J. J. Abrams and Fringe at the TCA Panel
J.J. Abrams and the rest of the producers of Fringe were at the TCA summer press tour Monday discussing about the heavily anticipated sci-fi / suspense / action series. While they sat on stage, the stars of the show, Joshua Jackson and Anna Torv, joined them via satellite from the set in New York.
On the most common observation about his upcoming series — that it compares so much to The X Files:
(Abrams) ""I would be a fool to say there are no influences. Yes, there’s an FBI agent and some weird stuff. But I’d like to think the similarities end there. It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s do "The X-Files" again. It was like, ‘What [kind of show] do we want to see?’ I thought we’d be slammed for doing the big David Cronenberg/Michael Crichton stuff … like ‘Westworld’ … the place were medicine and science meets real life … we started and made a list of all the shows we like … certainly ‘Twilight Zone,’ ‘Night Stalker’ are ones I really like."
(Robert Orci, Executive Producer) "’X-Files’ was an inspiration as well, but that’s not where we started. … I wanted to do a show with geniuses solving problems."
The show is also influenced by other shows "where medicine and science meet in real life".
On how different is the experience from Lost: “’Lost’ has a reputation of being a very complicated show. ’Fringe ‘is in many ways an experiment for us…we believe it has an overall story and we know its end game … you don’t have to watch episodes one, two and three to watch episode four. We are trying very diligently the show doesn’t require the sort of insane, absolute dedication to other series.”
On Lance Reddick’s status, Lost semi-regular and apparently series regular on Fringe: Abrams said there’s still a possibility for appearances on Lost. "When we were casting him, we hesitated because of his Lost character. But then I realized if he goes and does another show, he’ll be less likely to do Lost, so let’s get him on this one, because I know the producer."
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