Laura Prudom

Joel McHale Talks 'Community' Season 5, Wrestling Robin Williams And Klondike's Celebrity Challenge

2013-06-17T14:50:13-04:00

"Community" star Joel McHale is the latest in a long line of luminaries to ask, "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" and you'd better have a darn good answer, because you might be asked to prove it over the next few months.

McHale has partnered with Klondike for the What Would YOU Do for A Klondike Bar? Challenge, a summer-long contest featuring the comedian and several nostalgic celebrities of the '80s and '90s, in which fans can suggest acts that the celebrities will be required to carry out in pursuit of the fabled ice cream bar. The only catch? If your idea is chosen, you have to do the deed too. Luckily, there are prizes, bragging rights and potential viral video fame up for grabs in the process, if such things entice you. The first celebrity participant is Alfonso Ribeiro, star of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and originator of the iconic "Carlton Dance" -- so if your challenges don't include a hint of Tom Jones, you're not trying hard enough. Check out McHale's video introductions for the Klondike Celebrity Challenge below.

"I'm looking forward to seeing what the challenges will be from the people," McHale told The Huffington Post between takes for the video. "People will submit challenges for what they would do for a Klondike bar. Most of them, it's just gonna be murder, but that's not creative enough -- it's got to be creative murder. So those are gonna be interesting, and the person who submitted it will then do it as well as the celebrity. I will sit back and watch in a lounge, maybe adirondack chair ..."

The identities of the remaining two participating celebrities are shrouded in secrecy for now, but every three weeks, a new video will be posted via Klondike's Facebook page to introduce the latest participant and invite new submissions for challenges from fans.

"June 17th -- much like when you hear the space shuttle reentering the atmosphere -- you will hear two loud booms: that means the contest has started," McHale joked. "You're gonna see enough banner ads to have a Chinese New Year's parade with, of me going 'June 17th, go to Facebook!' Which is a website where you put things up and people view them and they let you know if they like something or if they prefer it. There will probably be the use of the Twitter engine, where notes the length of telegrams will communicate this contest, and hopefully, I assume, because people have imaginations, they'll come up with good things for them ... It's cool because if we choose it, they have to do it too, so you can't just go, 'I want you to detach your jaw and swallow a baseball whole,' they have to do it as well. 'Saw off a foot -- yours.' If they say that, then they have to do it themselves. 'Bag a rhino.' Very difficult and highly illegal." No cheating and stealing his ideas, folks.

Naturally, McHale joked that the main reason he took the job was because, "They offered me some money, and ... I had my eye on this Jeep ..." but the campaign also proved to be an attractive prospect creatively, thanks to the involvement of veteran "Community" director Tristram Shapeero and McHale's friends and "The Soup" writers Boyd Vico and Brad Stevens.

"They just wrote 'The Soup Investigates,' which is a brand new show -- or, I guess, special; if the special goes well that means there might be a new show. They're two guys that I trust implicitly, and they can take anything -- they're like Rumpelstiltskin -- and they can spin comedy out of it," the actor explained. "Because obviously, when you're trying to sell a product, you have to include certain very important things, like the name of the thing and what it is and what you're doing, and they're able to do that in a funny way, which makes me look really good. But they're terrific and Klondike was very cool about letting them be part of the team and so I think they're gonna get some free ice cream bars out of it."

As for Shapeero, McHale admitted he was "very glad that he could do it because ... I got to know him on 'Community,' because he came in as a journeyman director and everyone fell in love with him, and he and I spent a number of romantic weekends together. This year, he will direct more 'Community' [episodes] than any other person, and he just directed me in this movie called 'A Friggin' Christmas Miracle,' with Mr. Robin Williams -- Sir Robin Williams, that's me namedropping -- so I'm just really glad he was available, because now he's prepping for Season 5 of 'Community,' and he's tremendous. I love the man. He's the best retired, grey-haired, former rugby player I've ever worked with."

"A Friggin' Christmas Miracle" features McHale and an enviably star-studded cast, including Williams, Lauren Graham, Candice Bergen, Oliver Platt, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Tim Heidecker, Clark Duke and fellow "Office" alum Mark Proksch. "The cast that came together, it really showed that a lot of terrific people need work, like myself," McHale said with a laugh. "It was a really fun script to make and it's a Christmas movie, kind of 'Midnight Run' meets Christmas. Robin Williams plays my dad and believe me, every time I'd be there, I'd be like, 'Hey, there's Robin Williams. He's right there!'"

After "Community" was "unbelievably and fantastically" renewed for Season 5, as McHale put it, news soon broke that the show's creator Dan Harmon was in talks to return, after being unceremoniously ousted at the end of Season 3, following a high-profile feud with Chevy Chase.

On Twitter, Harmon credited McHale as the reason for his unlikely but well-received return to the series. McHale demurred, "I think it was a group effort. Dan is the voice of the show and there's nobody else on the planet like him, so when it started happening that he was coming back, I became as excited as a little boy on Christmas morning -- who celebrates Christmas. I'm thrilled he's back, [along with] Chris McKenna, who wrote 'Remedial Chaos Theory.'"

Despite a lukewarm reaction from fans and critics, McHale expressed fondness for certain parts of the Harmon-less Season 4 of "Community," noting, "I think when you had such a strong voice with Dan ... you didn't know where it was going, but you really felt like, 'We know the tone of what we're doing,' and without him, that was harder. I think there were some really good episodes. The one Jim [Rash] did was amazing. [The season] was really different. But Jim's, and Megan Ganz wrote one that was amazing -- a couple. And Andy Bobrow was great. Andy Bobrow is back, and obviously Jim is too ... So I'm thrilled we're back."

Check out Klondike's Facebook page to learn more about the "What Would YOU Do for A Klondike Bar? Challenge."

'Under The Dome': Mike Vogel Talks Barbie's Journey And Playing A Heroic Antihero

2013-06-17T10:47:20-04:00

Meet Mike Vogel, the 33-year-old actor who plays Dale "Barbie" Barbara in CBS' "Under the Dome," the high-concept series based on Stephen King's hefty novel of the same name.

As we draw closer to the June 24 premiere, The Huffington Post will take you inside the epic CBS drama, introducing you to each of the show's major players through our series of on-set interviews. Whether you're a fan of the book or a newcomer to King's world, the series has plenty of surprises in store. For the uninitiated, "Under the Dome" centers around the fictional town of Chester's Mill, and explores what happens to its inhabitants after an impenetrable dome of unknown origin cuts them off from the rest of the world. Will they rise to the occasion or devolve into chaos as they try to find a way out?

Vogel is perhaps best known for his recent roles in ABC's "Pan Am" and A&E's "Bates Motel," but "Dome" is likely to provide the actor's true breakout role. Though Barbie is presented as the show's reluctant hero from the outset, he's hiding a number of secrets from the people of Chester's Mill, and once the dome comes down and traps the townsfolk in close quarters, those secrets won't stay buried for long.

Did you read the book to prepare for the role, or were you actively avoiding it to start with a clean slate?
I did the same thing with "The Help" -- I hate having a preconceived notion of what it's going to be and then playing to that thing, especially once I heard that it's certainly based on the book, but [with] a series, there's a lot of maneuvering that we have to do. So yeah, I didn't.

Give us a little background on your character, Barbie, and where we find him in the premiere?
Barbie is a great guy. I love him. He's a former Special Forces operator. He's gotten out of the military and since then, he's done a bunch of odd jobs, trying to find his spot and where he fits in.

He finds himself basically collecting debts for a bookie and nine times out of 10, it's a nonviolent ordeal. He's not a heavy that's going around thumping on people, breaking kneecaps, [saying,] "Pay up. Pay up." Normally, everyone's willing. But he finds himself in some situations where he has to defend himself, which is sort of the catalyst which brings him into this town and he happens to find himself here when this event happens.

So he finds himself stuck in a position of having had to defend himself after a rather nefarious deed and stuck in a small town where word travels fast and everyone knows everyone. There's a lot of stuff swirling in the first couple episodes, and what I like about the show is, judging by the opening of the show, someone might say, "Oh, Barbie, bad guy -- Big Jim [played by Dean Norris], good guy." But that's not at all the case. And I enjoy that it takes time for everything to unravel here and that everything that you see is not what you're getting.

The book is certainly more delineated in laying out whether Barbie is good or bad right from the outset, so it's great that the show is sketching in more shades of gray.
Yeah ... You certainly have to stick with it to start seeing the evolution of everything. It takes time. And because of Barbie's certain talents and skills, he certainly plays a role in the town of the protector and enforcing justice, but also because of that, he becomes a fall guy for some things.

Speaking of Barbie's relationships with people in the town, what can you say about his dynamic with Big Jim, since the promotional materials certainly seem to be setting them at odds from the start. Would you say that they're the primary antagonists for each other?
Absolutely. Both Type-A personalities, for sure, and there's a power struggle there. I have many friends in Special Forces and the amazing thing about these guys is how quickly they can read someone. So clearly, Barbie gets a little feeling about this guy that something's off. On one hand, he appears to be the leader of this town and we all stick together. Everyone's on the team here. But you come to find out that there's all kinds of dealings that this guy's involved with under the surface. So it becomes a bit of a power struggle between the two of them ... Big Jim basically has every resource at his disposal; Barbie's here with nothing but a backpack and trying to exist in the middle of chaos.

From the promos, it seems like Barbie would prefer to stay out of everything, but circumstances conspire against him?
Yeah. Essentially that's the thing -- he'd rather go sleep in the woods and just avoid everything until all this blows over, and be far more comfortable doing that. But I think his integrity and his desire and need to help others wins out at the end of the day.

Barbie seems to be a magnet for trouble, because he'll also encounter Big Jim's son, Junior [Alexander Koch] ...
That's the thing. It's kind of like someone like my brother -- my brother could walk down the street and everyone wants to fight him for some reason. I don’t get it. It's like, "Why? You're standing here right next to me and it's not an issue, but for some reason everybody looks at me and they want to throw a punch in my face." And I feel like that's the way it is with Barbie. He carries himself in that way. He's out of place in this town, so instantly becomes a scapegoat. He's easy to blame for a lot of things because no one knows him. But yeah, it seems that in every episode he's carrying somebody, fighting somebody, helping somebody. It's good for me -- it's fun. But it becomes a good blend of trying to not play too much the hero, because that just gets a little overbearing.

He also seems to have some chemistry with the town's reporter, Julia Shumway [Rachelle Lefevre] -- can you preview anything about their relationship?
Yeah, and a lot of this is still evolving for us. We're only on [episode] four and the fun thing is that a lot of the guys involved with this come from "Lost" and so they bring that "Lost" mystique with them. And so we find ourselves going, "what's happening in the next episode?" [And they say] "It's coming, don't worry -- there's kind of this thing with this thing with a guy with a thing." And we're like, "Great. Fantastic. That helps!" So with Julia ... again, he finds himself stuck in this town. Clearly, she is an insanely intelligent, quick-witted woman and he's certainly attracted to her. We find out in the first episode that she had a husband that Barbie happened to run into, and an event took place ... and he's stuck in a position of having to lie to her ... And over several episodes, she comes to find out the truth and we'll see how their relationship evolves from that point. It's going to take some dancing, that's for sure.

