Over on NBC, the peacock network will dedicate the 9-11PM slots to retrospectives on both Jackson and Fawcett’s remarkable careers while CBS will air a prime-time special on Jackson at 10PM which may also include coverage on Fawcett’s career.

BURN NOTICE (9PM USA)
While Michael is away infilitrating a gang in order to take down a highly sought-after criminal, Sam must face down his most challenging foe yet: The IRS (Da-Da-Duh!)

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (9PM FOX)
Two more dancers have their dreams crushed on national television. Awkward.

Combining the best action/thriller elements with surprising humor and an iconic new breed of espionage, the second season heats up as blacklisted spy, Michael Westen hones his unique skills for new clientele.  A season that can be yours should you be able to answer this highly challenging skill-testing question in the comments below: In what city does BURN NOTICE take place in?

One winner will be chosen at random and notified via email on June 26, so be sure to enter using a valid email address. Not a winner? BURN NOTICE: SEASON TWO is now available on Amazon for only $25.99.

Between playing numerous variations of “Six” on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, the hard-nosed handler of former agent Michael Westen on BURN NOTICE and an upcoming stint as the mysterious Agent Alex Ford on NBC’s action-comedy hybrid CHUCK, model-turned-actress Tricia Helfer may in fact be the busiest woman in show business.

Which is why this TV Addict was thrilled that she was kind enough to press pause on her busy schedule and take the time to talk to various members of the media about what the future holds for some of the most exciting characters to grace the small screen in recent memory.

On what fans can expect from the last two episodes of BURN NOTICE:
Tricia Helfer: It’s kind of hard without giving too much away. I will say I’m really excited to see the last episode. There’s a great stunt at the end that I’m just so excited to see. It’s not even my stunt, but I’m really excited to see it and I think it’s going to be a great finale. It really comes to a culmination point and Carla has kind of had it with Michael Westen and she realizes he’s just basically run her around in circles after she’s put some trust into him that he’s going to find the bomber and help give her the name, which essentially is a rogue agent, but she knows it is, and he disappoints her, so it comes to a culmination.

On whether or not she’ll be involved with season three of BURN NOTICE:
Tricia Helfer: I’m not on board for next season. As I like to say, I was the baddie of the second season, so yes, my last two episodes are this week and the finale, March 5th.

On shooting the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA series finale:
Tricia Helfer: Shooting the last episode is intense, not only do emotions run really high because obviously this is the last time you’re working with a lot of these people and you become like family over five years, but it’s also very intense because last episodes tend to come in very long.  I think we had a four hour script in a two hour time frame to shoot that we were maybe given a couple of extra days.  So we really shot incredibly long hours and everybody was kind of like zombies at the end of it.  So it’s intense, emotions are really high, but it’s also a wonderful feeling, it’s a great feeling of accomplishment and camaraderie, too. 

On the culmination of Number Six’s relationship with Baltar:
Tricia Helfer: For the first time I find out after five years of filming what that relationship is, so there will be a conclusion by the finale.

On the possibility of “Six” appearing in a potential BATTLESTAR GALACTICA spin-off:
Tricia Helfer: You know, I’ve never really thought about that.  Without giving away the finale, I guess there sort of could be.  It’s definitely a closing in one respect, but now that you mentioned it, there could possibly be a spin-off.  I don’t expect there to be.  I really don’t expect there to be and I don’t think that’s their intention, but I guess you can never say never in this business. 

Tricia Helfer on Breaking out of the Cylon mold:
Tricia Helfer: I think people within the business really respect Battlestar. If they’re fans of the show, if they watch the show, they’ve also seen that the Cylons aren’t just cold robotic creatures like maybe a Terminator. It’s not your typical robot. It’s much more like Blade Runner and the Replicants and things like that. So they have a lot more emotion and they’re a lot more human than—I think it would be harder if you were playing much more of a robotic creature than people might think, that you might not be able to do other type of roles. So I’m really not worried about it.

On her upcoming guest appearance on CHUCK:
Tricia Helfer: My character (Agent Alex Forrest) is alive at the end of the episode and she could always come back, but I don’t expect to come back, certainly not on a regular basis, but I’d certainly sign to coming on again and shaking things up. I think she may have a little thing for Casey at the end of the episode, so if she comes back, it would be fun to come back and explore that because Casey doesn’t get very much action.

On her mystery pilot that’s in development:
Tricia Helfer: I’m right in the middle of pilot season right now.  It’s my first year in five years of being available because of Battlestar now being finished.  I got Battlestar in my first year of acting, so definitely being on a show, it’s amazing to be on a show, you want to be on a show, but it also limits what you can do with your hiatus when you’re shooting 22 episodes a year of a show.  Now is really the first pilot season and I’m actually in negotiations right now with a pilot that I’m quite excited about, but it’s a little too early to stake my claim on it yet until everyone has signed on the dotted line.  But yes, I’m looking, as one of the callers earlier asked about varying roles and I’m definitely looking for my next project to be something that’s a little bit different.  First off, I’ll be playing a human and not a spy.  But yes, I’ll be looking for something that varies the roles up. 

