FOX's 'Fringe' John Noble interview

By April MacIntyre Nov 19, 2008, 2:59 GMT

Noble (R) stars in FOX "Fringe" as Dr. Walter Bishop

My favorite thing about FOX’s new hit series “Fringe”?

Two words: John Noble.

Actor John Noble plays Dr. Walter Bishop, a left-of-center genius who bemusedly interacts with his son Peter (Joshua Jackson), who doesn’t know what to make of his mad scientist father at times.

There is a slight hint of “My Favorite Martian” Uncle Martin – Tim O’Hara repartee in their back-and-forth, as Bishop is just so intellectually beyond the room at times, his answers border on good-natured condescension.

from FOX

Monsters and Critics joined a group in a conference call to speak with John Noble about his terrific character.

Do you have fun playing this character?

J. Noble Well, it’s as much fun as it looks like.  I mean it’s an absolute hoot playing.  It’s obviously got serious aspects to it, but I treat it as a hoot to play the thing.  Preparation, well, that’s probably the hardest bit, getting the timing right and doing the preparation on the scientific work.  But working on Fringe is a great job. 

I mean it’s a great group of people to work with, and amazing scripts from the minds of J.J. Abrams and other people.  They’re geniuses.  Living inside their heads much be a very strange thing to do because they’re always coming up with something different.  Overall, fantastic experienc.”

How do you navigate the twists and turns?

J. Noble I kind of enjoy reading things that make me concentrate or watching things that make me concentrate, and so, you know, that’s what Fringe does.  And I watched an episode on Tuesday night, and I was in it, but there were things I missed, and I said, what was that?  What did they say there?  So I mean it’s fascinating to be watching something that does require concentration.

How do you balance the sweet with the scary of your character?

J. Noble   It’s the dark side to stuff, isn’t it?  I guess it exists in all of us.  But with “Walter,” because of who he is and how he is and how bright he is and how disturbed he is, it just sort of surfaces a bit more often and a bit more radically than it does in most of us.

I don’t find it that hard to find.  I mean taking each moment when I’m doing a scene, I take each second and look at what’s gone through at that point, and sometimes those reactions just come out, to be honest with you, out of frustration, the character’s frustration, or out his greater purpose, whatever, out of his madness. 

But it’s certainly interesting to play, and it shocks the people I’m playing with at times.  You see these shocked reactions from the other actors, but that all makes some good fun too. I think there’s – as an actor, I always have to find a reason. 

I can’t just sort of say something out of the blue, so I always find some sort of neural pathway in there, some image that it’s tapped.  It’s like we are, we’ll see, we’ll smell something or we’ll hear a sound, and it’ll take us into a memory.  You know how that happens to you as well? 

And so it’s like he continually has these little memory jolts that will – but instead of keeping them to himself, he talks about them, and say, “I had a fruit cocktail once in Atlantic City.”  And that’ll just come out because it’s a memory, so he’s quite inappropriate at times. 

from FOX

Did you enjoy science in school, or now?

J. Noble Yes, I do, but more on a theoretical level than a practical level.  One of my best friends, a fellow who I shared a house with many years and we were at the university together, he’s a brilliant scientist. 

He’s also quite mad.  But we would talk, and my thought was the art, his was the science, but we could talk for hours.  We found common ground in the theory, the theoretical side of it, and so I’ve always understood that or being able to talk about it, and also have written quite extensively.  But put me in a lab with a whole lot of instruments, and I may not do so well. 

Who was the inspiration for the thin line of Walter’s genius?

J. Noble:  His name is Dr. Ted Steal, and he’s an extraordinary man, and he’s always ridden on the edge of the scientific community because he’s just absolutely no good at politics, but he’s a genius, and so, but he was a man whatever he did he did with absolute passion and focus and so if we were out drinking and partying, or if he was playing tennis or football or going after a girl, whatever he did, it was with complete and utter focus.

That’s one of the aspects that “Walter” has as well.  But he was also a lovely man, but he’d also fight people.  I mean, at a turn of a hat, he would fight people, and so he was a fascinating guy.  In fact, he’s having his 60th birthday this week, I think, and I can’t be there in Australia with him, but he’s an amazing man, and I’ve based a lot of this on him.

Can you tease some upcoming plot points?

J. Noble:  I guess there are always two things.  There are the sort of bleak and dark moments that you see sometimes, and there’s also the comedic, well what play as comedic moments. 

We’ve just really finished off the final episode that will be going on in December, and there are a lot of “Walter” moments in there just him being inappropriate really. 

The next episode, which goes on next week, we see “Walter” from a different angle, very vulnerable.  He goes back into the asylum, and we see the very, very fearful man return for a while, although he does have some wonderful moments early in the episode.  But when he goes back inside, he turns back into this incredibly fearful, stuttering fellow who we saw when we first met him. 

It’s a very interesting journey that we see “Walter” go through.  You know, he also solves these extraordinary things either because he had done them in the past or because he simply has the intellect to think now.  We’re getting more episodes where “Walter” hasn’t done that experiment sometimes, but he has the mind to be able to see a way through it, so that’s the sort of thrust of things you will expect to see in the future. 

