Can you give us an insight into season three of Prison Break?
Well, the first season was very Macgyver-esque with the tattoo and the shenanigans and the eight alpha dogs in a box and we shake it and see what happens. Season two we had a lot of ground to cover literally and season three kind of returns to form it feels like classic Prison Break. Everything has come full circle except now Michael is on the inside and Lincoln is on the outside and he doesn’t have the big brother to kick some a** if and when necessary and of course there will be escape in the offering.
How does this season compare to the others?
Fox River was our springboard in many ways. He set a certain tone for the show and was the most important character on the show in the first season. And in the second season was about finding our feet in the absence of Fox River. The difference in terms of intensity, danger and excitement is that the new prison is based on a prison in Brazil where the inmates took over 10 years ago. The correctional officers hang on the outside and shoot anyone who tries to escape and on the inside it’s Lord Of The Flies so it makes Fox River look like Club Med.
How has Michael changed as a character this season?
I think Michael is stronger, tougher and more resilient this time round but I think he is in danger of becoming too much like the hardened criminals that he has been consorting with over the past two years. I think the question we face third season is and what we have been flirting with all along and that’s how far across the line can good men go before you can no longer call him good. He’s a good man still on a hero’s journey but his hands are absolutely filthy and there’s the question can they ever be clean?
Why are audiences so fascinated by prison stories?
I think people are fascinated by prison stories and what it is that goes on behind those walls – we like to imagine how we would do in the darkest of scenarios. The third season is going to take a lot of those same compelling dynamics and just turn it up one extra notch, in a way this is going to be our most deadly compelling season yet.
Michael is back in prison with some of the faces he started out with. How will that be?
Well, yes Michael is back behind bars with three of his deadly enemies and Prison Break works best when you have a bunch of alpha dogs and you shove them in a barrel and then you roll the barrel down hill. T Bag, Bellick and Mahone have made Michael’s life hell over the past two seasons. Mahone killed Michael’s father in cold blood so I don’t think there will be an automatic alignment between these forces – it will be something forced due to necessity. These characters are in way over there heads and to make it out of the situation alive they will have to band together, but that leads to another question: how can Michael allow these dangerous characters to escape from this new prison especially when he was responsible for T Bag escaping the first time? I think one of the best parts of the show is what happens when you have deadly enemies who are forced to work together for a common cause and that is certainly at the core of what the third season is about.
Any new characters you can tell us about?
Michael finds in his new environment a gangster, a kingpin called Lechero, played by an actor called Robert Wisdom who is coming to our show from two seasons on The Wire and he’s fantastic, very intimidating both on screen and off screen.
Is Michael ok with being in prison – because even though he’s a good guy he has done some bad things that are now eating away at him? Is that too much of a reach?
No, I think your right on target I think he’s one of the shows heroes but he’s a very conscience-based character and there’s been a lot of carnage as a result of the wheels he set in motion so that his brother could go free. Michael feels responsibility for all the people that T Bag murdered in season two and feels guilty because if it wasn’t for him T Bag would still be behind bars. Part of him thinks maybe prison is where he belongs and prison is the only way to atone from his sins.
Does it really come down to brotherly love and the extent which Lincoln and Michael are willing to do for each other?
That’s one of the show’s strongest hooks – we have the car crashes and the gun fights but at the end of the day it is a show about families. I think that’s the secret of our success and what translates so well overseas; it’s something anyone can tap into.
Does it amaze you that people are willing to stick with the show three years in as sometimes it’s hard to play catch up if you’ve missed part of a season, with everything that goes on?
Its tremendously gratifying and it’s a testament to not only the audience out there but to the quality of the shows that your seeing out there: 24, The Sopranos, Prison Break – stories that require some level of commitment and that give you a pay off, but only after a certain number of episodes or seasons.
What will keep Michael motivated this season?
Michael is always motivated only by concern for others and it turns out that the people that he loves are being held hostage by the very same forces that threw Lincoln into Fox River in the first place, which destroyed the brothers’ lives. They are still very much at the mercy of those dark forces and they want Michael to carry out certain tests. there are reasons why he is in this new prison in Panama. He’s not been thrown there by chance and now he’s faced by the mystery that is Whistler.
Prison Break season 3 starts on Sunday, April 13 at 9pm