Don’t miss Tricia Helfer on BURN NOTICE (10PM Thursdays on USA Network), BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (10PM Fridays on Sci Fi Network) and on an upcoming episode of CHUCK (8PM Mondays on NBC)

I don’t think I’m overstating anything when I say that this summer has given us some of the best TV I’ve seen in a long time. I’m still not caught up on the few weeks I missed due to our trip to San Diego, but I still feel like I’ve seen some quality TV that I’m glad we have in the summer so these shows don’t have to compete with my regular fall viewing. Here are my favorite shows from the summer (if not listed, it’s because I’m just not caught up and I can’t say it’s my favorite if I haven’t seen it…I’m talking to you, THE CLOSER).

My five favorite summer shows this year:

BURN NOTICE – Ever since my visit to the set, I feel connected to this show. I’ve had the chance to spend time with the people that make the show possible, so to me, that makes season 2 even more spectacular than season 1. Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) is a great character – he’s sarcastic, which is perfect for me – I sometimes feel like sarcasm should be my middle name. I love Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar, who I can’t say enough good things about) and I think she’s even better this season than last. No one compares to Sam (Bruce Campbell) and, say what you will about Madeline (Sharon Gless), I think she’s a fantastic character. I have enjoyed every episode of Season 2 so far. It’s funny, whip smart, and just an easy way to pass the time. I understand the plight of viewers who think the Carla thing has dragged on a bit too far, but I personally am on the edge of my seat, waiting to see how the mid season “finale” goes (since we’ll get more BURN NOTICE in January this year) and what more we find out about the mysterious Carla (Tricia Helfer).

THE MIDDLEMAN – I cannot say enough good things about this show. Matt Keeslar is brilliant as the goody two shoes Middleman. He and Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson) have an absolutely fantastic chemistry between them, and Mary Pat Gleason as Ida is perfectly cast. Wendy’s roommate and neighbor Lacey and Noser are some of the best things about the show. I just find the whole cast to be intriguing, and different. Plus, the creator of the show, Javier Grillo-Marxuach is one of my favorite people on the planet. Please find 100,000 of your friends to watch this show (Kevin Sorbo was CLASSIC last night as the Middleman from 1969) and help a girl out. Also, send peanut M&Ms into ABC Family in an effort to get a second season.

SWINGTOWN – When this started, I thought it would be another cheeseball show that just sexed it up for 44 minutes, and then said “tune in next week for more sexing it up” but I could not have been more wrong. What started as a clichéd story about Swingers in Chicago suburbs has turned into one of the most intriguing character studies currently airing on TV. I love a good flawed character, and everyone on this show (except BJ, who is like the coolest kid ever) has some sort of huge flaw which plays to their advantage. I’m dying to see what happens to Bruce and Susan. And Roger and Janet. Will Roger and Susan act on whatever is brewing between them? Will Janet find a new man when she enters the workforce? What will become of Laurie and Doug (which, again, say what you will, I think this storyline is very real, and I enjoyed it)? Most importantly, does Grant Show’s appearance on PRIVATE PRACTICE later in the fall season (and the decline of ratings since episode 1) mean we should be savoring every last minute of his porn-stache?

MAD MEN – This show is so good it should be illegal. It’s like a drug addiction for me; I seriously cannot get enough! I love Betty Draper. She’s just perfect. And I hate-love Don Draper for so many reasons. I’m dying to see what happens with the Pete / Peggy love-child story. I want to see more Sal has trouble admitting who he really is storylines, and hopefully that means more Sarah Drew! What is going to become of everyone at Sterling Cooper and with Joan as Don’s fill in secretary for a bit, how awesome is that going to be? What started as a lazy Labor Day marathon last summer has quickly become a great obsession, and I am not looking forward to the season ending (I know we’re only a few episodes in, but I don’t want to go another year without it. See, I told you it was like a drug)!

PSYCH – Burton Guster and Shawn Spencer are two of my favorite characters on TV, period. I love them together. I think their friendship is dynamite and I want to hang out with them on a daily basis because they just crack me up! Add in time spent with Henry Spencer, plus Lassiter and Jules, and I’m in! Cybill Shepherd was great as Shawn’s mom – looking forward to seeing more of that. I kind of can’t wait for the Roller Derby episode that some friends got to see being filmed. Everything about this show screams “Great summer escapist fare” and I love escaping into Santa Barbara on a weekly basis!

What else is coming up in August?

Know what else I’m excited about? The season premiere of GREEK on August 26. I miss that show – it’s one of my top summer shows from last year, so I’m glad it’s coming back! And getting the timeslot right after megahit THE SECRET LIFE is such a sign of support from the bigwigs at ABC Family. Kudos to them!

“I’ll Catch it in Reruns”

That’s a big motto for me during the regular season when there’s a show I really want to watch but I just don’t have time to, and for me this summer, that show has been CSI: NY. I don’t know why; I’m not a fan of CSI. I really don’t love CSI: MIAMI though I watch it. I am absolutely hooked on CSI:NY thanks to the power of reruns and On Demand.

I’ve also gotten the chance to get completely caught up on DIRTY SEXY MONEY this summer (I have had them on my TiVo this long) and I’m even more excited for the new season now!

What about you guys? What are did you love this summer? What else are you looking forward to?

In the fifth of our series of interviews with the cast and creative team of BURN NOTICE, theTVaddict.com proudly presents a Q&A with the Executive Producer Jeff Freilich — who was kind enough to spend time with theTVaddict.com Senior Editor Amrie Cunningham [as well as numerous other media outlets] on a recent visit to the set.