"Under the Dome" premieres Monday, June 24 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS. Come back to HuffPost TV every morning for a new interview with a member of the cast.

'Magic City' Premiere: Jeffrey Dean Morgan Previews Season 2 Changes And Working With James Caan

2013-06-14T10:44:06-04:00

"Magic City" Season 2 premieres Friday, June 14 (9 p.m. ET on Starz), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan promises that the new year brings a story that's "darker, crazier and more vicious" than anything we saw last season (which featured blackmail, murder and voyeuristic sex acts on a weekly basis). Plus, Season 2 boasts Oscar nominee James Caan returning to his "Godfather" roots as a Chicago mobster whom Morgan simply describes as "a scary dude."

So what lengths will Ike Evans (Morgan) go to in order to rid his Miramar Playa Hotel of the mob and Ben “The Butcher” Diamond (Danny Huston)? And will his long-shot gamble tear the Evans family apart? Find out what Morgan told HuffPost TV to expect from "Magic City" Season 2 below.

Last time we saw Ike, he was in jail for murder, with State Attorney Jack Klein (Matt Ross) determined to throw away the key. Where does the beginning of Season 2 find him? I'm guessing the whole season isn't set with Ike in jail ...
[Laughs.] No, no -- we have to get Ike out of jail or I don’t know, the show will turn into “Oz.” So he gets out rather quickly ... because he needs to get to the business at hand .. This season, it’s all about getting Ben Diamond out of his hotel and ending that partnership by whatever means necessary.

He started pushing those pieces into place by partnering with his ex-sister-in-law Meg (Kelly Lynch) last season. Does she have a bigger part to play this year because of that deal?
Meg is now a very minority owner in [the hotel] and she has a more substantial role in the show and certainly in Ike’s life this year, which is an interesting relationship in itself. That dynamic is a very interesting dynamic, especially if you’re looking at it from Vera’s [Olga Kurylenko] point of view. Some sparks will fly there, but ... I think what we established last year in Ike being this family man that’s trying to do good while running this business; this year, he falls behind on his family duties and it becomes this singular vision of getting rid of Ben Diamond. And along with Ben Diamond, now we’ve got Jimmy Caan playing Sy Berman. So Ike’s life gets very complicated and he goes much more to the dark side this year. I think he remains this guy that wants to do right, but he is definitely not walking that fine line that he did last year quite as well.

Right. He spent most of last season managing to avoid getting his hands dirty, and then he ruined it all by killing Jimmy Shoes (Arron Shiver) to protect Judi Silver (Elena Satine). Will we see Ike continuing to take matters into his own hands this season?
Yeah, I think he gets his hands dirtier. He has to start playing the game that these other guys are playing, [that] the mob is playing, in order to break out and get rid of this element in his life. The problem is, Ike is very adept at it. He’s a guy that is able to slip into that world and live there comfortably, which was kind of interesting, I thought. Last year, the audience didn’t know really what Ike was up to a lot of the time and this year, the audience will be in on Ike’s plan and his thought process a lot more, which is great because you’ll see that Ike is two moves ahead of these guys at all times -- which is not to say that he doesn’t have some super close calls, but you can see what he’s thinking, which adds a lot more to his character and being able to see what he’s up to instead of just having to guess.

It also seems like Ike's wife, Vera, is going to start wising up to the fact that he's painted himself into a corner ...
She starts putting some pieces together and it gets to the point that Ike has to come clean with what’s going on, for two reasons. One is, well, their relationship is under a lot of strain so there’s that element, like, “Here’s the truth. You need to know the truth.” The other [reason] is in still trying to keep her safe and out of harm’s way. That’s why he has to tell her -- but his family relationships, both with Vera and his sons, become incredibly strained this year and he goes from being this ... very good family man to someone who very well may end up alone.

One of the best moments of the finale came after Ben Diamond discovered that Ike's son, Stevie (Steven Strait), was sleeping with his wife -- but instead of killing Stevie, Ben watched the two of them have sex. Is Ike going to become aware of that affair and some of Stevie's questionable activities?
Stevie goes into a whole other level of kind of stupidity this year. [Laughs.] If that wasn’t dumb enough, what he was doing, he does even crazier things this year that Ike does find out about. So that relationship becomes incredibly, incredibly strained and I think Stevie goes from being the good son as he was touted last year to ... not a good son. And Ike is aware of a lot of the stuff that he’s doing and tries to change it, with questionable results. Then Danny is a whole other piece ...

Right, because Danny (Christian Cooke) thinks he's doing the noble thing, wanting to follow the law, but that path and trusting Jack Klein is obviously going to put him on a collision course with his father.
Right -- [the path seems noble] for a guy that’s after Ike. Jack's whole goal is to get Ike Evans. So, yeah, Ike is getting it from all sides, including his own sons.

It sounds as if Ike's leaving Miami for a bit and heading to Havana. Can you preview how the new setting and the casinos there play into Ike's plot?
Yeah, it’s all part of Ike’s plan to get rid of Ben, and he hatches a plan that has to do with the casinos in Havana and Sy Berman. And so Ike has to go to Cuba and try to drum up some business in order to get Sy Berman to help him to get Ben Diamond out of his hotel essentially. It’s a very smart plan that Ike comes up with and I don’t know how much I’m allowed to even talk about. It’s a brilliant plan and it was certainly fun to play out as an actor with these other fine actors, but I remember as I was reading it, going, "Wow. That is super devious and sort of crazy and yet incredibly smart.” So I will be interested to see how the audience reacts to it.

What does James Caan's character, Sy, bring to the story -- and what was your experience of working with him?
Well, Jimmy Caan plays a guy, Sy Berman, who runs the Chicago outfit, which is where Ben Diamond came from. He sort of created Ben Diamond. Sy gets brought into the mix, one, to kind of figure out what the fuck is going on with Ben Diamond, because Ben Diamond has become such a loose cannon. I bring him into the mix for my own reasons and I can’t tell you, but there’s another thing going on with Sy Berman and another character in the show that is completely fascinating and crazy. But what he brings to the table is balls, you know?

He’s a brilliant actor and a hell of a personality, but what he brings is an intensity. And to work with him is ... I’m not going to lie, my first scene with him, I was a little bit nervous going in. That hasn’t happened in a long time, but I had butterflies because I was working with Sonny Corleone and the relationship I had with him was also a little volatile. So to do scenes with him -- and he’d get very intense in scenes and Ike has to stay toe to toe with him. So it quickly wore off because he’s such gregarious and sweet and wonderful man, but man, when he’s in character, Sy Berman is a scary dude.

He has an ability to go toe to toe with me and Houston, as actors, something which that role needed desperately, because otherwise, he’d be eaten alive. So to have someone of his caliber, that was a necessity from an acting standpoint, but he also knows what he’s doing and brings so much more than what is on the page to what he is doing. So I think what he brings to the show in itself is another level of intensity. I think it certainly steps up the stakes from last year. I think the last four episodes of last year our story really kicked in -- we spent like four episodes kind of introducing this world, and the last four were really moving and that’s where we leave off this year. Each episode gets bigger and the stakes are raised and it gets darker and crazier and more vicious. Certainly, he has something to do with that.

"Magic City" Season 2 premieres Friday, June 14 at 9 p.m. ET on Starz.

Are you looking forward to seeing James Caan in "Magic City"?

'Scandal' Season 3: Katie Lowes, Joshua Malina And Dan Bucatinsky On Hopes For Next Year And More

2013-06-13T10:52:25-04:00

"Scandal" Season 3 is still, painfully, a few months away, but members of the cast were on hand at the recent ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas to reminisce about Season 2, talk Twitter and share their hopes for next year.

One of the many shocking twists of Season 3 was the revelation that Joe Morton's enigmatic B613 director, Rowan, was also Olivia Pope's (Kerry Washington) father. The cast members on hand at the ATX panel -- Katie Lowes (Quinn Perkins), Joshua Malina (David Rosen), Dan Bucatinsky (James Novak) -- admitted that they were every bit as floored as the audience when they finally found out. "Joe Morton had been around for months and we had no idea," Lowes said with a laugh. "No one knew. Everyone was completely flabbergasted. I think there was screaming that occurred."

"There's screaming at every table read," director Tom Verica, who was also at the panel, noted. "There were probably five of us who knew when Joe first came on. You wonder, 'Is anyone going to figure this out along the way?'"

As well as learning that the cast members have some famous friends who they'd like to see appear on the show (Malina said his former "West Wing" co-star Allison Janney is "a big fan of the show," while Bucatinsky revealed that "Lisa Kudrow [who he worked with on "Web Therapy" and "The Comeback"] watches every single episode"), here's what else we found out during ATX's "Scandal" panel.

Cast chemistry is integral to the show's success:
"We do all really like each other," Lowes said. "I feel like it's a testament to Shonda [Rhimes] because when she was casting the show and putting everybody together, she called previous bosses and checked up on everyone to make sure everyone was a nice person and normal and cool. I think she really gathered a group of people who work hard and we love being there."

Bucatinsky agreed. "We've all become friends and it's very smart. I've never done a scene with Darby [Stanchfield] or Katie; I've known Josh for a long time; but for all of us to become friends and love each other regardless of whether we act together," he added. "On this show, you never know if you're going to wind up in a scene together for the strangest of reasons. I never thought I'd be in a scene with Bellamy [Young] and then I ended up acting with her a lot ... You build these relationships early on that just last regardless of who you run into on a particular episode, so you have chemistry."

And the cast's social media prowess factors into "Scandal's" success too:
Lowes admitted that, "The majority of the people on 'Scandal' were not on Twitter before 'Scandal,' aside from Josh and Kerry. But we got this email from Shonda Rhimes a couple weeks before the pilot aired, and she said, 'We'd like you all to join Twitter.' I [had no idea] about this stuff. I'm social media not smart at that kind of thing ... So we all struggled together to learn how to do it, and now, we're so thankful that we are." Lowes later revealed that it had been Washington who suggested to Rhimes that the whole cast should jump on the Twitter bandwagon, a strategy that has certainly paid off.

"There's definitely a correlation between our engagement with Twitter and the fans and the groundswell of 'Scandal' this season," Bucatinsky noted. "Around November, it really started to take off and it was a very steady growth all the way towards the end of the season. Journalists would write about it, we had record-breaking numbers of tweets per minute, we were the biggest cast that would live-tweet during the show, both the East Coast and the West Coast. And what's starting to happen is that people are tuning in, appointment television, to watch 'Scandal' live as opposed to watching it recorded, and that's something that the advertisers were worried about for years. I think the live-tweet situation is going to start drawing people to the live broadcast of the show because you're watching with the cast."

"And because people know we'll ruin the episode for you if you don't watch it as it happens," Malina added with a laugh.

The cast enjoys lying to us:
The plots of "Scandal" are closely-guarded secrets, and Lowes admitted that the cast has fun with misleading viewers sometimes. "Sometimes we tweet pictures purposefully leading you down the wrong path. Darby and I were doing this scene where we were breaking into [David's] office and we were dressed in black and all stealth and we took a picture and tweeted it like, 'What do you think we're doing?' and everyone was all, 'Someone's dying!' 'You're dressed for a funeral!' You try to get creative with it."

