sweets’ relationship to Booth and Brennan. And as I say
it was very painful for us to lose John and to lose this
character of Sweets, but this is what happens not only on a
television show, but it happens in life. You get thrown a
curve ball, you don’t know what’s happening the next moment
in anybody’s life and you just have to pick up and move on
and try to learn from the experience and make the best of it
and hopefully make everyone’s life a little bit richer and
better for it.
That was really a long, long answer. I’m sorry.
Meredith: All right. And then when it came to [indiscernible]
the funeral scene in the next episode, what did you want to
make sure you did with it?
Stephen: I’m sorry?
Meredith: What did you want to make sure you did with the
funeral scene in this week’s episode?
Stephen: Really this is a two parter in a very classic way,
not only for the primary plot with the conspiracy, but more
than that a two parter dealing with one of our most beloved
characters leaving our family. So we wanted to send him off
in a way that honored his memory and showed how much our
characters have changed, grown because of their contact with
Sweets, so we really wanted to show that and show what this
family is made of and how they pulled together in the most
horrible of circumstances and get through.
Meredith: All right, great, thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from Jamie Ruby with
SciFiVision.com. Please go ahead.
Stephen: Hello, Jamie, how are you doing?
Jamie: Good, how are you?
Stephen: Good, thanks.
Jamie: Great to talk to you again. I have to say I was really
upset. I like Sweets. I know a lot of people do, but I’m
sure the rest of the show will still be great. I want to
know if you can talk about the 200th episode and anything
that you have planned for that.
Stephen: I’m going to be very, very vague and circumspect. It
will be an episode unlike any we’ve ever done before. We’re
going to have as many people who have crossed our paths as
we possibly can. There are limitations to that of course,
some limitations that we can’t possibly get around. But we
wanted to give a little gift to the fans, to the people who
have watched Bones for ten years or even three or five or
six, give them a little gift showing our characters in a
situation they would never normally find themselves in and
just see our characters from a different perspective. It’s
not a dream show, but it is unique. It is going to be
visually something we’ve never seen before on Bones and
stylistically something we’ve never seen on Bones before.
Jamie: Interesting.
Stephen: But that’s an answer to your question that it’s far
too vague for you I’m sure.
Jamie: That’s okay. And then the follow-up, can you talk a
bit about James Aubrey’s character and how like continuing
through the show he’s going to be, because I assume
eventually Booth is going to warm up to him I hope.
Stephen: Yes, as they recover from the end of season nine and
the beginning of season ten really Booth and Brennan and the
Squints life has to go on. But it’s a very difficult hurdle
for Booth especially, his foundation, his trust in the
institutions that he’s devoted his life to that he’s risked
his life for has been shaken, so he has some big trust
issues moving forward and Aubrey is the focus of that
initially. Now Booth will be getting over this in a way only
he can with Brennan and Brennan’s help and this will not
drag on for a long time. Bones is not going to turn into a
dark show where they’re dealing with all of these demons all
the time. But we have to deal with what has occurred, so
within the first three or four episodes Booth is going to
have to learn to trust Aubrey and Aubrey is going to have to
earn Booth’s trust. So it’s really a two-way street and we
will be doing that; and we’re going to be back on our
traditional Bones footings very, very quickly.
Certainly episode three, episode four the show is back. Our
show is yes, we’re procedural, yes, people get murdered, but
it’s funny. It’s romantic. It’s bizarre and all of that, the
oddities and the unique nature of the show will return, but
we will be getting to know Aubrey in these first five or six
episodes because he’s going to be a very valuable member of
the team and slowly become a member of the family as well.
He’s a strange guy, but he’s a brilliant agent who is
un-intimidated.
Sweets was very deferential to Booth. Sweets being so young
when he started he wanted to fit in; he wanted to make sure
he was doing the right thing. Aubrey is somebody who really
has, socially, he’ll just blunder into things, but at the
same time Booth will learn to trust the fact that he is a
great agent.
Jamie: Right. All right, thank you so much.
Stephen: Okay.
Moderator: Our next question comes from Sarah Curtis of
GiveMeMyRemote.com. Your line is open.
Sarah: Great, thanks.
Stephen: Hello, Sarah, how are you doing?
Sarah: I’m good. I’m filling in for Marissa today. She was
sorry to miss it.
Stephen: All right.
Sarah: So Pelant gave way to the ghost killer, which
then gave way to this FBI conspiracy. Is there anything else
lurking out there in that connection train or are we really
just going to see standalone cases/villains for the rest of
the season?
Stephen: There’s always something lurking out there. I can
safely say that there is going to be something else lurking
out there. I don’t think the world ever exists with simple
murders no matter how horrible. I think we need something a
little more evil and that will be coming our way. They might
be in the second half of the year when we come back in
January, but we’ll be getting involved in another case where
there’s someone who’s not nice, not a good person.