Can you say your name for the tape?
Gabrielle Anwar.

[Everyone laughs]
We have the most remarkable hair and makeup department. Most people don’t recognize me on South Beach. It’s amazing, because in front of camera, I wear a Triple 0 and off camera I’m a 34 waist. The people in Miami just can work magic! So Jeff Freilich.

It is pretty amazing when you walk around this set and see what’s involved and all the people involved. Do you ever just take a moment and say “yeah, I put all this together” and how difficult is it to put all this together?
I only say that when there’s no blame attached. Miami really hasn’t seen a television series of this kind of scope since the days of Miami Vice. The only other show that stayed in Miami before this, between Miami Vice days and now was South Beach, which was a short-lived series. A lot of shows come here to shoot just to get beauty shots. Dexter shot its pilot here. They shot a few more episodes and then they moved to Los Angeles. CSI: Miami shot part of a season here. They come here a couple of times a year to pick up the look of Miami. That’s something that we can’t afford to do. We’re on a different budget than these shows. One of the disadvantages of shooting a show for cable television is that you’re working on budget that’s no more than 60% of the budget of a standard prime time network television show, so you have to be a little bit more creative in the way that you spend your money. We couldn’t afford to shoot in Los Angeles and come to Miami three times a year to get shots of Ocean Drive and the Brickell area. If you’re going to dive into Miami, we had to dive in with both feet. And the problem was that we also had to start shooting last season and this season right at the head of hurricane season. Ideally, if there had been no Writer’s Guild strike, we would have been starting to shoot at the end of January and we would have wrapped in June. We would have had much different weather. We would have had probably more consistent sunshine with lower temperatures which is much more conducive to doing this ambitious a series in only 7 days per episode. People just tend to get slow in the summer. It’s not because the crew isn’t really wonderful. It’s because you die, you kill yourself to get too much work done. Plus we also run the risk of heavy rain and other things which is why most of the series don’t shoot in Miami.

When this pilot was originally written, it was designed for Newark, NJ, and it was changed in part by USA’s influence to Miami to give it a better look, to make it a more inviting show as you’re flipping the dials, and I think what Matt’s conundrum was “I want a guy to be trapped in an uncomfortable place.” How do you ever make Miami an uncomfortable place to be trapped? Well now that we’ve been here for two summers in a row, we have the answer. [everyone laughs]

And we put Michael’s loft in an industrial section, the actual loft, and it does exist. That loft in the pilot was shot on location, in a writer’s loft along the Miami river in what was at one point maybe 10 years ago, to be considered a place where you didn’t want to walk when it got darker. Now it’s becoming, as a lot of urban neighborhoods are becoming it’s a revived kind of community and it’s invited a lot of artists in and there’s shops opening and urban renewal is changing everything. But at least when Michael looks out his window, he’s not looking at South Beach where anyone in the audience could go (sarcastically) “oh poor guy he has to look at that all day”. But what Miami has given us, originally when we came here, was kind of a, it was a work in progress when it came to the filming here. It’s a place where lots and lots and lots of really glossy looking commercials are shot, pieces of big movies are shot, pieces of television show, but nobody in the crew hadn’t really had a long term job for a really long time. People like Terry Miller, the producer of the show, or Elaine Keratsis, who is the production supervisor, none of those people really had this kind of ongoing work.

I come in as an exec producer to set the production up in Miami and I hadn’t worked in television in 14 years, either. I just kind of disavowed TV altogether and made movies. It’s because television and anybody who works in television will tell you it’s a real grind. It is the same thing every day for 5, 6, 7 months. It’s very exciting in short stretches, but after a while, you really fight to come up with freshness. Because that’s what television needs. You want consistency in the series and you want freshness in a series. The actors get to the same point, and everybody involved in a creative aspect of the show. We shot there already, we told those stories before, we learned those quotes before, we’ve seen those cars before, we’ve had those extras before. How many times can that same girl go to the same club? You get to the point where you really start to struggle to find something that’s new, and we have somehow succeeded in doing this. We’d gone to locations recently that I had never seen in Miami. I’m sorry to be so long winded. It’s a Friday. It’s just one of those things and I tend to run on. To go back to answering your question, yeah, we came to this building a year ago and there was nothing here. It was going to be torn down. The Miami convention center was just the place where Jim Morrison exposed himself on stage years ago at a Doors concert and then went to jail. The hotels across the street where we put the guest stars and the directors, where the Eagles and Don Henley and a lot of other people. This was an iconic place which was on the border of being destroyed. We came in and talked to the film commission here. We turned this into a movie studio, and that’s something I’m very proud of, but I’m even more proud of the people who did it. I said let’s do it and a bunch of people actually did. It’s an ideal place to work. It’s also been home to Marley and Me, the picture with Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston.

