TV with MeeVee: Press Tour: "Prison Break": Breakfast With Michael, Lincoln and T-Bag

July 14, 2008

Press Tour: "Prison Break": Breakfast With Michael, Lincoln and T-Bag

The tag line for Fox's "Prison Break" in the coming season is: "The only thing harder than breaking out is breaking in." Brothers Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows will be working for the government for a change, in hopes of earning their freedom permanently. But it's not going to be easy.

The cast and producers of "Prison Break" showed up for breakfast at press tour this morning, and nobody got much to eat because we formed a huge scrum around Wentworth Miller (Michael) and Sarah Wayne Callies (Dr. Sarah Tancredi).That's my hand holding the recorder in front of Miller's shoulder.

They weren't giving out a lot of spoilers about the coming season, although Miller told us there won't be a third breakout, after the characters escaped Illinois' Fox River prison in Season One, and the Panamanian hellhole Sona in Season Three.

Is the actor glad to be out of those dank prison cells? Not really, it turns out. "I felt like Michael was at his best in Season One. He had a clear sense of purpose," Miller said. "And then in Season Two (after the escape), the character kind of spun out. And then when we were back inside in Season Three, he had that sense of purpose again." So will the character spin out again now that he's back on the street in Season Four? "No, because this time we're being pro-active instead of reactive. He has a mission."

I asked Dominic Purcell (Lincoln) how the actors feel when they get their scripts featuring the show's trademark outrageous twists. Do they ever think, Oh, come on? "Not really, because with this show you just have to check your brain at the door sometimes, and I think the fans know that and have come to accept that."

Probably the most fun, though, was talking to Robert Knepper, who plays the brutal sex-murdering psycho Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell. He said he can walk into any bar in any town and even the toughest looking characters keep their distance. Women who turn around and find him behind them tend to shriek.

T-Bag chopped his own hand off to escape capture and later forced a veterinarian to reattach it in one of the show's most outrageous storylines. Then he killed the vet. Turns out Knepper is the son of a vet and actually called dad one night to doublecheck the right amount of dog-euthanizing drugs that would be required to take down a man.

Knepper used to help his father with dogs in his clinic, and he felt that the 5cc suggested by the writers just wasn't enough. But he didn't want to spoil the upcoming episode for his father, so he invented a story about dreaming that he had killed a man with a 5cc injection and asked dear old dad if that would be enough. "There was a looong pause," Knepper said with a laugh. But dad came through with the facts - 15-20 cc's was more like it. Ultimately, though, that prop needle was just too big.

The "Prison Break" Season Three DVD will be out Aug. 12.

Much more to come, but I can't hear myself think over the "So You Think You Can Dance" performance going on in front of us now...

Posted by Joel Brown on July 14, 2008 at 10:16 AM in Press Tour, Prison Break | Permalink

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