Bucatinsky's relationship with social media is a little different: "People tweet me more as the character than they do as [me] -- I am spoken to much more as, 'Why are you putting up with that? Why are you letting him talk to you like that? What's wrong with you? Don't tell the world about what he did!' I'm like, 'It's not my fault. I didn't rig a national election.' I find myself responding as if I'm James."

They also enjoy playing their dark sides:
Malina spent one episode on the receiving end of viewers' ire after the penultimate episode of Season 2 made it seem like he was a villan, seemingly betraying Olivia Pope and Associates to work with the unhinged Billy Chambers [Matt Letscher]. "Honestly, I loved it," he admitted. "I wish that villainy had lasted a little bit longer because I enjoyed being hated ... I wanted to do the opposite and prolong it somehow. People for so many months were saying, 'He's a gladiator. When are they going to hire him at OPA?' If you ever think you know where it's going, that's your first clue that that's not where it's going. That's not Shonda's style. She will always surprise you. But I enjoyed the malice."

Lowes got to channel her own dark side when Quinn went nuclear on Billy with a drill in the season finale, and the actress was surprised by how she responded to the scene. "I didn't know if Quinn would be into it or not. I just thought. 'OK, when I get that drill in my hand and I go down, she's either going to be into it or not or scared or not.' And it happened and I was like, 'Oh, Quinn's into it.' That's just what came out naturally -- 'This is a high.'"

They mostly want to be alive next season:
When asked about their hopes for Season 3, the actors were content to trust Rhimes' vision, with only a few small requests ... "Whenever there's a flashback episode, I'm not in it, so I would like a past," Malina laughed. "Or some evidence that David Rosen was alive [before the series started]." Bucatinsky hoped to see "the balance between work and home more, the baby and maybe getting a sibling, and a spin-off series ..."

Meanwhile, Lowes admitted, "I really just have loved everything so far and there's been so many things that I've never done like drilling and whatever. I trust Shonda in all of her ideas and everyone in that writers room is so brilliant ... and I also just want to be alive."

The show continues to excel at portraying realistic gay relationships:
Bucatinsky praised Rhimes' work in making James and Cyrus' (Jeff Perry) relationship about the characters instead of their sexuality. "To me it's the thing that I respect most about Shonda and the shows she creates -- the fact that there is no closet in a Shonda Rhimes show …Everyone in that administration knew, Olivia Pope knows and makes nothing of it. And the issues that Cyrus and James go through -- with the exception of election rigging and taking out hits on each other -- are the issues that a working couple go[es] through ... Becoming a family and becoming parents and how they manage their relationship. It normalizes it, and that fact is almost subversive in its execution so I'm kind of psyched about it."

Not all actors can handle "Scandal"-speak:
The show has drawn comparisons to an Aaron Sorkin series for its fast-paced dialogue, and Malina has been fortunate enough to play in both Sorkin's sandbox and Rhimes'.

"I've been very lucky to exist in both the Sorkinverse and Shondaland. There are definitely similarities -- being able to speak very quickly and enunciate are paramount," he said. "There are definitely similarities -- her world is a bit saucier, a bit racier. In terms of the dialogue itself, both very dialogue-heavy, well-written. It's very easy to act when the dialogue is good. When the writing is good, you just get out of the way of it -- you just say the words in the right order and you look like a brilliant actor."

But Verica noted that it's not as easy as the cast makes it look: "It's a different speed, a different pace, and our guest actors -- there are really good actors, established actors, who come in and can't do it. In the audition process, they really have to ... get 'em going in "Scandal"-speak because we need to know whether they can handle it. Being able to go that quick, Katie, you set the bar for everyone."

"Scandal" will return in fall 2013 on ABC.

What are you hoping to see in "Scandal" Season 3? Weigh in below!

'Under The Dome': Stephen King Previews CBS' New 'Family Fright'

2013-06-12T14:08:16-04:00

As "Under the Dome" approaches its premiere (June 24, 10 p.m. ET), CBS has released a new preview featuring creator Stephen King as he discusses the process of adapting the series for the screen, with cast members such as Dean Norris, Mike Vogel and Rachelle Lefevre describing the impact the author has had on the show and on them personally.

King promises that "Under the Dome" will feature visuals that will make viewers' eyes "bug out of their heads," insisting that, "we're going to try to make this a character-driven show, but nobody's shying away from the big effects."

According to King, "Dome" is intended to be a "family fright," with endless potential for stories. "When people come, I would like them to be fascinated by the situation. I love stories about ordinary people in extraordinary situations -- how some people will rise to that situation and some people will crumble," the writer says in the video above. "If we're very very lucky, people will also start to discuss 'what is this dome, what does it mean, what's the purpose of it?' The one thing that TV has is time -- it has all the time in the world to spread out and tell a story."

"Under the Dome" premieres Monday, June 24 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS.

Are you excited for "Under the Dome"?

'Once Upon A Time' Season 3: Neverland, Hook And Emma Romance And Potential LGBT Characters

2013-06-12T12:37:02-04:00

"Once Upon a Time" Season 3 will see some of fans' favorite fairytale characters venturing to the dangerous world of Neverland in search of kidnapped Henry (Jared Gilmore), and creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis were on hand at the recent ATX Television Festival to preview a little about what we can expect when "Once" returns in the fall.

On the "Once Upon a Time" panel at the ATX Festival this past weekend, Horowitz and Kitsis discussed how the show's core characters will relate to each other while trapped in close quarters on The Jolly Roger; whether Hook (Colin O'Donoghue) will romance Emma; what's in store for Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) and Belle (Emilie de Ravin); and much more.

On how Season 3 will begin:
Horowitz: It's pretty much a direct pickup ... What you saw at the end of the finale is a jumping off point: Some characters are on the boat, some characters are in Storybrooke. [The beginning of Season 3 focuses on] what they're facing and how they're going to deal with new challenges, particularly having a lot of our hero characters and our villain characters forced to work together.
Kitsis: The major difference is that there are characters who are separated, but for us, what's interesting is that you see this motley crew on this ship and you wonder how they're going to work together. You've got that core dysfunctional family on the ship heading to Neverland to get back Henry -- so they're separated in a different way.
Horowitz: We have characters left behind in Storybrooke, like Belle and those folks, and what they're going through, so we've hopefully created a situation where the dramatic stakes are heightened, but they allow us to delve deeper into each of the characters and use the next season to really go into how they're going to react to these new situations.

On the different plot and scheduling formats for next season:
Kitsis: One of the things that we're most excited about is that this year, we're going to do 11 episodes in fall, and 11 in spring, and we're approaching it like two seasons. The first 11 is a very focused, contained beginning, middle and end journey for these characters.
Horowitz: The plan currently is that it will run sometime starting in the fall through December, then come off and come back in the spring for 11 [episodes] straight.

On a potential romance between Hook and Emma (Jennifer Morrison):
Kitsis: The thing I liked about Captain Hook in the finale is, he started to look back on his life and was like, "Maybe I've wasted it?" So here you've got a guy that wants a new chance. And I think being surrounded by all these characters last year, and even seeing his nemesis happy with someone else made him realize that, "Maybe after all these 100 years, I need to get over Milah." So who knows? They're on the ship together and Emma thinks Neal's dead ...

On whether Rumplestiltskin can (or wants to be) redeemed:
Kitsis: We said it in Season 1 when he said, "I'm a difficult man to love," and that is his character. The minute you love him, he just does something horrible. I think for all these characters, Emma was supposed to break the curse and return their happy endings -- I think she broke the curse, but the happy endings we're still searching for, and that's the journey of the show ... Right now, unfortunately for him, he's on a path where the prophecy said he'll die, so we'll see if he survives that.
Horowitz: That's what's cool about him to us as writers: He's torn between competing impulses -- what he knows he should be doing, and what his various agendas are, and they oftentimes conflict.
Kitsis: At first, he wants to do the easy thing and the dark thing and [in the finale,] he realized that once again, he messed up and he lost his son so he says he's going to go back and hang out with Lacey and they're gonna die. But he then needed someone to share those emotions with in those last moments. And so, when he sees that ship come back, he realizes this is a sign that's telling him it's time to do the right thing. So even though this may lead to his death, he knows he needs to honor his son by going and getting his grandson back.

On the future of Rumple and Belle:
Horowitz: It's going to be another challenge for their relationship, since they're separated. He left her behind to protect her and to protect her from many things.
Kitsis: He went there with a very focused attitude of saving Henry and all these things will be [explored] in Season 3.

On whether Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin) can heal her dark heart:
Kitsis: Her journey in Season 3 is interesting. At the end, when she said, "Let's do the hard path," [that] was the moment she realized it's time to start doing the right thing and "I'm the one who has to heal this heart," and I think that with Henry being gone and what we'll see in Season 3, what's required on this mission is Snow White -- but the bandit Snow. It's time for her to rise to the hero that she was to save her grandson. This whole Neverland experience is going to force all the characters to become who they truly are.

On the show's examination of good versus evil:
Kitsis: It seems black and white, but life isn't black and white -- people are always faced with difficult circumstances where sometimes, it's easier to do the wrong thing than it is the right thing ... As writers, it would be boring if the evil queen was just evil because she was evil. We want to see the pain behind it and the torture and what we love so much about the Evil Queen is, she's a person who's trying to find her own happy ending. She just goes about it in a really disastrous way.

On whether we'll ever see an LGBT character on the show:
Kitsis: We are absolutely open to that, and for us, it's a matter of the right time and the right story. It's something we discuss and we're open to, it's just not something we've done yet.
Horowitz: And it's the same as with any love story -- we'd have to do it right and give it its due.

On how much they plan out each season and how much they leave room for things to develop as they write:
Horowitz: It's a complicated process -- we try to have end points and big signposts of where we want to go, but we have to leave room for flexibility, to discover things along the way, characters and places we want to explore.
Kitsis: We never want to be so rigid that we don't leave room for creativity, because that's the whole point.

What do you most want to see in "Once Upon a Time" Season 3?

'Veronica Mars': Rob Thomas On Writing The Movie Script, Fan Pressure, Returning Cast And Much More

2013-06-12T11:48:06-04:00

The "Veronica Mars" movie is a reality thanks to an unprecedented Kickstarter fundraising campaign, and the show's creator Rob Thomas was on hand at the recent ATX Television Festival (alongside star Chris Lowell) to discuss how the crowd-funded movie came together, despite the odds.

While Thomas reiterated much of the information we've already heard about the "Veronica Mars" movie -- which raised almost $6 million via Kickstarter in April -- Thomas' panel did offer fascinating insight into the unfamiliar process of producing a crowd-sourced film. Read on for Thomas' thoughts on satisfying fans who also have a financial stake in the project, how actors' availability affected the script and the latest on that "Party Down" movie. (Questions have been edited and condensed for clarity.)

Will the movie be restricted by traditional studio rules in terms of deals and distribution?
I actually don't know how it's going to be distributed yet. I can tell you that at the beginning, in all the talks, there was no guarantee that there'd be a theatrical release of the movie. Nobody had any idea how we'd do on Kickstarter, what the buzz would be like. But right before we launched, they made a decision at Warner Bros. .... You make different deals if you're planning on a theatrical release of the movie, and it started feeling like, "No, we think it's going to happen. We think it's going to make [money]." So all the deals did include theatrical release. But at the time, I think people were talking in terms of 200 or 300 screens -- a very limited release. There's no guarantee -- if the movie doesn't turn out great, that may be where we are. But there's now been talk about many wider release scenarios.