I mean, we’ve created a movie community in Miami. We found practical locations. Madeline’s house exists in Miami. It’s a trip worth taking; it’s only about 20 minutes away. To see how these sets were recreated from the original, it’s really quite exciting. It’s seamless. Last year, we shot outside the real house, and inside this one and you’ll never know the difference, you can’t tell. With the loft, we’ve done the same thing. We’ve gradually built this building up. It’s incredibly fortunately located, right by the ocean. While we’re on a stage day, we shoot something that looks like we’ve gone to a location. We shoot along the water front here; we built a café, the Carlito Café. We have that in a corner of this building that they used to sell tickets out of. We’ve found a way to use all of the surrounding areas of Coconut Grove and it was the only way that we could possibly make the show look the way it looks for the amount of money that we have to spend on the show. The thing that I’m proudest of is that we make a show, that with a lot of shows that spend a lot of money, and I think it looks a lot better than shows on the air. If it weren’t Miami, the tone of the show, one of the things that people seem to like about it is that it has a lightness, a crispness. Aside from the fact that I’ve been blessed with a cast that can deliver those kinds of things, the look of Miami, the color, the architecture, the people, is a character of the show also. Miami is a true character.

The show would not have felt the same in Newark
Why do you say that? [everyone laughs] No, I totally agree. And it wouldn’t have been Newark, it would have been Toronto for Newark which is even more difficult to conceive of. I mean, I grew up in New York. I know what Newark looks like, it doesn’t look like Toronto.

And then how do you avoid not looking like The Sopranos after a while?
Although in the Sopranos, they didn’t shoot in Newark very often, they shot outside, in a rural area. One of the things I love about Matt is that he is very adept at being flexible and making broad changes that on a second read feel like they were naturally the right first choice. When I read the script that had then become the Miami script, and Matt had never been to Miami before, and it was only when matt and I and Chase Alexander came to Miami, we though, oh wow, this is Miami, let’s start changing things. And changes got made. We tried to make the show more Miami. Each trip down that the writers make to see more of the things that aren’t in the tourist books.

Why do so many productions leave Miami in the first place?
Well, because, originally, I think because of two things. I think that before and we helped do this, before there was a really cultivated community of crew that could work on episodic television, which is more than twice the daily work of a movie, so it takes that kind of a special person, it takes people who can have energy in this kind of climate for 14 or 15 hours a day, and that’s a hard investment. The other thing is that you’re not paid as much. A commercial grip is going to make 3 times what he makes in a day on a television show, so at first it wasn’t appealing to the top crew to work on a television show. But that’s not the primary reason. I think the primary reason has always been weather. I think that one hurricane wipes us out for a week and that’s unbelievably expensive. We’ve been very fortunate, we haven’t had that. But I think that the risk prevented a lot of production companies from committing. I think that a lot of people thing, boy, if you show them a lot of palm trees in Los Angeles, they’re going to think that it’s Miami. The fact that there’s no Deco architecture in the west side of LA is notwithstanding. I think that the other reason is that the cast on some shows just didn’t want to commit to uprooting themselves and moving to Miami. I think that a lot of production companies felt that the cost of transporting directors on a regular basis and certain crew people because you can’t get an entire crew in Miami. Our Director of Photography, Bill Wages is from Atlanta. One of our assistant directors is from Los Angeles. We have other people in the crew; one of our production designers is from Los Angeles. A lot of people have to be brought in, and I think that on paper, the first thought is that you have to fly so many people in Miami, and house them, and pay them per diem, that the cost of bringing them in kind of offsets the cost of the look of the location and it would be better to go shoot in Los Angeles, maybe. And pretend. I mean, God, they shot every picture for 50 years in Los Angeles, and made it look like every place in the world, why can’t you make it look like Miami?

One of the reasons I wanted to shoot in Miami is that I think that all the reasons you don’t want to shoot here are good reasons to shoot here, for example. If Jeff Donovan were walking around 65 degree, sunny weather in Santa Monica and playing it for Miami, he would have a very different rhythm to his step. Everybody in the show would have a different feel. Miami has its own pulse, just like New York does, just like Los Angeles does, if Los Angeles does. There are days when it doesn’t have one at all. In New York, the pulse is like twice the pace of Miami for example and extras look different on the streets of New York and the same goes for Miami. You really need to shoot in a place, and I’ve always been a believer of going to the actual location to shoot whatever, in order to get the flavor of that location. The other thing is that the architecture in Miami is kind of singular. A show like Miami Vice, which did repeat business in Miami, it was the first show, recognized that and in a way, Miami Vice put Miami on the map. A lot of you are kind of too young to remember what in 1986 was revolutionary on television. When you saw South Beach lit up with wet streets and two guys driving around in hot sports cars with white linen blazers and t-shirts underneath, it created a look that became a style that then had ramifications on almost everything else that was on television. People for a while talked about ‘we want another Miami Vice’ but what does that mean? That meant style that we hadn’t seen before on television. It was a lot of blue sky and beaches, and pretty women, and pretty cars and pretty buildings. Miami Vice had a good run on TV and then it was like, well what else can shoot in Miami. Miami Vice kind of defined Miami in a way that ruined it for other TV shows. This is the anti-Miami Vice. Burn Notice is the other side. It’s not about flashy, it’s about a guy who’s trying to get out of what seems to be a beautiful place. And it’s that irony that kind of attracted me to the show.

Do you work full time out of Miami? I know Matt flies back and forth.
I am here because the California penal institution that I was let out of made me come here. [everyone laughs] No I am here all the time. I come out here at the beginning of the season.