Sarah: Okay, that kind of leads to my follow-up here, which
is last season Max hinted to Brennan that he was involved in
some things that she didn’t know about and wouldn’t like, so
I’m just wondering if that’s coming up and where and when or
if it was just a throw away.
Stephen: Again, this is something that it’s not a throw away.
We try not to throw anything away, but it’s also something
that we’re in the process of developing now more fully. And
the first half of the season especially leading up to the
200th and finishing the conspiracy was something this story
with Max is something that we wanted to devote a good amount
of time to and again, that’s going to have to be in the
second half of the season. We didn’t want to go from a
conspiracy into some other “big bad” story, but Max will be
back and we’ll be back dealing with that issue.
Sarah: Okay, great, thanks.
Stephen: Okay, thank you.
Moderator: And the next question is from Colleen Pinto of
Voice of TV. Please go ahead.
Stephen: Hello, Colleen, how are you?
Colleen: Hello, how are you?
Stephen: Hello.
Colleen: You sort of touched on this a little bit, but the
whole government conspiracy affects Booth because he’s sort
of idealistic to a fault about the government and his time
in the military, I know you said it’s not going to go to a
dark place, but how is that going to affect him for the rest
of the season?
Stephen: How what, I’m sorry I couldn’t hear the last part of
what you said.
Colleen: How will the government conspiracy and Booth being
shut out, how will that affect him in his job and the way
that he thinks about the government?
Stephen: We will deal with that and initially it will be
resolved reasonably quickly, but the residual elements of
that will always be there. I think he’s a very resilient
guy. He’s been through war; he’s been in covert operations.
He was a ranger; he’s seen a lot of stuff and he has bounced
back from a lot of very difficult sometimes tragic
circumstances and found a way to move on, and this will be
no different. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some residual
emotional issues that he will be confronted with really at a
time when he thought everything was okay, so it’s really
going to ebb and flow through the season and we will see
this initial issue of trust and idealism and challenged
idealism be dealt with in the first few episodes and dealt
with pretty successfully, but there’s a lot underneath that
will keep bubbling to the surface throughout the season.
As I said it’s not going to be some kind of weird dark
season, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t have
difficult things that they have to deal with that surface
when they least expect them. So Brennan as well as Booth
will be dealing with a lot of residual fall-out from what’s
happened and what will happen in the future.
Colleen: Okay. And will we see more of Daisy on the series?
Stephen: Yes, definitely.
Colleen: Bearing his child.
Stephen: Daisy will be in the second episode clearly, we have
to say good-bye to Sweets and send him off as only this
group can, but Daisy is also pregnant and as we heard in
that episode, she’s alone really. And I don’t think people
who have grown close to her and really grown to love her in
their own way over these, I don’t even know how many years,
five, six years are not going to send her out into the world
alone. When this baby is born, this baby will be born and
cared for.
Colleen: Wonderful, thank you.
Moderator: And we have a question from Jenny Riordan from
TVIsMyPacifier.com. Please go ahead.
Jenny: Hello, Stephen.
Stephen: Hello, Jenny, how are you?
Jenny: I’m good. My phone is dying, so I hope to get through
this all before it finally quits.
Stephen: Okay.
Jenny: I was extremely sad about Sweets, but I understand
that his career is taking off, so that’s a big thing for the
actor, too.
Stephen: Yes.
Jenny: But my question focuses more on the Squints, will we
see the same rotating cast of characters; will we be
introduced to anyone new? And [indiscernible]—
Stephen: Yes, all of our regular Squints will be coming back
to visit and work, so these are characters we’ve grown to
love and they have become such an integral part of the show
that we’re able to really treat them as more than just
functionaries within the lab. They really have full, rich
lives of their own and that’s what we’re going to be
contending with. Wendell is dealing with his cancer. Cam and
Arastoo are dealing with their relationship. Daisy now is
going to be dealing with a baby. We’re bringing back Oliver
Wells. We’re bringing back Clark and all of these people
have very rich lives that will be explored and since they’ve
all become so close to the other Squints, everybody gets
involved in each other’s lives as happens in most
workplaces. And we’ll be learning a lot more about these
characters that initially were just temporary help in the
lab. They’ve become permanent members of the Bones family.
Jenny: Excellent. That’s just want I wanted to hear, so thank
you very much.
Stephen: Okay, thank you.
Moderator: We have a question from Suzanne Lanoue from
The TV MegaSite. Your line is open.
Stephen: Okay, hello, Suzanne.