Deepening of the relationship with the son, of course.  There’ll be a lot more of this.  As you go through this season and the next seasons after that, you’ll see the ensemble of actors interact a lot more than maybe we’ve seen at present. 

The relationships with the “Olivia” character will become more like relationships do when people who know each other for a while and start to kind of have an investment and care, and care for each other. 

We certainly will see that in the first episode coming back next year where we all bond together to support “Olivia,” and she for us.  So that’s the sort of thing you can look forward to.

One of the things that they also do, these people, is that they keep the process pretty organic, and as things happen, as things happen in their mind, this is the writers I’m talking about, or an actor, one of the characters will invent something or a new character will evolve, and they keep it open to evolving the script as they go along.  We’re constantly getting rewrites. 

Sometimes just before we go on set, we’ll get a rewrite because they’ll have a better idea on what line to say there.  And so that’s, whilst that’s challenging, it’s also very, as I said, organic.  I personally love working that way.

Strangest thing you have picked up while working on Fringe?

J. Noble: We’ve got some coming up.   I get more interested in the neural aspects of it, I suppose, than say the parasitical elements of it.  When it goes into that sort of neural stuff and it’s a little strange in that sense, I get very excited about it. 

Obviously the parallel universe episode we did, which was called “The Arrival,” was probably outside of the realm of what we normally think about, although I have to confess, I had a very similar conversation about parallel universes with a friend of mine sitting in the university campus 30 years ago looking at the stars, and so it was an interesting thing to revisit that. 
So that was kind of memorable for me, that one.

How did you concoct Walter’s voice?

J. Noble The character of “Walter,” because of his nature, he’s a top academic. 

We knew that he was probably born in England, but he’d spent most of his life in Boston, which has a unique sort of accent anyway.

He had lived in this sort of very wordly, peopled with scientists from all over the world, so he kind of lived in a different world and has picked up what we called a Transatlantic accent, so it is American, but it has sort of elements of British in there as well, and that’s the term we use in vocal, talking about vocal stuff is Transatlantic, and we did that quite deliberately because of the background of the character.

How important is the father/son relationship, and do you expect the dynamic between them to shift or change in any major way, i.e. “Walter” maybe becoming a little more normal?

J. Noble From my point of view, and I think Josh Jackson will back this up, probably the most, the thing that has held our interest most so far has been that relationship and, in a sense, as individual actors, what we’ve worked on, we’ve probably talked more about that, Josh and I, than about anything else. 

We just kind of feel that it’s special to do that sort of thing and feel a bit of responsibility to try and get it as right as possible.  Judging by the feedback we’re getting, it’s working, and it’s resonating with a whole lot of people. 

And we’ll continue to do that.  It’s not going to turn into any sort of soft, “Oh, I understand, and now I know I love you” time, and walk away into the sunset.  It won’t happen any more than it happens in families.  But they’ll continue to grow.  The depth of their relationship will continue to grow.  There’s no question about that.

What have been some of your favorite scenes or moments thus far in the series that we’ve seen?

J. Noble Yes.  Well, anything to do with the cow.  Anything to do with the cow, I mean, I adore working with the cow.  It just makes – the cow makes me laugh.  I don’t know why.  Everyone gets all sort of gooey and funny when the cow comes in.  And then, of course, I got to milk the cow and, you know, because they rang up and said, “Do you need some coaching to milk a cow?”  And I said, “Certainly not.  I could milk a cow.  I’m a country boy,” so that was great fun milking the cow.  I don’t know. 

In the pilot where we’re eating Chinese watching “Sponge Bob,” and that cow was on our necks, myself and Jasika.  That was the funniest thing because it was nuzzling up against us trying to get the Chinese food.  It wouldn’t stay until I gave it some, but it was just the funniest night doing that scene about 4:00 in the morning.  Those sorts of things, there’s a whole lot of them. 

One of my favorite games at present is I’ve got this thing where I try and make “Broyles” laugh because Lance Reddick plays it to a tee.  So I go out of my way whenever I have a scene to try and make him laugh.  Of course, as actors, we have great fun with this because, in rehearsals, I succeed.  But as soon as the cameras roll, there’s no way.  It’s going to be absolute headlines across the nation.  “Broyles Smiles” one day. 

from FOX

Do you ever get reined in while acting?

J. Noble Sure.  Absolutely.  The agreement that I have with every director that comes in, the term I use is: “I’ll push the edge of the envelope, and then you can pull me wherever you want to.” 

But I find it easier to go for,  “Let me take all the risks, and then tell me what is too much” rather than starting with nothing or starting from very little.  I start with a lot, and sometimes they’ll say to me, just pull that one back.  It’s no big deal.  Or just change that or just pull the vocal level back there, which I’m more than happy to do, but it means that I have to trust the directors. 

But I’d rather try for the sort of big effect and then pull it back than start with nothing and try and build it up.

You have to have a trust in your director.  Basically your directors and your editors, you have to say to them, “Well, look, I’ll do this, but don’t hang me up to dry here.” 