Next season, will you be doing January to June? I’m already assuming that there’s going to be another season.
I would say February to June or July, yes. That’s what I’d like to do. One of the reasons why, it’s an astronomical reason. If we start shooting April 25, as we did this year, and we wrap in October, we are here for the longest days of the year. Which means, we’re not going to see any of the night life in Miami, which is Miami. Miami is a sleepy town during the day. It’s a town where people sit at cafes and get drunk and get ready for the evening, or they sit on the beach, or in their cold office. They’re not in the streets and it’s not as colorful. Miami on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, you go around South Beach or you go around the Brickell area, or you go around other parts of Miami. You go to Lincoln Road, which is kind of Miami’s answer to the Santa Monica promenade and you can’t walk down the street without bumping into thousands of people. Because it’s cooler and everything’s open late, and that’s a side of the city that we haven’t gotten to see and that’s a side of the city that we all want to see. So I think that if we were able to shoot in February, March, April, before the clocks change, when it becomes night at 5:00, then we’re going to get half night, half day, and it’s not going to be as hot, and things will move a little quicker, and what’s amazing, and I don’t know how we did this, but we actually cast a lead actor who in a full suit does not sweat when it’s 95 degrees. I hate Jeff Donovan for that. He’s amazing. It’s so in character. Michael Westen doesn’t sweat about anything except talking to his mother [everyone laughs]. And when he walks down the streets of Miami wearing an Armani suit and a tie and it’s 95 degrees and 90% humidity, he’s the only person who’s dry on that street. It’s remarkable. Imagine what he’d look like at night. He would glow [everyone laughs].

You said you haven’t done TV in 14 years. Why is that? This is kind of a three part questions. Why haven’t you done TV in 14 years, what do you think has changed about television in 14 years, and why are you back?
My last experience in television, in episodic television, mind you I’ve written, produced, or directed over 500 hours of television. I started in movies but my first venture into television really was Beretta. You can look up the rest of my credits. But the point is that my last experience was the most unpleasant experience of my life. I was executive producer and partners with Arnold Kopelson, a producer, and we made the movie Frogmen with OJ Simpson in Puerto Rico, in 1994. It was my company that made the movie and everything in that movie became evidence in the murder trial. The film was confiscated and it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, so I decided, also, it was the beginning, because it was a two part thing, I wasn’t just making Frogmen, also, the time when television as I had always known it began to change in a way that I felt uncomfortable. I was executive producer of several series before that, where I had a tremendous amount of, and in some cases 100%, creative control of everything that mattered. I could say no to any note I got from networks or the studio. I could cast anybody I wanted. I could hire any director I wanted or any writer I wanted. That kind of autonomy was something that I really enjoyed and I surrounded myself with enough talented people to succeed. What happened in television in the mid 90s and it happened in part at the same time as the rise of cable television so that there were more venues, there were more channels, there were more outlets for it, was that it also was the handing over of studios and networks from individuals to corporations. When I started at Universal, there was one man who called the shots. It was Lew Wasserman. Lew Wasserman wanted something done at his studio, it got done. It was very easy to go into the heads of the studios in those days , ask a question and get an answer, and live with that answer. When it became managed by conglomerates and nobody had an opinion until they heard another person’s opinion. I actually once heard from a network executive in those days. I had written a pilot in the early 90s. I handed it in, and asked him what he thought and he said, “I don’t know, I’m the only one who’s read it.” Now to abdicate responsibility for making a decision to that degree is frightening. I suddenly realized that the inmates began to run the asylum and I just didn’t want to be a part of that. I didn’t want to have to deal with several layers of oversight before I got a decision that I felt I could have made better to begin with. I was a writer, I started as a writer, that’s all I did for a long time. I became a producer in lieu of them giving me more money as a writer. Universal gave me a title; I didn’t know what the hell it meant. It’s the only title you could give away without a guild determining whether you deserve the credit. So in the mid 90s, and this was 94, when large companies started to swallow up production companies on networks and networks and production companies started to intertwine, I just thought it was time to bail out and I became partners with Norman Jewison and I made 6 films with him, and Barbra Streisand and I made a series of six films, and I had just started to make a lot of movies, and what I realized about movies was, particularly when you’re dealing with independent films or dealing with lower budget films, they are so grateful that you give them a good movie that they kind of leave you alone from the time they give you the check to the time you give them the movie and I liked that. It was a slightly slower pace and yet I had 5 or 6 movies going at once, and it was really fun. Cable television during that time, primarily Showtime during that time, had become the dream independent film production company for those of us who wanted to make pictures that wouldn’t cross 1500 dollars. We still got stars, we still got great directors, but we got to make pictures about subjects or in genres that they weren’t making feature films about.

