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Answers by Michaela Conlin, Actress, starring as Angela Montenegro on Bones, on Quora.
A: I read the script, which was initially called 'Brennan,' and I remember immediately responding to Angela and feeling connected to her. It was during pilot season which is an insane time of the year for actors, we're all reading the same scripts and auditioning for the same roles. I was supposed to test for two other pilots but couldn't do so if I wanted to test for Bones, which was risky as I didn't know if I'd get the job. The casting process for a broadcast television pilot is quite involved as there are a lot of people who have to sign off on you before you're offered the role. You read for the creator of the show, the director and the producers, the studio that produces the show and lastly the network that puts it out. The group of actors you're testing against starts off very large and gets smaller as you move forward in the process. Eventually it's just a few people. It's an insane process honestly. Thankfully it all worked out.
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A: Yes definitely. The show is extremely technical, so oftentimes we have to explain very complicated concepts to the audience-the way a body decomposes, what causes a bone to fracture in a certain way, how previous injuries affected the body's current state or the physical surroundings of where the victim was before they died. There are actual pronunciation guides included with each of our scripts as there are so many multi-syllabic words in each episode. By the end of the season, which is where we are now, our brains start to turn to mush and it becomes harder to remember everything.
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A: Like anything, it's really about the people involved. We work such long hours and for many months of the year so you really do have to respect and care for one another. The writers have come up with a lot of ways to keep the stories interesting and engaging which is not easy to do as we shoot 22 episodes a season. I give them a lot of the credit.