Are the expectations different and is there added pressure because more of the public is invested in the outcome?
Yes and no. I'm certainly feeling a ton of pressure ... We are a guinea pig for this financing model. We have a lot of people's attention. So far, so good, but if you judge the Kickstarter process and how things have gone -- we're gonna get to shoot the movie, we're getting the cast that we want, we're getting to spend real money on it -- I think it all goes out the window if we don't stick the landing. If it's not a quality movie at the end of the day, if somehow we don't get t-shirts out in a timely fashion, and people catch us using a signing machine for all those signed posters ... then we'll be some sort of weird footnote, the punchline of a joke.

When we launched, I thought there was a chance of humiliation. We had been talking about it for a year and a half ... I'd spent a great deal of time feeling like the Pied Piper on this mission, really being in salesman mode, convincing executives at the studio that this could be big, that there is a groundswell there, that we will do alright ...

Kristen [Bell, who plays Veronica Mars] and I decided the night before we launched, we were gonna send these mysterious tweets to each other and say, "Hey, everyone! Stay tuned for some news tomorrow!" Kristen Bell has a million followers so I thought, "Once we send these mysterious tweets to each other, it will erupt! It will be like a bonfire on the internet!" And on the eve of doing all this, having spent a year and a half of my life trying to get this going, we tweeted each other and it barely caused a ripple. There were maybe a couple hundred tweets that I saw, but it was not close to what I was expecting.

We were launching the next day and I went from having an absurd level of confidence to thinking, "Oh my God. Kristen and I have been listening to the same 20 fans for the last seven years and we're gonna look silly asking for 2 million dollars." There have been projects that made more than that, but no one had asked for that much. Had we launched and raised $35,000, it would've looked silly. I am very conscious of [the pressure] ... It would be nice if it ended up making money rather than losing money.

How close did you come to making the movie before, that prevented you from giving up all hope?
Joel [Silver] had an overall deal and a certain ability to make movies at a certain dollar amount, and we thought we could get the "Veronica Mars" movie made for a dollar amount deal. And so, I came in with a pitch for the movie: At that point, around the time, Veronica would've been graduating from Princeton, so it was centered on a Neptune-y spring break. Joel, given the size of the movie, wanted a very commercial movie, and so I came in with a pitch and then Warner Bros. decided to do a running marketing test survey of "Veronica Mars" awareness, and we did not score high enough on that test, so it fizzled there.

I hit a low point then ... I remember reading a headline -- yes, I Google Alert myself, and I find out a lot about the other Rob Thomas [of the rock band Matchbox Twenty] -- but one of the headlines I read was like, "Would Rob Thomas please shut up about the 'Veronica Mars' movie?" ... I felt like I spent half the time trying to stoke interest and keep it alive, and the other half trying to tamp it down because I didn't think it was going to happen and didn't want to raise anyone's hopes for it. The thing with the Kickstarter campaign that I knew was that it was going to give some sense of completion or finality -- but had the Kickstarter drive failed, it would've been put to bed. That would've been the end of it. It never would've happened after that, and at least I could sleep soundly knowing that I'd had my best shot and it wasn't meant to be -- and now, I'm already outlining movie six. [Laughs.]

How was your experience at the beginning of the campaign?
It was one of the crazier months of my life ... I got to study other Kickstarter campaigns and keep an eye on what was succeeding or failing. If you watch our Kickstarter video, we were very bold about saying, "We're gonna be the biggest Kickstarter campaign ever." But as we were filming that, a company went over 3 million on a video game. When I first proposed the campaign, the highest total on Kickstarter ever was $900,000. By the time we got to launch, the highest total was $10 million. We didn't think we were going to get $10 million.

There was a big debate in the room with Warner Bros. about how much we should ask and all sorts of numbers -- anywhere between $1 million and $3 million were bandied about at that time. In my head, I was thinking $5 million was the number that I thought we could do ... I had outlined it, but there were all these fuzzy sections, like, "If we do $2 million, it's this -- it's 8 characters in a room. If we do $5 million, it will be this kind of movie." Because Kristen Bell goes back to work on her Showtime show, there was a very specific window we had to shoot in. I dumbly thought that once the Kickstarter campaign was launched, it would just run itself. But I got 30,000 emails on the first day ...

What was the scriptwriting process like?
I've had a new vision for it. I'd say this is the third thing I've really fleshed out, and the problem is that all the actors keep getting older, so something that made sense four years ago doesn't make as much sense now. I've known how I wanted the movie to end and what Veronica's dilemma is probably for the last year and a half, and that would've existed, I think, in the $2 million version or the $6 million version.

Did the availability of the actors and the budget change the script?
Yeah, how grand we can go on some of these things -- the lower-budget versions would've been very Agatha Christie, "Murder in a Drawing Room" and Veronica [trying] to solve it over the course of a night. As it is, I think we have an ambitious $5-6 million movie that we're doing. It's not going to be "The Hunger Games" -- we do not have $120 million to shoot it, but I'm really excited about the scope. It's probably at the top end of what my expectations would've been. One of the things that I keep noting as we've gone through this [is] if we had just barely got over the hump, there would've been harsh words exchanged at the high school reunion. But if we made more money, there would be a brawl. We got to brawl level, but please don't come in expecting the "Matrix" brawl. It'll be more grappling than artistic ... There are no car chases in it, but I think for the size of the movie, I think it's a pretty ambitious thing. I think it'll feel bigger than the TV series.

Given the fan-funding, how did you walk the line between making the movie you wanted to make and serving the fans and their expectations?
I was very conscious of the fact that it was crowd-funded. The fortunate thing is that I think the movie that the fans want to see is pretty much the movie that I want to make, so those things aren't divergent. In discussing with my agent what way would the 'Veronica Mars' movie get made today at times, one of the things that he suggested that I noodled with was, "Rob, go write this great thriller with a 30-year-old female lead," and he'll pitch it and sell it as that and then in the last line of the pitch, "... And it's Veronica Mars!" And that was the bonus thing, but it would be hard to go in and pitch without thinking, "How do you put Wallace in this version and Weevil and Mac and Piz and Logan?" That would've been a real trick, and I think fans of "Veronica Mars" the series, while they might've been like, "Oh great, there's a 'Veronica Mars' thriller out there," the pleasure zones for us and what I enjoyed about the show would involve bringing back the people that we care about. I think we want to see where they are all these years later.

Have you run into any limitations, given the budget?
"It Never Rains in Southern California" was the final song [of the series] as Veronica walks out into the rain. [The movie] starts with Veronica in New York and she travels back to California and as she arrives, I wanted her to return in the rain as this nod to how the series ended. In this low-budget movie world, my line producer called me yesterday and said, "Rob, I have bad news for you: We're $30,000 over. We've gotta lose the rain." So as you see her land and come out of the Balboa County airport, imagine rain.

How did you approach setting up the movie for returning fans versus reintroducing characters or plotlines for newcomers?
Warner Bros. has been great ... If you write a movie or a TV show through normal channels, you are dealing with creative executives who have a lot of thoughts on your script, and you are arriving at a movie at the end of the day that has had a lot of input from a studio or a network. The nice thing about doing it this way and coming into it with several million dollars of our own ... they have not been heavy-handed. In fact, they've barely given me any creative thoughts, but one of them is how much we attempt to catch-up non-"Veronica Mars" viewers ... but they want me to give more information and I want to give less.

I want to uncomplicate it for people who are coming to it fresh. There's a scene at the top of the movie that very quickly catches people up to speed with it. All I think is important for a new viewer to know is that Veronica spent her teenage years, oddly, working as a private detective, but that she hasn't done that since we last saw her. So you all know, she has not worked a case since you last saw her at the end of Season 3. So I plan to give a very minimalist explanation so that no one feels like we're missing mythology or we're missing backstory. There are certainly easter eggs for people who know the show, but I want to uncomplicate it for new viewers -- there's no Lily Kane mythology, there's no bus crash mythology. I want to keep it clean: She worked as a PI as a teenager, she put that away and is now leading an adult life as we find her.

How did it feel to revisit the characters when you were finally able to write the script?
It was a joy. It's the most I've enjoyed writing something. So much of what I do ... is coming up with new characters and trying to invent voices for them, and to have people fully fleshed out in my head and to know who can say what in the scene and who these characters are ... I love it. After not being able to write them for seven years, it was fun.

Season 3 was very different from the first two years; how much of that was due to the network and outside input?
People are eager to blame the structural difference on network notes. The truth is, we knew we were in a "fight for your life" scenario. We knew the potential for us to get cancelled was high and that we weren't doing the numbers we needed to do to stay on the air. So the decision to break it up into three shorter mysteries ... I supported that idea. There was an element of it that I really liked because they were all done in packages. Our first mystery, we got to air nine or 10 episodes in a row, uninterrupted, not showing reruns, and I liked that notion of getting to tell them all in a row. The feeling that we had with "Veronica Mars" that may have proven to not be true, but that we wanted to explore was, are people shying away from the show because they feel like if they miss one or two, they're so far behind the curve on that 22-episode mystery, we aren't inviting in new viewers? The notion of "Let's break it up and have shorter mysteries. Let's try Veronica in college ... maybe people would be more attracted to a college show. It will bring in viewers ... " -- we were willing to try anything. We were fighting for our existence, so we were trying things to get a Season 4. Clearly, it didn't work; but that was why. It wasn't the network demanding something -- it was everyone together thinking, "What can we do to try and bring in more people to the show?"

How will Veronica's voiceover play into the movie, and will we see many familiar faces return?
I have a very specific strategy on the voiceover in the movie. There is a "Godfather III" element to this: "No matter how much I think I'm out, they pull me back in," and Veronica as a non-PI, she doesn't use voiceover -- it's only when she picks that mantle back up. So we do not open with voiceover -- I will tell you that. We have a bunch of cast deals done, but we're trying to parse them out now that we have them. They've all come together in the last week, but we want to give everyone their own moment, so you will be getting a lot of notices over the next nine to 10 days about cast members. (So far, in addition to Bell, Jason Dohring, Chris Lowell, Percy Daggs III, Francis Capra, Christine Lakin, Daran Norris, Amanda Noret, Sam Huntington and Enrico Colantoni have been confirmed to return.)

What's the status of the "Party Down" movie?
It's still in the works; we still are hopeful that it could come together. We are down a path on a "Party Down" movie -- John Enbom is working on a script for it, we've broken out the movie -- we've gone down a traditional path on that. "Party Down" is an interesting case ... With the Kickstarter campaign, I've been answering all these questions about what it means: Does it mean a new way to finance movies and will this become commonplace? It don't think it will. I think the Kickstarter model worked for us because of a very specific set of circumstances: having a cult following, having a movie that could be made at a reasonable price point. I think it would be tough for a space show to be done via Kickstarter -- it would be tough to raise that sort of money. The thing about "Party Down" is that it would be a perfect Kickstarter model; it's a movie that we could make at a reasonable budget, it does have a cult following, but we're long down a path going through traditional means of making an indie movie and we're hopeful that that will happen.

