Prison Break

Wentworth Miller Interview

Question: What were your expectations when you originally signed on as Michael and have you met or surpassed them?

Wentworth Miller: I think it’s safe to say that we have surpassed pretty much everyone’s expectations. There was a lot of chatter for a season about how we could get an entire season out of two guys essentially jumping over a brick wall. And then once we did, there was a question about how long we could keep the season going now that the boys were outside of a prison. Was the name still relevant?

And I think the 17 minute clip that’s now available online has set a lot of fears to rest and concerns fans might have about the third season being part and parcel of the story that we’ve been telling all along. I think it’s a testament to the writers and the actors involved that we’ve managed to create a pretty complex, fantastic universe with a lot of moving parts, a lot of different stories, all of them worth exploring.

And as far as this thing continuing on nine, ten seasons like a “Friends” or “CSI,” I’m not sure we’ll go that far, but I do think we have at least another two or three seasons in us.

Question: Last season you talked about how the season was going to unravel the relationship between the Michael and his brother Lincoln (Dominic Purcell), how they were going to get to know each other as they were on the run. What’s going to happen with them relationship-wise this time out?

WM: That’s a great question. I wish I had all the answers for you, but it being TV, of course, you’re given a road map to where you are, but not necessarily to tomorrow or the day after that. What I will say and which has been one of the most fascinating parts of the brother dynamic to me is that in this story about a man trying to free his brother, it’s also a story about a man becoming his own man and that involves letting that brother go.

I think Michael is an extreme example of a loving, loyal younger brother who worships his big brother, who would obviously risk life and limb to save that big brother. But what he discovered second season was that freeing Lincoln from Fox River State Penn did not automatically mean that the two of them were going to run off and set up a scuba shop on the beach somewhere. Lincoln was a man with his own agendas, his own scores to be settled and Michael had to learn how to let him go and somewhere in that process learn how to stand on his own two feet.

Question: did you do any projects over your hiatus or were you simply taking a break?

WM: Actually, I spent my hiatus pitching projects. It’s now pretty clear to me that I don’t just love acting; I love storytelling and I want to be part of that process any way that I can, which means maybe sitting in the director’s chair or hanging out in the editing room while the footage is being cut together. And there is a little feature film project that I’ve come up with on my own, on the side, over the course of the second season and during the hiatus I had a number of meetings around town with producers and writers trying to test the waters and drum up some interest. Actually the good news is that I potentially have a writer working on the script as we speak.

It’s a love story with a Hitchcock kind of twist and it also satisfies my career dream to play a bad guy. After playing Michael Scofield for 50 some-odd episodes now, the idea of playing someone who is not cool and collected and constantly having to sit on his emotions; to be the one who is running around with an ax at the end of the movie is tremendously appealing as you can probably imagine.

I’d like to produce and to take a back seat in terms of the writing of the script, to learn more about what it is that goes into crafting a screenplay. Because I know there is a formula. I know that there is a science to it and it’s something that I’m very curious about.

Source: post-gazette