By Christina Radish

Lena Headey at the Fox All-Star Party held at the Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, Calif. on July 14, 2008.

The show’s star, Lena Headey (300), and creator/executive producer, Josh Friedman, spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about what’s in store for the cast this season.

MediaBlvd Magazine> John Connor is supposed to eventually be the salvation of mankind, which obviously makes him pretty central, but the show is called The Sarah Connor Chronicles. What is it like to maintain the balance that you have to be walking, at all times, to remember what the name of the show is and who the star is, but also look to the future?

Josh Friedman> It’s challenging, but it’s very doable. The Sarah/John relationship is the central relationship in the show, but at different times, there can be different shifts, in terms of the power dynamic or the pro-activity. Sarah takes a little bit of a back seat to John. It’s a parent/child struggle. As a parent, my child is a lot younger, but watching the push and pull of that dynamic is fascinating. I look at them as a pair. Ultimately, yes, it’s called The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but it’s about how the parent of this special child deals with that. It’s challenging for any parent, and it’s challenging for this particular parent because of who her child is supposed to be, but I don’t believe that she ever has to stop being Sarah Connor. The challenge is just figuring out who that is, on a daily basis.

MediaBlvd> Lena, what will be the gradual progression of Sarah Connor this year?

Lena Headey> It’s been an interesting season. I feel that Sarah has taken a backseat, in terms of being pro-active and taking care of business. We’re going to see a lot more of John taking control, making steps toward becoming the man he has to be, to take on his tasks. This season, Sarah is losing slight control over pretty much everything. There’s a slow madness happening in her because she feels that everything’s out of reach right now.

MediaBlvd> How cool is that for you to play?

Lena> It’s calming, but more visceral. It’s been strange, coming from such a ferocious side of her, to feeling very much like all control has gone from her.

MediaBlvd> Las season’s finale was a different finale than you had originally intended because of the writer’s strike. How did that affect your decisions, in restarting the series, at the start of this season?

Josh> I was very interested in the aftermath of that last episode. Last year, we would have done a version of that episode, but I had a whole different concept. It was one that I couldn’t really do for a season premiere, but it was certainly about the aftermath of the truck explosion. We really have stayed on track with the goals of the show, storytelling-wise, but episodically, things have changed pretty radically from last year.

MediaBlvd> The producers revealed at Comic-Con that someone is going to die this season. Lena, do you feel pretty safe because the show is called The Sarah Connor Chronicles?

Lena> I don’t know. To quote Sarah, you can never feel safe. I don’t take anything for granted. 

Josh Friedman shows off the new T:SCC game for X-box at Comic Con 2008.

Josh> No. You’ll know it when you see it. You won’t have to ask about it. There’s obviously some stuff in the first episode, thematically, about dying, resurrection and re-orientation of all the relationships, but when the character dies, you’ll know. 

MediaBlvd> Did this upcoming character death come about, in the terms of storytelling, because you feel that it’s time to have a death like this, or is it more economically driven?  What actually brings you to the point of saying, “Well, it’s time to axe one of these guys”?

Josh> It’s usually their behavior on the set. No, it’s pure storytelling. It’s painful to say good-bye to actors, especially on this show. Everyone’s wonderful and they’re all lovely people. Going to an actor and saying, “Here’s the script and this is what’s going to happen,” is extremely difficult. It’s never driven, at least for us, by economics or anything extracurricular. We were in the writer’s room and, all of a sudden, had this dawning realization that we had a really good idea for something story-wise, but it’s going to end up costing somebody a job. That’s not easy. These are people who will go on and get other work, but it’s not a fun thing to do.

MediaBlvd> And, does the actor know about it yet?

Josh> Yes.

MediaBlvd> What was the casting decision behind getting Shirley Manson on board, since this is her first acting job?