That trust, I mean, I have that with the people I work with.  It would be terrible if you thought suddenly that you were being hung out to dry doing this big performance, and it was out of character and out of context, and they kept it in there, making you look like a fool.  Then that wouldn’t be so comfortable.

Talk about the relationship that “Walter” has with “Olivia” and with “Astrid”

J. Noble Yes.  It’s been one of the things that has had to come slowly.  We’ve had a man who has obviously been – I don’t think he would have ever been particularly good with women anyway, you know. 

I think he would have been a pretty horrible husband, not because he’s a bad man, simply because he wouldn’t have thought to be nice.  Then he comes out, and he’s confronted with these two girls, and he doesn’t know how to talk to girls, so it’s taken time to learn.  He still can’t remember “Astrid’s” name.

Which is, I have to say, one of the great joys is working with Jasika on that whole, you know, the name business. 

She is such a funny girl.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with her eventually, but she’s a very, very funny woman.  And the one with “Olivia” is fascinating because that’s far deeper. 

My sense is that “Walter” starts to feel almost paternal towards her.  But obviously you can’t go into that path, and just on occasions I can see that “Olivia” wants to ask “Walter” something, but then she’ll back away. 

We’ve seen a couple times that that’s happened.  Somewhere down the track, I think that there will be a coming together of those two, and I don’t know this for a fact, but I just feel it’s inevitable, and I think it’s something that “Walter” and “Olivia” will need to do.

Talk about  “The Pattern”

J. Noble:  Do you know, we don’t know.  I don’t know what The Pattern” is.  “Walter” doesn’t, and that kind of works okay for me.  We know, and having a global conspiracy of sorts, I mean, goodness me, James Bond opening this week, we’re used to the idea of global conspiracies.  I don’t particularly want to know what’s going on in terms of the writers’ minds. 

As to people asking, well, yes.  But it’s not offensively.  It’s just, “Do you know anything? And I say, “I don’t know,” and I mean it, so I can’t be drawn really.
 But no, a little bit is revealed, and these writers have in mind a plan that could last one, two, three years, or however long it lasts, and they will bring that all to a conclusion at the right time.  We can’t reveal everything now because where do you go, so there’s a long way to go.

Do you get to ad-lib?

J. Noble What I get is the ink on the page.  No, I mean the interpretation of the character is mine.  As an actor, I talk an awful lot about rhythms when I’m talking about acting.  I don’t want to bore you with this, but that’s what I do, just creating different rhythms within the scene and the act of the scene. 

See, I did bore you there, but so I mean I’m always looking for rhythms that will work because it makes life interesting rather than just playing through on a flat line the whole time.  Lines like that, I don’t know.  They just kind of sound right to do it like that.

Ever get hung up on the technical jargon?

J. Noble Yes.  I do what research I can, and I do it off the Internet.  So if there’s a chemical described, then I’ll go and see what they’re talking about basically just for my own satisfaction or procedure. 

The times that it’s more likely to affect me is after we’ve been filming for about 15 hours and we’re onto our tenth take.  Then I could start to jumble … it’s really interesting.  It doesn’t happen the other way around, you know, at the beginning.  It’s after when we start to get tired that things will come out jumbled.  But it does take a little bit of work.

How has modern science informed you for your character?

J. Noble In my lifetime,  lasers were considered to be some sort of futuristic foolish idea.  This is in my lifetime, and we use them on a daily basis for everything now.  I believe we are only tapping the edges of what is potential … as we learn more through quantum mechanics and string theory, we’re finding out that all sorts of things are possible that we didn’t think were. 

We’re becoming less ignorant as to the possibilities.  We can imagine the impossibilities, as J.J. Abrams likes to say.  So I don’t have any problem with any of it, and I just went off on a great big tangent and forgot the question.

"Walter” seems to almost be torn in terms of his loyalty to “Peter” and his loyalty to science?

J. Noble:  It’s an amazing observation.  It’s true.  Given a task, that “Walter” is incredibly focused, myopic when he has a task to do, and really other things become secondary. 

And we know this with a lot of people in our society are workaholics, and find it difficult to split their time between their work and their families.  Now this is an issue that many of us deal with. 

This is an extreme case of that.  And when he’s on his science, he really doesn’t have time for this squawking child next to him or for the wife, and I think there are plenty of examples of that in society, but “Walter’s” is just heightened a little bit. 

What are your personal views on fringe science?  Are you into big foot and UFOs and stuff like that?

J. Noble:  No, not UFOs.  No.  I’ve got nothing against them, but it’s just not something that tantalizes my imagination.  I think I’m much more fascinated by what we’ve discovered, as I said a while ago, through quantum mechanics and so forth. 

What was started off by Albert Einstein essentially, who just opened the floodgates into a new world, and then we suddenly find out that we can bend time or the string theory … and it just means that anything is conceivable, and I find that fascinating.  We don’t know anything.  We don’t know what black holes are even.  Do you know what I mean?  To me, I get excited by it.

But, we’re moving exponentially.  We’re moving so fast that today’s technology is out of place by next week.  It’s an exciting time to live in keeping up with these guys.  I don’t know.  I’m glad to be alive to observe it. 

I think I’ve lived in an amazing time.  I think I’ve lived in amazing times.