The "Veronica Mars" movie is set to debut in early 2014.

'American Dreams' Reunion: Unaired Alternate Ending Showed Where The Pryors Ended Up

2013-06-10T11:56:34-04:00

When the "American Dreams" cast and producers reunited at the ATX Television Festival on Sunday in Austin, Texas, loyal fans were treated to the unaired but long-rumored "epilogue" to the series finale, which showed where Meg Pryor (Brittany Snow) and her beloved family should've ended up when the show was abruptly cancelled after Season 3.

"American Dreams" creator Jonathan Prince admitted that the brief scenes showed how the writers would've ended the series had they been given the money or time to film one more episode, but since they hadn't, they had to film it while they wrapped up the finale without going overbudget. "We showed it to ourselves ... it's raw. The editor's talking instead of an actor -- that's what makes it beautiful. It's just our little present to ourselves," Prince explained, telling fans that many members of the cast hadn't even seen it, and only Snow, Tom Verica and Gail O'Grady were aware of it at the time, since they were involved in filming.

The original Season 3 finale saw Meg riding off into the sunset with Chris (Milo Ventimiglia), much to her parents' disapproval. But the unfinished epilogue aimed to give closure to the Pryors by checking up on them three years later.

In the epilogue, we see a long-haired Meg on a bus headed to Woodstock, having not spoken to her parents or returned home since leaving with Chris. After a couple of fellow hippie travelers inquire about the purpose of her trip, Meg reveals that she's planning to attend Woodstock with her friend, Sam (Arlen Escarpeta), who has just graduated from Berkeley. We also discover that she'll be staying in New York with her best friend Roxanne (Vanessa Lengies), who is now married to Luke (Jamie Elman) and has a baby. Younger sister Patty (Sarah Ramos) is attending college at Harvard's sister school, Radcliffe.

We get flashbacks to Meg's memorable moments with all of the aforementioned characters and see the inner turmoil playing out on our heroine's face, before Meg turns up at her parents' house. Her nephew Trip (son of Will Estes' JJ and Rachel Boston's Beth) is outside on the swingset. He recognizes Meg from family photos, and tells her that his father designed the astronauts' space suits -- we realize that the timing of the epilogue is somewhere around the moon landing.

At this point, Meg's father Jack (Verica) comes out to bring Tripp inside, sharing an awkward few moments of silence with his daughter after sending his grandson into the house. Helen (O'Grady) comes out to find him soon after, and it's tense for a couple of seconds before Jack asks if Meg is hungry. When she admits that she is a little, he tells her that her mother probably has some leftovers from dinner and retreats inside. Meg and Helen share a relieved hug after three years apart, and we see Jack's face briefly overwhelmed with emotion in the background. As the camera moves away from the house, we hear audio of Neil Armstrong's moon landing before we fade out.

In addition to an emotional appearance from a fan who won a $20,000 college scholarship thanks to a competition the show staged in partnership with Campbells' soup, the "American Dreams" reunion panel also (somewhat) answered fans' lingering questions about whether Seasons 2 and 3 of the show would ever be available on DVD. Sadly, the producers admitted that because of costly music licensing issues, it was unlikely that NBC would find it cost-effective to make those licensing deals unless fans campaigned to prove that the DVDs would sell, suggesting a Kickstarter campaign to gauge interest. Keep the "Dreams" alive, Pryor fans!

Are you still longing for "American Dreams" on DVD?

'Friday Night Lights': Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton Reunite With Cast At ATX Festival

2013-06-10T10:35:19-04:00

"Friday Night Lights" may have ended before its time, but fans were transported right back to Dillion this weekend at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas, which played host to a cast reunion that brought stars Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton back together to reminisce about the show's stellar run.

Joining Chandler and Britton (Coach and Mrs. Coach) on the panel were Gaius Charles (Brian "Smash" Williams), Brad Leland (Buddy Garrity), Louanne Stephens (Grandma Lorraine Saracen), Matt Lauria (Luke Cafferty), Scott Porter (Jason Street) and writer/producer David Hudgins.

Chandler and Britton's appearance at the festival was kept secret from fans until they emerged on stage, and their arrival was met with teary eyes, full hearts and a standing ovation from the crowd. Throughout the panel, the pair demonstrated that their characters' affectionate rapport was still going strong in real life, even after two years apart, with Britton offering wifely corrections to Chandler's anecdotes and Chandler making wry asides, just like an old married couple might.

Hudgins (who was moderating the panel) kicked things off by asking the duo about their on-screen marriage, which was often a combination of their "intense, loving side" and "giving each other shit."

Chandler began, "Connie and I, the whole on-screen marriage happened the first day we met downtown. We were going out to lunch -- "

"Dinner," Britton interjected. "He always gets this wrong."

Seemingly with practice, Chandler continued undeterred, "And it was, I think, within the first five minutes that ... sometimes you meet someone and it's like, 'Oh, OK! We're in good shape now,' and within the first five minutes we realized ... we were gonna have a good time, and in the next 10 minutes we realized the acting styles were gonna work, and within the next half hour, we were excited to begin. And the greatest thing between Connie and I, I think we'd both agree, is that when we're working together, we're both fools, we like to play the fool, but no matter what, we would always let the other person ... fall as far as you wanted to, but you knew the other person would grab you. And in the acting, that's perfect because that's the timing and everything. So you always felt safe making the biggest fool you could of yourself, so we could always turn back around to the sentimentality or the humor of it."

Britton agreed, adding, "Right from the beginning, it felt like we could trust each other, which was crazy, but we did. I think the other thing that felt really important from the beginning was, we shared the same values about what we wanted that marriage to be, which we shared with the writers. We really wanted that marriage to be about two people who were committed to being married to each other, through thick and through thin, as opposed to having affairs and all of those dramatic things that happen on other TV shows ..."

Was that a not-so-veiled dig at Britton's current role on "Nashville" (which has reportedly had some backstage drama)? "Some people might call that 'story,'" Hudgins humorously pointed out.

"Yes, some people might," Britton laughed.

Hudgins noted, "It was certainly a challenge in that marriage because there was the idea that no matter what happened and how much we tested Coach and Tami that they would never get apart, which is a challenge from a writing standpoint -- but it sounds like you felt like it worked."

"Oh yeah, I think, not only did it work -- and I remember you writers saying in the course of the seasons, 'This is challenging from a writing standpoint' -- but I think that the audiences appreciated it so much because, oddly, that was a rare thing to see on television," Britton said. "And I think that's what most people are trying to do out in the world, is live a life where they're doing the best they can with a partner and making it work. We were really true to that."

During the panel, notable clips played that highlighted each actor in attendance, allowing the stars to discuss their memories of filming and the relationships that made the show so resonant. One of the most memorable scenes shown was Coach Taylor's rousing eleventh-hour speech to the Panthers in Season 1 finale "State," which resulted in a surprising story that highlighted Chandler's dedication to the role.

"I was in Texas Stadium while we were shooting, and we had pulled out a lot of stops to be able to shoot in Texas Stadium, and on the day that scene was shot, [Kyle] was sick as a dog -- didn't you have the flu?" Hudgins asked the star.

"He had strep throat," Britton confidently answered.

Chandler recalled, "I had a cold that day, and I started feeling very strange, and by the time we got up there, I was a mess ... I don't remember much of that. I was just a mess."

"He was hallucinating and he was a big baby," Britton teased.

"And that's why the scene turned out so well," Chandler laughed. "But seriously, about that scene ... there are so many pieces that make that work; the editors on the show were so incredible, everyone was giving it 110 percent ... it just all worked. It was a compilation of so many things that came together."

Chandler then referenced something that fellow panelist Porter said at a wrap party, but inadvertently called him "Jason" (his character's name) in the process.

"His name is Scott," Britton corrected slowly, in perfect "Tami Knows Best" tone.

"Notice though, the way he's looking at me, he called me Jason and I was just like 'Yes?'" Porter said with a laugh, nodding obediently at Chandler.

"Pfft, that's Jason," Chandler insisted. "Anyway, he said, 'The reason this show works so well is because everybody had ownership of the show -- we all owned a piece of this show from the beginning, from [creator] Pete Berg to the writers to the producers, we all pulled together and we all had ownership, and that's, I think, one of the biggest reasons this show was so successful.'"

Unwilling to let Chandler completely deflect attention away from his determination to finish the Season 1 finale scene in question, Hudgins added, "I want to make sure I'm clear about the fact that Kyle was sick on that day because a lot of actors, if they're not feeling well, they don't show up and you can't shoot the scene -- it's a hardship on production. On that particular day, it would've been a killer, and so Kyle gutted it out. We were looking for you between takes and I found you in the bathroom throwing up, and you came out and did the scene anyway." Can't lose, indeed.

8 More Facts We Learned From The "Friday Night Lights" Reunion Panel

Chandler used to cook breakfast for the crew: Hudgins asked Chandler about a specific scene in Episode 10 of Season 5 with Coach and Vince (Michael B. Jordan) in which Coach Taylor was cooking bacon in his office. "It started out with the kitchen scenes in the Taylor house [that] I would cook breakfast for the crew. We'd get there early, wouldn't have anything to do, so I'd start cooking packs of bacon and I made toast and I put cheese on it and I was handing bacon sandwiches to everyone," Chandler explained, before describing the circumstances of that particular scene. "[The director] wanted bacon in the scene and I thought that was great, so we just put a hot plate in the middle of the scene -- it had a 'Sopranos' feel," he said with a laugh. Hudgins added, "I can tell you, back in LA, we were like, 'What does this mean? Is it a sign? Is Kyle unhappy?'"

The cast's awesomeness isn't limited to Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton: Leland knew that Stephens was a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys, so during the filming of "State," he got her a personalized autograph from Julius Jones, the Cowboys' running back -- telling the story got Stephens (and much of the audience) visibly choked up. (See below.)

Grandma Saracen with a ball signed during the episode "State". AWWW. #fnl #ATXTVS2 twitter.com/TVMcGee/status…
— Ryan McGee (@TVMcGee) June 8, 2013

Matt Lauria faceplanted in front of real football players on his first full day on set: After promising the stunt-coordinator that he could run "really fast," having been a track star in school, Lauria got to set, had never run on astroturf before, and fell over when trying to shoot his first major scene.

Connie Britton is still proud of the "sex talk" scene between Tami and Julie (Aimee Teegarden): "My mom talked to me about sex and I hid behind the chair in the living room," she said with a laugh. "Certainly I've had people come up and say, 'I've rewatched that scene so I could figure out how to talk to my child about sex.' It does create a big sense of responsibility in a way. It makes you think about the voice you're putting out into the world. I think it's a testament to the writers on our show: Because of the way that our show was set up, we got to tell great stories like that, stories that resonate on a base, human level ... Gosh, we were so lucky to be able to play those moments and have the writers be able to delve into those areas."

Scott Porter broke a camera operator's foot during filming: During the scene in which Jason Street punches Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) for sleeping with his girlfriend Lyla (Minka Kelly), Porter broke a camera operator's foot by accidentally flipping a heavy bench over on it while playing a moment of high emotion. "She finished the scene, and she's the one who got that end shot where Jason is just crumpling in on himself ... that was her angle; she has a broken foot and she's just shooting it. There was an ownership on this show, but there was also a trust, from top to bottom," Porter observed.