You did Rescuers?
I did Rescuers: Stories of Courage. That was wonderful. I was with Barbra Streisand with 6 amazing directors and 20 incredible people in the cast, and they’re all true stories, and we went all over the world with a Canadian crew. We shot in Belgium, we shot in Holland, we shot in Canada. It was a phenomenal experience, but literally in that case, I took a very large amount of money from Paramount and Showtime and took off with 6 directors and a lot of actors and went all over the world and came back two years later and gave them 6 movies. I can’t tell you how incredible that was just as a creative person it’s really nice not to have somebody looking over your shoulder. Television in a way became doing your homework with your parents watching and nobody likes to do that. You don’t want to take a test with your teacher staring over your shoulder kind of shaking their head and nodding at you. I had a relationship with David Madden who is at FOX television, and I’ve known David for a long time, never worked together, we were just friends. I did a picture for FOX which was called Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas with Christina Applegate a few years ago; it was based on a James Patterson book. A few years later, David called and he said, I have a pilot script I really want you to read, and I said no. He said, I know you really well, I think you’re going to like it. So I get this pilot script, I’m in New York with my daughter, looking for an apartment for her, and I read the script and she’s talking to me, and I’m ignoring my daughter [laughs]. I’m reading Burn Notice, and it’s this 100 page script written by this guy, never heard of before. I loved the script. I agreed to talk to Matt. I said I would do this if I liked the people I have to work with. I’m not getting involved in something else where I don’t like the people I’m working with. I don’t want to be miserable; it’s not worth the money or the effort. This show is a lot of work and it has to be done right. I met with Matt and I instantly liked Matt. What I saw in Matt was a little bit of me 20 years ago. It was a guy who was terrified that something he had spent a lot of time writing, had really lived in a way, in a way Matt wants to be Michael Westen. In a lot of ways, Matt thinks just like Michael Westen. I could see in him, the writer who is afraid that these 100 pages were going to be taken and turned into something completely different. Every writer lives with that fear. And I had been teaching at AFI for a few years also when I was at Los Angeles. What got me excited about teaching was the same thing that got me excited about having breakfast with Matt Nix that morning which was if I work with Matt Nix, maybe I will start to be just as excited as I was 25 years ago, 30 years ago, when I started working in this business. Because after a while you get jaded, after a while you get tired. After a while you feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over again and it’s all about a paycheck. Having been in medicine years ago and having not liked being a doctor, and having become a writer, having gone into this business, I never wanted to do anything again that I wasn’t having a good time doing. I thought A) this guy’s going to help me have and B) what I’m going to do is I’m going to make sure it comes out exactly the way he wants it to. Our deal has always been if Matt gives me what I want, which is something I think we can shoot, I’ll give him what he wants, which is his show, without anybody meddling with it, and turning it into something different. And we kind of made that pact, but it wasn’t for the series, it was for the pilot. I refused to do the series.

Do you also think that television now, it’s more prestigious to work in television?
No, for me, it’s never been prestige. I had a lot of friends, I went to AFI also years ago, and most of my friends went into movies, and I kept trying to hire them to do television and they all went, we don’t do television. Now, I think the Jerry Bruckheimers of the world kind of opened up television. Anybody with half a brain knows that media is media. Anybody who makes movies should also make something for the internet. There is no difference anymore. In Mao’s little red book, it says Art is for the people. Well now, we’ve kind of come to realize that, that kind of prophecy. I have a son who is 26 and daughter who is 22 and they hardly watch television. They watch everything on their computers, because it’s portable, because it’s instant, because they can pause it and start it up again. I don’t blame them, I do the same thing. I hated the fact that I actually sat on an airplane and watched a movie on my Ipod. I was the person I always hated. These are supposed to be people who are “I don’t have the time right now, I’m going to watch it this way” so really media is media and now I don’t think it’s a question of more prestige, I think it’s a question of nobody cares about prestige anymore. I think that everybody tries really hard to make a good product and everybody, the dream of a creative person, is to have their work complete. Now that we have movies direct for DVD, and in a couple of years, there won’t be DVDs. Everything will be downloaded, and everything will have a failsafe data on it, and you’ll be able to buy it for life, and burn it yourself. Now we just make things. And if they happen to find their way to someone’s eyes and ears, you’re lucky and you’re happy.

Jeff, get back to why you didn’t want to do the series!
I didn’t want to do the series for the same reason I said before, I didn’t want to make television. It’s very, very repetitive and the idea of coming to Miami and leaving my home and uprooting myself and coming here for an extended period of time, it just seemed like a sentence. Like I was going to be sentenced to go to Miami. But we didn’t know. I got a picture to make, I remade, I produced a remake of Bachelor Party, and Miami seemed like the right place to make that, and the series got picked up in the middle of production on that. Matt and I talked about it a little bit and again, I decided at that point truly, I decided that I wanted to be the person that I never had working with me. Matt wasn’t going to come here, Matt has three children. There needed to be somebody here that basically protected the material. What I do best is that I know how to spend money in the most creative ways possible, and that’s what I pride myself on now. I don’t write as much as I used to anymore, I direct every once in a while, but I do know how to take money and spend it on the things that I think a writer would feel are the most important places to spend it. I don’t spend it where the production company thinks it’s the most important place to spend it. A writer’s mind is different than a production executive’s mind. I’ve never had that job, I don’t want to know what those people do, frankly, but I do know where the emphasis should go, and I know what I think makes the show look best, and that’s where I like to spend the money, and I thought that it would be good to protect the series. I like the show. I like the fact that my mother likes the show. And I like the fact that my daughter likes the show. To me, it’s really bizarre that a 22 year old and an 85 year old both like the same show. It’s unusual. And then when I started to see the stats and the demographics on this show were so wide, it obviously has a universal appeal, that maybe somebody who has less objective opinion like me, because I was just part of it, opened my eyes a bit. I agreed to do the first year, and I produced the first year, and I was ready to come back. I love the cast; I really feel at home here, the people in Miami couldn’t make me feel more at home than I do. They’re truly nice people. I don’t find anybody here jaded, everybody comes to work excited and it’s inspirational to me. I hate the fact that I’m here in the summer, but nobody listens to my complaints which is why I’m here complaining to all of you [laughs]. I get on the phone with somebody in LA and they go, “Where are you?” and I go “Miami” and they all go (sarcastically) “Aww”. “But you don’t understand, it’s really…”, “Yeah, right,” and they move onto the next thing. I’m on the show because I like the show.