Josh> Yes, it is. I’ve known Shirley well, for a couple of years. She’s a friend of my wife’s. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed her, and I’ve known her as a performer. When we were doing the show last year, whenever I’d see her, I used to joke with her about coming on the show to do one episode because she’d never acted. We were like, “You know, you should come on and be a scary Terminator for an episode, or something like that.” And, she always said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re never going to do that.” And then, this year, when we started casting, I actually wasn’t thinking about her for this part. Somewhere, about a week into casting, I thought, “I want to bring Shirley in and see if she’s up for it, and  see if she wants to do it.” She was actually in Europe for a funeral, and I emailed her and said, “Do you want to come in and audition?” She said, “Well, yes. I’m coming back to town on Sunday.” I said, “Well, we need you in on Monday.” So, she came and she did it, and she’s just got an incredible charisma. She’s also just very professional. She’s always prepared, and her learning curve, in terms of the craft part of it, has been very high so far. It just happened organically, but she also had to go through the entire audition process, just like any other actor. She was given no extra points for being Shirley Manson. In some ways, she was given minus points by people who thought that maybe she couldn’t do it.

MediaBlvd> Would you characterize Shirley Manson’s character as a nemesis? Is she evil?

Josh> I think evil is a bit strong. I don’t think of any of these characters as evil. They’re very focused. They have a plan. It’s not personal. There’s not some evil back story where revenge is necessary. There’s a plan that she has in place to try to grow the Turk, but it’s not necessarily that she’s bad.                                                   

MediaBlvd> Did you end up having the liquid Terminator character appear a little bit sooner than you had hoped? Or, are we at a state in technology where it’s cost efficient for you to try it out on a regular basis?

Josh> Did we try it out earlier than we wanted to? No. I think it was exactly when we wanted to. It was sort of serendipitous. We were working on this character and wanted to introduce somebody who was more of an antagonist, and I didn’t want to do just the basic evil corporate type, so it was a natural progression. It’s expensive to do, but it’s not necessarily any more expensive to do than an endoskeleton. Over the years, morphing technology and CGI is something that’s been streamlined, in terms of cost, since it was first done. It’s still time consuming. It’s more just the art of it, and getting it right, in terms of the rates of change, what it looks like and the texturing. We went back and forth quite a bit, in the first episode, because it was the first time that we’d done it.

MediaBlvd> Have we seen the last of John in high school? Will they be on the run from that entire life now?

Josh> We’ve seen just about the last of John in high school. John and Sarah have wisely chosen home-schooling for John, at this point. It doesn’t mean that we’ve seen the last of John interacting with people from his high school, but I think the days of seeing John sitting in class are pretty numbered.

MediaBlvd> As of the finale last year, FBI Agent James Ellison (Richard T. Jones) was pretty much thrown into this world where Terminators really do exist, and we see him in the premiere episode, interacting a little with Cromartie. Is he going to get to hook up with Sarah and the rest of the troops, and what might that mean?

Josh> I don’t know that he’s necessarily going to hook up with them. Now that he knows for sure that they exist, he is on a quest to figure out why he’s a part of this arrangement. Comartie’s particular suggestions to him indicate that, and the fact that he’s been left alive indicates that he may play a larger part in the plan. So, you’re going to see Ellison trying to figure out what his part in the larger puzzle is. 

MediaBlvd> Can you talk about bringing the religious aspects of this mythology to the forefront?

Josh> Sarah is a very, very radicalized Mary figure, and John is sort of a Jesus figure, which has always been in the franchise. It’s stuff that, thematically, is interesting to explore, and I’ve become fascinated with it through the Ellison character. Richard T. Jones is quite religious, and I’d spent some time talking to him about it. It seemed like a really natural place to explore some of those themes, especially with him, regarding whether or not his faith is either confirmed or challenged by the things he’s seen. It’s easy to assume, because there are Terminators in the universe, that God doesn’t exist, but that’s not necessarily true. It’s interesting just to see people with particular ideologies have to try to fit radical world views into it.                

MediaBlvd> Lena, there seems to be a lot of anger in your portrayal of Sarah Connor. Is she partly angry at John because he’s the reason she can’t have a normal life? 