The lines between fiction and reality often blurred during shooting: After seeing the clip in which Smash goes to tell Coach that he got into college on a football scholarship, Gaius Charles reflected on "what a victory that was for them and their relationship and for the audience that followed their story." Chandler agreed, "Those scenes like that ... you don't see many shows that allow silence ... It really allows us as the actors to be with each other. That's one of the most intimate scenes we ever did on the show together. I have to be honest -- for me, it wasn't Coach up there; it was me saying goodbye to Gaius. To see that again, that does get you ..." Then, to make light of the moment, Chandler playfully added, "I was so happy to see him go!"

One of Jason's most iconic lines was ad-libbed. After a career-ending injury in the pilot episode, the grace that Jason Street demonstrated while being taken off the field by the EMTs was one of the most poignant moments of the series, and it wasn't even scripted. Since "FNL" was Porter's first role, he recalled, "Pete [Berg] took me out to dinner and was like ... 'I want you to just say whatever comes to your mind at all times in this pilot and let's see where it goes.' And I was laying on the field and the entire stands were full, the entire cast was there, and the EMTs come out and go to put me on a stretcher and I said 'thank you' to the EMTs and it wasn't scripted. And they picked me up and put me in the ambulance, and Pete came over to me, and Pete is just so intense, and he goes, "Thank you ... fuck yeah!" It's a moment that, every time I see it, it's such an emotional moment, but I smile 'cause that was the beginning of this amazing road for me. I never would've gone there without Pete and that moment."

Don't expect a "Friday Night Lights" reunion movie any time soon. There's been plenty of talk about a movie revival of the series, which both Britton and Chandler have weighed in on, but Hudgins doesn't want to get your hopes up: "I will say that we can dream the dream; there have been talks about making a movie of the series. The producers, Pete and his partners are very passionate about it. I don't think there's any plans for it to move forward right now. But you never say never."

Would you watch a "Friday Night Lights" movie revival? Does seeing Britton and Chandler together again bring back fond memories? Weigh in below!

'Girl Meets World': Ben Savage And Creator Michael Jacobs Share New Details On 'Boy Meets World' Spinoff

2013-06-08T02:14:17-04:00

The ATX Television festival played host to a "Boy Meets World" reunion on June 7, with stars Ben Savage (Cory Matthews), Rider Strong (Shawn Hunter), Matthew Lawrence (Jack Hunter), Maitland Ward (Rachel McGuire), Betsy Randle (Amy Matthews), Lily Nicksay (young Morgan Matthews), Trina McGee (Angela Moore) and creator Michael Jacobs in attendance to reminisce about the series and drop hints about the upcoming "Girl Meets World" follow-up series.

During a press conference after the reunion panel, Jacobs and Savage shared more information on what fans can expect from the sequel series, which will follow Cory and Topanga's (Danielle Fishel) daughter Riley (Rowan Blanchard) in her own coming-of-age story.

One reporter wondered how heavily the new series would lean on its predecessor in terms of references or in-jokes, but Jacobs insisted that "‘Girl’ is gonna be its own show -- I think that’s really important ... I think it’s really necessary for the audience to understand that if you do a reunion show, and that’s the tone and tenor of the piece, you get to spend this lovely hour with us, and we’ll be as charming and entertaining as we possibly can be and hopefully you’ll go out and you’ll say, ‘that was great with them.’ Now come back tomorrow; now come back the next day; [you say] ‘well, they’re sort of older and we don’t like ‘em as much the third time.’"

He continued, "My feeling is that the premise of the show is about these two girls having a friendship, going off into the world we now know -- ‘Girl Meets World’ will be unique from ‘Boy Meets World’ in that way. However, it is the child of an original program, and there is no way that I’m not going to include everybody who wants to be included on this piece, because they’re the genesis of the piece. For me, we may build a new house, but we’re building it on ground, and that ground was ‘Boy.’"

Savage happily discussed what prompted him to return to the role of Cory Matthews, telling reporters, "The most interesting tweets we’ve gotten are like, ‘I watched “Boy Meets World” with my dad and I’m so excited to watch “Girl Meets World” with my daughter.' And I just think it’s so wonderful to see how it crossed generations. That’s why we’re really excited about it."

Still, he admitted that he'd heard from many original fans who are worried that the new show could "hurt the legacy of 'Boy Meets World,'" given their childhood memories of the series. "I think that it’s important to stress that we’re not doing ‘Boy Meets World,’ we’re doing ‘Girl Meets World,'" he pointed out. "This generation grew up with ‘Boy Meets World’ and it means something very special to them as it means something special to us. And we want to try and do something for the next generation, and we want to give them the show that they can grow up with and have their own memories with, and so that’s what we’re doing."

As for what Cory Matthews is like 13 years later, Savage said: "We're still figuring it out. I think the writers and the show have done a wonderful job of staying true to who we are as people. What’s Cory like now? I guess he’s what Ben is like now. It’s all been worked out -- we’re taking it one step at a time, we’re being very cautious, very careful to honor the old show, trying to work within this new dynamic in this new time we’re all living in."

One thing he didn't need to be cautious about was rediscovering that old rapport when he reunited with co-star Fishel. "I think that, with everyone you see before you [on the panel], we’re a family and we’ve spent so much time together and we know each other’s cues so well that it was very easy working with Danielle again," Savage said. "We picked up exactly where we left off 13 years ago, so it was really nice."

Just because the characters are older, though, don't expect them to be wiser. "‘Girl Meets World’ has got to be about the friendship of these two children as couched by somebody who has been through it and is still confused," Jacobs said. "If they’re great parents, I got no show. If they’re learning in that generation, Ben continues to learn, so does Danielle -- together, they have always been better than separately. That will continue. However, Ben and Danielle, their challenges of what’s going on today and how children have to be raised and protected today … those are some pretty extreme challenges."

While Cory and Topanga will be figuring things out together, don't expect the same happy ending for Shawn and Angela. "Nothing good happens to Shawn, that’s all I can tell you," Jacobs laughed. "Rider reacting to the hurdles that keep growing is what I think is compelling about Shawn. Rider once said something -- and I really take to heart everything that these people say -– he said, ‘I keep Shawn in the cellar, and every once in a while, I’ll go down and I’ll visit him.’ And I thought to myself, ‘boy, even Rider keeps Shawn in the cellar,’ so I think nothing good is ever gonna happen for Shawn."

Both Savage and Jacobs think that TV is long overdue for another show like the original series, and hope that "Girl" will fulfill that need.

"I do think that people are, not just nostalgic, but are eager to watch a type of show like ‘Boy Meets World,’ and I don’t think there are a lot of shows like that on TV anymore," Savage observed. "And in spite of how much things have changed in the world, people still want a show that they can relate to and that’s comforting and that can make them laugh and that’s fun and that they can learn from. So I think that that’s what we’ve found right now and what we’re working really hard to make sure that we pull off."

Jacobs did caution viewers that the world has changed significantly since "Boy Meets World" went off the air, and so the storytelling in "Girl" has to adapt to the times accordingly. "It is simply, in the writing of it and the conception of it, not the same world. Not close. What kids know, what I personally believe enters very little into how the world works, because I look around and I’m astonished every day at what comes out of the four big screens: the television screen, the telephone screen, the movie screen and the computer screen," he said. "What kids have to understand in those forming heads, it’s too much, it’s just too much. To compete on a playground in an elementary school, what they need to know, what they feel they need to know has to be addressed, it has to be written to. The actuality is, it’s a challenge for me and for my writing staff to simply document reality and to do it in an entertaining way that I can slip in a lesson without it being thought of as a lesson ... That dynamic alone makes the new show worth watching for me."

Do you plan to watch "Girl Meets World"?

'Boy Meets World' Cast Reunites At ATX Television Festival In Austin, Texas (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

2013-06-07T16:46:41-04:00

The "Boy Meets World" cast, together again!

Many of the actors from ABC's iconic '90s TV series gathered at the ATX Television Festival in Austin to chat about the epic romance between Cory and Topanga, Cory and Shawn's ultimate bromance and the "Girl Meets World" spinoff during a panel on Friday morning.

"Boy Meets World" cast members Ben Savage (Cory Matthews), Rider Strong (Shawn Hunter), Matthew Lawrence (Jack Hunter), Maitland Ward (Rachel McGuire), Betsy Randle (Amy Matthews), Lily Nicksay (young Morgan Matthews), Trina McGee (Angela Moore) and creator Michael Jacobs were all on hand to dish on what went into the beloved ABC series, which ran for seven seasons.

"We never talked down to you and you knew that right away," Jacobs said to the panel audience, full of "Boy Meets World" fans. "What separated 'Boy' was that we operated thematically. We talked about what's next for you. We talked about friendship and how important it was ... The three of those characters [Cory, Topanga and Shawn] were so compelling, and we spun out from there."

Danielle Fishel (Topanga Lawrence), Will Friedle (Eric Matthews), William Daniels (Mr. Feeny), Lindsay Ridgeway (older Morgan Matthews), Lee Norris (Stuart Minkus), Alan Matthews (William Russ), Anthony Tyler Quinn (Mr. Turner) were noticeably absent, but Fishel taped a message to fans.

"It's a show that means so very much to me," the actress said. "I give you permission to ask as many embarrassing questions as you want."

Fans relished in the discussion and a screening of the series finale of "Boy Meets World" with the cast.

Screening the #boymeetsworld series finale @atxfestival and pretty sure there's not a dry eye in the room. #tissuesplease #imissthe90s
— Yahoo! TV (@YahooTV) June 7, 2013

"We did that last scene [saying goodbye to Mr. Feeny] in one take because we were all so wrecked," Strong said. "It was our last scene -- the last scene in front of a live audience. It was so close to home. There was no filter between Shawn and Rider at that point."

"It's still hard to watch that scene," Savage added. "It was almost like saying goodbye to our childhood."

Check out the video and photos below of the "Boy Meets World" cast reunited and scroll down to the bottom for scoop on the spinoff pilot, "Girl Meets World."

Boy Meets World reunion #ATXTVS2 vine.co/v/bLi2m6HbKpx
— ATX Television Fest (@ATXFestival) June 7, 2013

#BMW cast with our #ATXTVS2 marquee! twitter.com/ATXFestival/st…
— ATX Television Fest (@ATXFestival) June 7, 2013

Love this shot! xo RT @marybonilla: Nicest cast ever! Boy Meets world @atxfestival twitter.com/MaryBonilla/st…
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@maitlandnyla) June 7, 2013

(via Maitland Ward on Instagram)

They're here!! BMW cast and creator Michael Jacobs on stage! #ATXTVS2 twitter.com/ATXFestival/st…
— ATX Television Fest (@ATXFestival) June 7, 2013

#BoyMeetsWorld !!! twitter.com/Naangel55/stat…
— Sarah Fallon (@Naangel55) June 7, 2013

Boy Meets World Reunion @bensavage @riderstrong @realtrinamcgee twitter.com/sunitadharani/…
— Sunita Dharani (@sunitadharani) June 7, 2013

BOY MEETS WORLD panel. I die. #ATXTVS2 #BoyMeetsWorld twitter.com/RachelFriedman…
— Rachel Friedman (@RachelFriedman8) June 7, 2013

Boy Meets World panel @atxfestival right now twitter.com/Lastonetoleave…
— michael mckinney (@Lastonetoleave) June 7, 2013

Boy Meets World reunion courtesy of @atxfestival including @bensavage and @riderstrong #ATXTVS2 twitter.com/SamanthaJanay/…
— Samantha Janay (@SamanthaJanay) June 7, 2013

Had an amazing time at the @atxfestivalBoy Meets World reunion at #ATXTVS2! twitter.com/__erincee/stat…
— Erin LaRocque (@__erincee) June 7, 2013

I JUST SAW THE SEASON FINALE OF BOY MEETS WORLD WITH THE CAST. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS twitter.com/DanniDragonn/s…
— Danielle (@DanniDragonn) June 7, 2013

On Thursday, the "Boy Meets World" cast reunited and walked the red carpet to kick off the second annual ATX Television Festival.