Would you describe yourself as a writers’ director?
Oh I definitely would. I became the kind of producer that I literally always wanted to have. I don’t like to stand on the set and look at my watch and make people nervous. I’ll tell you what my job is, and this is what I tell the people at AFI, because I taught at the advanced producers’ workshop. There is no definition of a producer; can anybody tell me what a producer does? A producer is the guy who throws the cocktail party. You want to invite a whole bunch of people who basically get along but there’s a little conflict because conflict is good. Conflict keeps things interesting. You want to bring the right caterer who is going to serve the right hors d’oeuvres and the right drinks because you want to make sure that the grips have their [stuff]. It sounds stupid, but that’s what I do. I know everybody’s name, I know everybody’s job. I basically can do almost anybody’s job; not as well as they do it, but at least I know what it is, so when I hear that they’re having a problem, I can understand how to solve that problem. I came from Roger Corman years ago, it was my first venture into movies. When it was me, and Joe Dante, and Peter Bogdonavich and Jonathan Demme and Francis Coppola and Tim Hunter and Johnny Axelrod and Jonathan Caplan and Paul Bartell. You got 25 bucks a week, you got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but god help us, somebody gave us a chance to make our movie. Joe Dante and Tim Hunter and Alan Arkush and I made a movie and Tim and I got paid $500 to write the script and Joe and Alan got $500 to direct it. And when we were done shooting it, we thought, boy, it could use a little stock footage from one of Roger’s other pictures and we put some shots in from Death Race 2000 and we got our checks and it was $350 not $500 and we went to Roger and we said how come we got a total of $700 instead of $1000 and Roger said “stock footage costs money” [everyone laughs]. But, we were okay because somebody made our movie. For me, it’s like we were happy and made nothing, but we had a good time doing it. Here we’re paying people good salaries. This is a union crew; we’re paying people very well. All of them are very happy that they’re not working high steel in Miami on a crane. They need to know that they’re appreciated, they need to know that somebody’s here to support them, they need to know that I don’t blame people when things go wrong because it goes wrong all the time. Maybe it’s my background in medicine when things were life and death that gives me a perspective on film making which is if you can’t have a good time doing it, it shows on screen. And you’re miserable coming in, and you’re working 16 hours a day, and you don’t want people to wake up Tuesday and say “Oh shit, I have to go back to work.” You want them, at the end of Friday, to hang out and have a beer, and not want to jump in their cars and drive home and escape. You want them to feel that it’s cool about waking up on Monday morning and coming back, and that’s what I try to do. I want the actors to be happy, and I want to keep the micromanagement of television away from us and away from Matt, and to some degree I’m able to do that, and to another degree, Matt does that by writing terrific scripts and putting a writing staff together that keeps the network and the studio satisfied. At this point, I never get calls from the network or studio except happy calls and as a result of that, then I feel like I’ve done my job. We’re not one that they worry about.

What do you think is going to happen with the upcoming actors’ strike?
I don’t think there’s going to be one. I may be the happy idiot but I knew there was going to be a writers’ strike. I think that when it comes to labor issues in general, this is not only in the entertainment business, but especially in the entertainment business, if the studios and the networks can afford a strike, then the odds are that there will be a strike. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think that when the networks and studios want a strike, there will be a strike. And I think that the writers’ strike was a strike that they thought was a necessary strike. And I think that it ended when they thought that they couldn’t afford it to go any longer. I think that they cannot afford for there to be a SAG strike, and I also think they don’t want there to be a SAG strike, so for those reasons, I’m just banking on logic. The fact that it’s already, almost the middle of June, about 3 more weeks, and the fact that I haven’t been getting constant phone calls saying “what are you going to do about episode 7? I don’t think we should start it.” The fact that I haven’t gotten any emails like I got last year in August saying “if there were a strike and you couldn’t start up again until February, how many episodes could you have ready by X date?” Well, I ain’t getting that kind of message, so I’m just assuming there won’t be one. If there is, I think it would be terrible. I think it would be terrible not for the television viewers, but for the people in Los Angeles and everyone else where people work on television shows. The hit that people who aren’t making a fortune, like everyone in the crew, took, during the three months of the wrtiers’ strike, was to some people, impossible to recover from. People lost their homes, lost all sorts of things, they lost their careers. I don’t think anybody wants that to happen again. I know that the actors don’t, our cast doesn’t want to strike. I’m not up to date as I was during the wrtiers’ strike what the issues are and that are different than what the writers or directors already settled on. But I have to believe that new media will be the cornerstone of whatever the negotiations are and I have to believe that SAG also knows that whatever the writers guild and the directors guild settled on is the benchmark of what their deal will have to be. Whatever the supplementary issues are that concern actors specifically, could be different. I’m not afraid of the strike, per se. I would dread it.