Suzanne: Hello. I was wondering you’ve gotten rid of
characters before and I was wondering if there’s ever
concern when you get rid of someone who is so beloved like
Sweets was if it might have an effect on the show that you
didn’t expect.
Stephen: Absolutely. We can only deal with the events that
confront us and that’s what we had to do in this
circumstance. It’s more than what is going to be good or bad
for the show. Really it was the difficulty, the challenge,
and to be honest, the pain of losing a character like Sweets
and an actor like John. We love John and it’s always
difficult and you never really know how the audience is
going to respond. We could only hope that by treating this
in a realistic way, in a way that respects the character,
that will also show how much we respect the audience. We did
not do this in a cavalier or a callous way; we tried to do
it and integrate it into the show and hopefully it makes the
show better in a way.
If the show continually was running in place, I don’t think
we’d be on for ten years. I think a show has to change and
evolve; sometimes the change is painful, but that doesn’t
mean it’s not good or correct, so we have to trust that if
we treat this situation truthfully, it will enhance the show
no matter how difficult and painful it is. There’s no way
really ever of knowing how the audience is going to respond
to any episode or any change. We didn’t know how they were
going to respond when Booth and Brennan got together. We
didn’t know how they were going to respond when they got
married, when they had a child, when people leave the show.
You just never know. You just hope that everybody is along
for the ride and that the ride is satisfying and honest.
Suzanne: And will you be addressing this season the passing
of Ralph Waite at all?
Stephen: You know, we’re still talking about that because we
probably will and we’re trying to figure out how to do that
without bringing it all up again and being exploitive. We
don’t want to be cheap about that, especially after dealing
with such an enormous loss as the loss of Sweets, so we’re
in a pickle there, but we’re dealing with it.
Suzanne: All right, thanks a lot.
Stephen: Thank you.
Moderator: (Operator instructions.) We have another question
from Jamie Ruby of SciFiVision.com. Please go ahead.
Jamie: Hello again, they took my questions, so I have to
think up one here. Now that you’ve going on for ten years
now, I think a lot of this obviously gets easier, but what
do you still find that’s most challenging even ten years
later?
Stephen: It’s all a challenge ten years later. Going into our
tenth year clearly the one of the most difficult things is
finding cases that are new, clues that are new, worlds that
are new and unique and ways of dealing with the science that
are new and keep up with technology. This show
technologically, the show has changed dramatically over ten
years, but primarily it’s where are these new body finds
going to come from? What are the new murderers? What worlds
can we go into that we haven’t gone into before?
The miraculous thing is the writers keep coming up with new
completely unique ways to kill people and locations and
worlds in which to kill them that are constantly amazing.
We’re going to be doing a murder at a forensics convention
filled with forensic experts. How did we not do that before,
but really and over nine years that we never have, so we’ve
got a new one. It’s just really, as I said, a testament to
the writers, Jon Collier, who’s an executive producer on the
show, who runs the writers’ room is just phenomenal and
leads the writers through the dark forest and into the
light; and what comes out of there is just amazing.
Jamie: Thanks. I hope it goes on for years more yet, so—
Stephen: We do, too.
Jamie: Okay. Thanks.
Stephen: Thank you.
Moderator: And we do have another question from Sarah Curtis
from GiveMeMyRemote.com. Please go ahead.
Sarah: Okay, great. There’s been a lot on the Internet from
Sunnie Pelant and then also Gavin MacIntosh maybe if you
could answer some questions. I know Sunnie was in the show
last year and she just is darling and Gavin I think seems to
be cast as Parker and just maybe talk a little bit about
what the casting process was for Gavin. He definitely looks
like David Boreanaz and so just wondering what that was
like.
Stephen: As the show evolves, especially with young actors,
sometimes changes occur. We’ve been in this situation
before. There was one actress initially who was playing
Michelle, Cam’s adopted daughter, and that actress changed
for that character. Christine also changed partly because of
age. We wanted someone in that part who could do more, so
Christine’s age accelerated a touch, the maturity
accelerated a touch, so we could have someone who could do
dialogue and hopefully stay with the show for the long haul.
And in terms of physical changes, I think there was a
consideration with that as well as far as Parker is
concerned, so again, it’s kind of the evolution of the
actors of the young people, who come through the show; and
maybe it’s in the long and wonderful tradition of Bewitched.
Sarah: Yes.
Stephen: We get a new Darren.
Sarah: Great.
Kim: Dan, I think if we don’t have any more questions, that’s
going to do it. Is anyone else in the queue?
Moderator: We have no further questions at this time.
Kim: Okay, perfect. I think we can wrap it up there.
Stephen: Okay, great. Thanks, everybody.
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our
conference for today. We’d like to thank you for your
participating and for using AT&T TeleConference. You may now
disconnect.
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