Boy Meets Austin. #ATXTVS2 @riderstrong @bensavage twitter.com/adamshapiro/st…
— Adam Shapiro (@adamshapiro) June 6, 2013

photo bombing the cast of boy meets world. #dreamsdocometrue #ATXTVS2 @riderstrong remember game night? twitter.com/littlelengies/…
— Vanessa Lengies (@littlelengies) June 7, 2013

Me and my girl @realtrinamcgee last night @atxfestival. Having a great time in Austin. #boymeetsworld … say.ly/zbC5ZvG
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@maitlandnyla) June 7, 2013

Pic of the girls... #boymeetworld #reunion #Austin @atxfestival @realtrinamcgee @betsrandle twitter.com/maitlandnyla/s…
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@maitlandnyla) June 6, 2013

Although the young cast members of the "Boy Meets World" Disney spinoff pilot, "Girl Meets World," weren't in attendance, Jacobs, Savage and Fishel (via video) spoke about the new show.

"I watch television and I love television and we do what we love and I don't see anything on television right now that is speaking to the audience that we spoke to," Jacobs said. "If we can do it and honor this show and make it unique because it's a different world, that's the reason to do it.

Fishel said reuniting with Savage was "even better than I could've possibly imagined it could be." "After being apart for so many years, we were worried Cory and Topanga wouldn't come back to us," she explained. "There is something so special about the bond we share ... He really does feel like my husband. He will always be my first husband. Nothing can break that bond that we have."

"I think Danielle said it perfectly," Savage added. "We were both a little apprehensive and nervous, but these characters were written so well ... When you're watching 'Boy Meets World,' that's us. That's how we are."

'Graceland' Premiere: Aaron Tveit, Daniel Sunjata And Jeff Eastin Preview USA's 'Dark' New Drama

2013-06-06T10:38:35-04:00

The premiere of USA's "Graceland" (June 6 at 10 p.m. ET) will introduce viewers to a very different kind of drama from the No. 1 cable network's usual brand of optimistic, blue sky fare. Hailing from "White Collar's" Jeff Eastin, "Graceland" stars Aaron Tveit and Daniel Sunjata as covert FBI agents who live alongside operatives from the Drug Enforcement Agency and Customs, sharing intel and working cases while trying to maintain their cover identities (and stay alive).

Eastin originally wrote the pilot for "Graceland" before he created "White Collar" for USA, with the series initially set up at NBC. After the network passed on the project, Eastin threw himself into "White Collar," but his passion for "Graceland" remained. In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, Eastin admitted that "Graceland" was "my favorite thing I'd written," but, despite repeatedly being told it was "one of the best scripts" that various executives and showrunners had ever read, no one seemed willing to make it.

Eastin said that Matt Nix, creator of USA's "Burn Notice," summed up "Graceland's" apparent issue. "He said, 'I don't understand what the format of the show is ... There's no sense of it being procedural.' I considered changing it, but ultimately it was, 'No ... I don’t really want to mess with it ... If it dies, it dies,'" Eastin explained. "So I went a couple of years with that, where there was always somebody kind of like, 'Hey, I read that thing, it’s really good.' 'You want to make it?' 'No.'"

It wasn't until Bill McGoldrick, executive vice president of USA's original scripted programming, said that the network was looking for a show involving "beach cops," that "Graceland" was back in contention.

"He said, 'This is perfect for us.' So it was a weird case of me sort of trying to talk the network out of it," Eastin recalled. He warned USA that "Graceland" was too "dark" for the network's sunny brand, but the executives insisted that they wanted to explore a different kind of series.

"Ultimately, we sat down, and I kind of told them where it went and everything. They were like, 'We’re on board.' True to that, they’ve been great throughout the process. I was worried they wouldn’t let me be true to it and take it where I wanted, but so far, they've been a great partner in it," Eastin said.

The show's next challenge was casting the two male leads -- the untested but ambitious newbie, FBI agent Mike Warren, and the legendary Paul Briggs, who holds the record for the highest practical scores in the Bureau's final exam, and who happens to be Mike's idol.

"Les Miserables" star Aaron Tveit -- a Broadway mainstay with a resume including major roles in "Catch Me If You Can" and "Next to Normal" -- was tapped to play Mike. The actor said the role was immediately fascinating to him, and it became even more compelling over the course of his research. "The thing that I really found interesting is that after 9/11, the sheer amount of people who want to become FBI agents, specifically, has grown astronomically .. It used to be you didn’t have to have a college degree to go to the FBI Academy, or maybe you just had an undergraduate degree, but now most of the candidates have at least one Master’s and went to Ivy League schools. Since 9/11, they’ve gotten a lot more selective. So that was something really interesting for me to think about: How smart Mike really has to be to have succeeded at that level, [and] what type of people really go into this field ... It’s a little darker than USA would usually go, but the word darker, I think, can be misunderstood. I like to think of it in the way that it’s just realistic."

Daniel Sunjata -- another theater veteran, best known for his portrayal of firefighter Franco Rivera in FX's "Rescue Me" -- was equally enthralled by the character of Briggs, and the multifaceted nature of the "Graceland" script in general. "I really like Jeff Eastin's style of storytelling and the fact that I could tell that 'Graceland' was not going to be a procedural show, it was going to be serialized with plotlines that develop over the course of the season. As a television viewer and fan, that's the kind of TV that I like to watch, so I was excited about that prospect," he explained during a recent phone interview with The Huffington Post. "And then Briggs as a character is just very complex -- he's got lots of colors and dimensions and it's the type of role that most actors salivate over the prospect of playing. There was no downside."

Both actors were also reassured to discover that Eastin was a very collaborative writer, one who encouraged input from his cast when it came to developing characters' backstories. "This is the first serious role I’ve done, but I’ve worked on a lot of television shows, and the amount that we’re allowed to give input for our own characters -- even on a day-to-day basis, shooting episodes -- it’s awesome," Tveit enthused. "They really want us to put our stamp on it. I think that’s a sign of a great writer, the fact that [Jeff] can write what he writes, but then he trusts us enough to do that, and he’s not precious about his material."

Sunjata agreed, "[Eastin] is very open to collaborating with his actors. He definitely, throughout the course of the season, not just took my input but all of our input. If we floated a terrible idea, he would tell us very lovingly that it was a terrible idea, but if we happened to float a good idea, or something that added to the storytelling or our character in a substantive way, it was often incorporated. That makes you feel appreciated as an actor -- not just being asked to be an automaton and regurgitate words that are given to you."

(Broadway fans will be pleased to learn that in addition to incorporating ideas and backstory from the actors, Eastin is also "desperately trying to work in the fact that [Tveit] can sing.")

Eastin described the relationship between Mike and Briggs as the "heart" of the show, which superficially echoes the dynamic between FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) and conman Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) on his other series "White Collar." But Tveit insisted that the two series are very different.

"Theirs is also a very complicated relationship, but I think on 'White Collar', their relationship is a little more black and white, because one is the FBI agent and Matt Bomer’s character is a criminal," he said. "There’s more gray area in our show because we’re both on the same side of the law, but we’re just going about it in different ways. So I think there’s a lot of room there to do some fun stuff."

Eastin admitted that he didn't set out to create a show that was specifically different from "White Collar" -- it was just a happy coincidence. "A lot of people have asked me, 'Did you do 'Graceland' because you’re frustrated with 'White Collar'? ... Most creators, if they do two shows, a lot of their shows feel similar ... It would be interesting if you showed [the 'Graceland'] trailer and a 'White Collar' trailer to somebody, if they would ever guess it was by the same person ... There was really no intent to do it that way. It’s just that’s the way it fell."

And while "the initial flavor of [Mike and Briggs'] relationship is mentor/mentee," Sunjata promised that "over the course of the first few episodes, it very quickly develops into something much more layered than that. And Briggs is not really excited about the prospect of having to train someone -- I think that's his initial reaction."

"I think they both have a lot to learn from each other," Tveit mused. "Briggs is basically the only person in the history of the FBI Academy who got higher scores than Mike, and what does that really mean? What I think it means, and what I think Daniel and I have both brought to it, is that these guys are really smart, and they’re really good at what they do, and fast thinkers. So because they look at things differently, I think that they have a lot to learn from each other. My hope is -- and I don’t even know where it’s going to go -- I would like to see them find some kind of common ground, because then they could really be a great force for good."

Sunjata promised that there would be some "reciprocity" in the duo's dynamic sooner rather than later. "Really, intellectually, they're on par from the very beginning. The only thing that Briggs really has over Mike is field experience, and Mike catches on so quickly -- he learns the rules and then he starts, intelligently, breaking them when necessary. So within the first couple episodes, it becomes a dueling relationship of one-upmanship for the rest of the season, and Mike does absolutely end up teaching Briggs certain things about himself as well."

While the show's tagline is, "Your lies are your life," it's the dynamic between the disparate but loyal agents inhabiting Graceland that forms the core of the series. Alongside Mike and Briggs in the house are strong-willed FBI agent Catherine "Charlie" DeMarco (Vanessa Ferlito); quick-tempered US Customs agent Dale Jakes (Brandon Jay McLaren); intuitive and merciless DEA Agent Paige Arkin (Serinda Swan) and the jokester of the house, FBI agent Joe "Johnny" Tuturro (Manny Montana).

"What’s really interesting, I think, is that being an undercover agent is a very, very tough world, and these people's lives are dangerous," Tveit observed. "The show is really neat because it shows this duality between this dysfunctional family life that we have at home, and then we step out into this real world where we’re in real danger at all times. They play at each other, but I think it’s also a very realistic look at what it means to be an undercover agent."

"Graceland" premieres Thursday, June 6 at 10 p.m. ET on USA.

'Graceland: Undercover' Takes You Inside USA's New Show (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)

2013-06-06T10:07:09-04:00

USA's "Graceland" premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET, and if you've ever wanted to get up close and personal with Daniel Sunjata, Aaron Tveit, Vanessa Ferlito or any of the other stars of the gritty new crime drama, USA has the digital experience you've been waiting for.

The network has developed "Graceland: Undercover," a second screen experience, which syncs with both the live airing of the show and any DVRed/streamed playback to reveal new content throughout the episodes. As the season progresses, fans can access over 60 never-before-seen videos, shot from each individual character’s point-of-view, which will offer deeper insight into their storylines (and a few pranks in between).