Lena> Yes, I think there’s some truth in that. Sarah’s pretty complex. You take a normal girl who suddenly gives birth to Jesus, and who was truly in love with this man who dies and leaves her with this legacy, and I absolutely think that her anger is partly at her son and her situation. She has frustration in dealing with that, as she can’t really throw down with her son. But, there’s also a rooted anger with everybody that comes to advise her and say she should do this and look at it this way. I think she would love to say, “Fuck you all!,” and she can’t, for various reasons.

MediaBlvd> Are you going to develop the storyline from last season, with Sarah trying to deal with her cancer?

Josh> There is some of it. Thematically, we definitely visit it again this year, and an early episode brings it back up and investigates it. It’s explored in an oblique way, in one of the early episodes. It’s definitely not something that we’ve forgotten about, but I also don’t think you’re going to see her in bed with chemo anytime soon.

MediaBlvd> Lena, there’s a little bit of a love triangle brewing between your character, Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green) and your former fiancé, Charley Dixon (Dean Winters). How would you like to see that resolved?

Lena> Derek and Sarah’s relationship is more like already-divorced parents. The fact that he’s John’s uncle would be weird, seeing as his brother was the love of her life, so I don’t think there’s going to be any development there. I certainly wouldn’t want it. It would be far too obvious. 

Josh> I completely agree with her, by the way. It’s not something that we’ve contemplated at all.

Lena> And, as for Charley, who knows?  That’s an open door, at the moment.

 MediaBlvd> Why was the choice made to add the Derek Reese character as a series regular? What gave you the idea to bring him on for every episode?

Josh> People really liked him, and we really liked him. He adds something to that dynamic. John’s always been looking for father figures, and it’s interesting to have one around who is a blood relative, but whose backstory is complicated.  I like the fact that Derek represents the human face of the future war, and the cost. He’s this damaged war vet. You always have a sense of the stakes of what they’re fighting, and what you don’t want to see someone become, which is Derek. And, Brian was out doing lots of auditions and we thought we’d lock him up, so that no one else could take him.

MediaBlvd> One of the big points in Season One was seeing the future. Derek having the flash-forwards really brought things together. Is that something that viewers are going to see more of in Season Two?

Josh> Yes, and it takes place the same way that it did before. For me, what worked about that was that the future stuff really informs the things that are going on in the present. When I watch that episode, I see an amazing emotional storyline with Sarah, Charley and John. Playing those two worlds against each other is something that works very well for us, so we’re going to see it in certain flashes this year. We try to always keep it informing of the emotional backstory of the show, so that it doesn’t just become pure eye candy, despite the joyousness of that. 

MediaBlvd> Now that Brian Austin Green is on as a series regular, have there been any talks to try to get Michael Biehn in for a guest spot as John’s father?

Josh> Brian and Michael Biehn are friends, but I’m really anti bringing in people from The Terminator movies in guest spots. I feel like we’ve worked really hard to try to make the reality of this show with these actors be our universe, and that would be weird. 

MediaBlvd> Are there any guest spots coming up for this season that you can talk about?

Josh> Busy Phillipps, from Freaks and Geeks, White Chicks and Dawson’s Creek, is going to come on for a few episodes. Most of the guest stars die when they come on.

MediaBlvd> The show has some really great action and special effects. How do you find the balance between that and keeping the humanity going?

Josh> At this point, it’s become an organic thing for us. We have a sense of how much action to have, in any given episode, but it does shift sometimes. In terms of the realities of production, you don’t have the time or money to do big things in every episode, which I’m happy for. I like it when the money people come to us and say, “You know what? This episode’s going to have to be a little smaller than the last episode.” I enjoy writing smaller, more character-driven episodes. At the end of the day, there are three audiences for the show: there are the people who really come for the action, there are the people who really come for the characters, and then there are the people who want both. And, those are the ones that, ultimately, are the most consistently pleased because they’ll get one or the other. To me, the show is a family drama that is in the science fiction world and has action in it, but the characters come first for me.