HuffPost TV has an exclusive look at one of the videos produced exclusively for the "Graceland: Undercover" experience, as Vanessa Ferlito's FBI agent Charlie takes you inside "Graceland" and gives you some of the tips you'll need to survive as an undercover operative.

Once in "Graceland: Undercover," fans can create their own alias and become virtual agents who have the power to unlock rooms within the "Graceland" mansion, where they can explore 360 degree views of each space and delve deeper into the complex stories behind each character. And if you're feeling competitive, much like the secretive agents on the show, you can recruit your Facebook friends to join in the games and win points, which can be traded for prizes -- including a trip to Malibu.

If you're interested in exploring "Graceland" further along with the premiere, head over to www.gracelandundercover.tv. As of June 13, the mobile and tablet apps will be available in the Apple App store.

Check out a description of the series below:

Inspired by true events, "Graceland" centers around an elusive group of undercover agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who live and operate under one roof. When forced to give up any shred of normalcy and the question of trust is a matter of life or death, the house becomes their sanctuary, their “Graceland.”

"Graceland" premieres Thursday, June 6 at 10 p.m. ET on USA.

Tell us: Do you use apps and second screen experiences while watching TV?

'Revolution' Finale Preview: Miles And Monroe Reminisce About Happier Times (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)

2013-05-31T09:39:51-04:00

The "Revolution" Season 1 finale airs on June 3 (10 p.m. ET on NBC), and the episode -- titled "The Dark Tower" -- will see Miles Matheson (Billy Burke) and Sebastian Monroe (David Lyons) finally face off in an epic showdown.

But Miles and "Bass" weren't always mortal enemies. As HuffPost TV's exclusive clip (above) of the "Revolution" finale reminds us, the two were once best friends and comrades, with a history that stretches back to their childhoods. Watch the pair reminiscing about happier times like Miles' 21st birthday, which included a stripper called Sierra who had a very memorable feature.

Check out the episode description for the "Revolution" finale," titled "The Dark Tower," below, and tune in on Monday, June 3 to see whether the rebels will succeed in bringing the power back -- and whether everyone will survive the attempt.

Life-threatening dangers abound on all sides as the Rebels infiltrate the Tower. Miles’ (Billy Burke) leadership abilities and character are sorely tested as well as his feelings for Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Nora (Danielle Alonso). Aaron’s (Zak Orth) genius comes in handy while Tom Neville (Giancarlo Esposito) and Randall Flynn (Colm Feore) bring new meaning to the dark side.

Who do you think will die in the "Revolution" finale? Share your predictions below!

The "Revolution" finale airs Monday, June 3 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.

'Under The Dome' On TV: What You Need To Know About CBS' Summer Mystery Series

2013-05-31T01:45:02-04:00

What is "Under the Dome"? After reporters were treated to an early look at the first episode of CBS' new summer TV series -- adapted from the bestselling Stephen King novel of the same name -- executive producers Neal Baer and Brian K. Vaughan (who wrote the first episode) attempted to answer that question and many more.

Luckily, the premiere speaks for itself, offering a gripping, handsomely-produced hour laden with mystery, a slew of creative (and disgusting) special effects, and a number of intriguingly ambiguous characters, lead by "Breaking Bad's" Dean Norris, "Pan Am's" Mike Vogel and "Twilight's" Rachelle Lefevre.

The show revolves around the fictional town of Chester's Mill, and explores what happens to its inhabitants after an impenetrable dome of unknown origin cuts them off from the rest of the world.

Baer described the series as "the new 'Twin Peaks,' in a way. You know how everyone was stuck in that little place but you really got into the characters, and mysteries were unfolding? I felt like that's what resonated [here]. This is very different from that show, but it takes that element and the roots of CBS with 'Twilight Zone' and puts it together in a new, fresh way."

Read on for more from the producers, including their strategies for solving mysteries, how dark the show will get and the major differences between the series and the book.

Stephen + Steven = Gold
Both EPs agreed that one of the show's main strengths is having Stephen King and Steven Spielberg on board as producers. "Steven Spielberg sees the best in humanity and Stephen King has always seen the worst, but there are a lot of similarities, in that they're both aggressive humanists; that they just love people so much, and throwing them in extraordinary situations and seeing what happens," Vaughan explained.

Since the show is based on his novel, King is said to be very hands-on, without being precious. "Stephen King sees everything from all the shows," Baer said. "We're on Episode 10, and he's been really wonderful to us, supporting us; giving us notes; letting us take it to different places but really embracing many of his original characters ... It's been a fantastic collaboration with him."

"He's given us plenty of creative freedom but we also love having him involved," Vaughan agreed. "He said, 'If this comes back for a second season, can I write [an episode] next season?' I said, 'We should be so lucky -- you can write 13 of 'em if you want to!' He's been super involved, but Stephen's first love has always been writing novels so I think he's very grateful to get to write this book and feel like his baby is being taken care of. He said, 'To quote Elvis, it's your baby -- you rock it now.' And I think he likes the way we've been rocking it."

If You Think You Know How It Ends, Think Again
If you've read the book, you're probably assuming that you have a good idea about how the story ultimately concludes, but Vaughan admitted that they had no interest in recreating the novel's plot verbatim.

"[The book] takes place over a relatively short amount of time, but when we first started talking with Stephen, he said, 'when I came up with this idea, I envisioned a town potentially being trapped for years at a time, and that's something that you guys could get to do that I didn't.' And that might necessitate a different ending," he said. "So we pitched Stephen a far-out, big swing idea for it -- if we're lucky enough for this to go several years -- a different ending, and he was really excited by it and so generous, to say 'I wish I'd thought of that, that's killer.' He's been so supportive, and I think he knows that the book is its own thing and it would be boring to translate the book exactly to the screen -- he wants to see something new that hopefully still has the theme and the heart of the book in it."

Baer agreed, "We're on Day 10 now, so we've already passed where the book goes and we think that this can go much beyond a week's worth of time, because we're just beginning to explore all of the ramifications of being caught under a dome ... how the citizens of Chester's Mill deal with it on a personal basis and on a sustainability basis."

We're Staying Under The Dome
Don't expect too many glimpses of the world outside the dome -- the producers want to keep the viewers trapped along with the characters.

"It's not post-apocalyptic, this is the first day after this life-altering tragedy, and we really didn't want to leave these people for a moment. We want to see each step -- how is society going to change as Chester's Mill is cut off from the rest of the United States?" Vaughan said. "We wanted to challenge ourselves and set it in this one location and find all the different things we can do under there."

Lessons Learned From "Lost"
The show has one overarching mystery -- where did the dome come from? -- but plenty of smaller subplots and questions waiting to be answered, and the producers promised that there would be pay-offs in the first season.

"You'll get lots of answers from things in the pilot, and some new questions will be coming up. I think we've done a pretty good job not stringing everyone along. We've made a conscious decision that if we present a mystery, we will solve it for you before we start introducing new ones," Vaughan promised. "We will learn a great deal about the dome by the end of the season, but maybe not all of the answers. Having worked on 'Lost' a little bit, I realized that if your show is only about one central mystery … I think there have been a lot of shows after 'Lost' that have been about that, but I think 'Lost' succeeded because people cared about these characters so deeply. The mythology is an added bonus, but it's about revealing character, so I'm not too concerned that people will tune out if they're not getting the biggest answer [yet], as long as they love the people that we're putting up on screen."

Dark Days Ahead
Fans of King's work know that the writer isn't afraid to go to some dark and twisted places, but the rules are a little different on broadcast network TV. Or are they?

"This was originally developed for cable first, but when it came to CBS that was one of my concerns: 'It is a Stephen King story, it's dark, it's edgy, it's adult -- can we still do that?'" Vaughan admitted. 'And [CBS president] Nina Tassler was so excited like, 'yeah, we really do want to do something different and we're not going to cede the summer to cable, we want to challenge them!' So I think the script changed so little between coming to cable and coming to CBS. They've been really supportive about letting us do something that's different and dark."

"It gets pretty dark, they're in trouble -- big trouble," Baer confirmed. "Human nature rears its beautiful and ugly head in the course of the season. People do things they probably wouldn't have done if they weren't under so much pressure, and they do things they may not have thought they were capable of in a positive way, as well."

The Times They Are a-Changin'
Along with potentially reworking the ending, Vaughan and the other writers haven't shied away from making some other (slight) alterations to the novel. This mostly relates to the show's characters, some of whom have been cut out or given reduced roles for the sake of timing or clarity, and some of whom are completely new or composites of other characters to deepen connections between the inhabitants of Chester's Mill.

Two completely new characters are a lesbian couple played by Samantha Mathis and Aisha Hinds, who were added to offer a little more diversity and realism to the town.

"King was really encouraging when he heard the idea of a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer and a shrink being stuck in small-town Chester's Mill and they've been really fun characters," Vaughan said. "There are tourist characters in King's book but the book is set in Maine which is pretty homogenous, so I think we made a conscious decision of 'let's not be so specific, it's Anytown, USA' so we can get a little more diversity in the cast and a little more diversity in the climate and what kind of town this is."

Less Is More
Despite some reports that "Under the Dome" is a miniseries, it was always conceived as an ongoing series, with a 13-episode first season much like the cable model. Vaughan declared that 13 episodes is "heaven," because it allows them to make every episode the best it can be.

"I'm sure if the show's successful, maybe CBS will say 'how about 22?' but right now, 13 allows us to do 'all killer, no filler,' to really get to work on making each episode perfect," he said. "With 22, some might get away from you, it's the nature of the beast, but so far we're really proud of every episode."

"We really tried to make it like the pilot [every week]," Baer agreed, praising the broadcast networks' newfound willingness to explore cable methods of greenlighting series, as demonstrated at the networks' recent upfronts presentations with limited episode orders for series such as CBS' "Hostages" and Fox's "Rake."

"I think 13 is really doable," he continued. "And I did 25 [episodes per season] of 'SVU' … it's just insanity. I love being able to focus on this one episode and not have to worry about 3 at once … There's going to be various approaches with seven episodes on broadcast networks and various combinations of things and miniseries coming back, it's a great time to be experimenting. The sky's the limit."

"Especially during the summer when you don't have to take any breaks, you just get to do 13 in a row," Vaughan pointed out. "I think as an audience member that's what I love, it's fun to get to do that one dense chapter a week."

Appearances Can Be Deceiving
Although King's book had plenty of well-defined characters with questionable motives, the show seems even more concerned with exploring the moral ambiguities of its central players. Just because you recognize a name, the producers caution you not to assume that you already know a character.

"They're complicated -- the people you think are bad may not be so bad, and the ones you think are good may not be so good," Baer teased. "Don't believe everything you see at the beginning."

Spectacular SFX
The premiere episode has plenty of impressive visual effects, but once the dome's down, does that mean the end of the action? Completely the opposite, Vaughan promised: "Jack Bender had the same concern -- we can't go from 60 to zero and have a big explosive pilot and then it becomes a nighttime soap with the second episode, so I think you'll see with the second, it's almost bigger than the first ... It's explosive, quite literally."

"Under the Dome" premieres Monday, June 24 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS.

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