Are you glad to be back to television?
I’m glad I came back to Burn Notice. I have been offered a lot of other jobs in television that I refused. And I’m not sad I refused those jobs. I like Burn Notice a lot. I like the show, and I like the friends, I like the people. I don’t know how long I can do it, personally. I’m not saying I wouldn’t produce another season. But it’s made me antsy to do something of my own. I made a picture, I produced a picture in between last season and this season. I did another picture for 20th Century Fox. I probably will make another picture. I have other things I would like to do. I’ve been writing a book for three years, and haven’t ha da chance to finish it. As long as there’s this show and as long as Matt’s attached to it, and as long as we’re still talking to each other.

What movie did you do?
We did Behind Enemy Lines 3; Tim Matheson directed it. It’s actually quite spectacular. I just saw Tim’s cut last night. Shot in Puerto Rico. Went back to Puerto Rico and had most of the same crew as Frogmen 14 years ago.

Claudia [PR Rep]: One last question.
Is there anything that I didn’t cover in my rambling.

We’ll get into politics next time.
Politics? We’re in the right state for that! [laughs] We count every vote in Florida. During the recount, the Germans could not understand why we didn’t just take all the ballots and recount them. They were like, isn’t that what you vote for? I couldn’t come up with an explanation. It’s insane.

Did you watch RECOUNT?
Yeah, it’s terrific. It’s terrific. I just wish the right people watched it. Unfortunately, all of those movies end up preaching to the converted. EK, our production supervisor, bought for a couple of us, Scott McClellan’s book for Father’s Day.

[we asked Jeff to elaborate on his book and the series it’s based on]
The first one’s called “Who the Devil Made It” which was about directors and the second one being “Who the Hell is In It” and those were his personal interviews with incredible directors going all the way back, well before Hitchcock all the way through Spielberg. “Who the Hell is In It” is 30 or so actors that he interviewed. If you read both of those books, you get tremendous insight into what it’s like to direct a movie and what it’s like to be a star. But no one’s ever written the companion piece which is the producer’s book, so I’ve been going around interviewing a lot of producers. It’s less interview than it is personal insight; it’s like what let you down this path, and it’s the one job that’s so poorly defined because it’s such a specious job that you can’t put your finger on what that job is. People used to give their brothers-in-law producer credit, because you can. Before there was a writers guild, people gave their brothers-in-law the writers credit; now they can’t. So what is a producer, because there’s so many different kinds, and so many different jobs. So I’m trying to write that book. These days, I have a stack of books in my apartment here that I can’t get to. It’s driving me crazy. I think the internet has ruined book reading for me. I’ll spend two hours looking at things on the internet, and then I’ll look at the book. So now I want to get one of those little things that Amazon sells….

A kindle…
Yeah, and travel with that, because the only place I read anymore is the airport. And it’s sad.

What was it like working with Barbra Streisand?
Barbra was funny. Barbra is a micro-manager. Barbra was good training for going back to television. [laughs]. The first person I hired was Peter Bogdonavich, because I knew Peter knew Barbra from What’s Up Doc? Barbra’s the one who insisted they hire Peter to direct What’s Up Doc. I know that Peter and Barbra had a wonderful relationship. Being with Peter for years, I’d see him talking to Barbra once a week, for years. So when I hired Peter, the first thing I said was, “Ok what do you think I should do with Barbra?” and he said “don’t send her a movie until it’s finished because she will give you notes until you die,” so that’s what I did. I’d hire directors, we’d shoot a movie, we’d cut the picture, I’d deliver the picture, I’d send her a copy and Barbra would send me back a really nice note. She really liked it. Barbra was just really supportive and what I need Barbra for was her name, because we needed credibly. We’d tape an introduction that Barbra did, and she was wonderful. She’s a good person. She’s really a good person and she and I both have the same reason for making Rescuers. We both wanted to die knowing that we’d made at least one thing that had some kind of weight to it, that wasn’t just pure entertainment. For a New York Jew, I won an awful lot of Christian awards that year. [everyone laughs]. I stood at the pulpit at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, from the Archbishop of New York got an award, it was the biggest award. I made a speech that silenced the crowd. Now that you know me, I’ll just talk a blue streak [everyone laughs], but a Catholic audience of about 3000 people. Fortunately, most of the people in the Rescuers stories were Catholic. Rescuers was a series of six films about Christians who did selfless acts of courage during WWII, during the Holocaust, to save the lives of Jews. It took place in France, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, and Germany. Most of the people who did, they happened to be Catholics. That’s one of the reasons for the Christopher award in New York which is a big award. It’s basically the Catholic’s version of a humanities award. And I said that these stories came from Yad Vashem which is a monument in Israel that honors the over 9000 righteous Christians that were identified during WWII as people who did selfless things to save the lives of Jews. And other people who were victimized by the Nazis. I ended that with “Hopefully, God forbid this should ever happen again, there will be more than just 9000.” But it’s true, it was sadly true. And the only person who came up to me and gave me a hug at the end and told me that he was proud that I said that was the guy who won the award for feature films that year, Robert Duvall. Robert Duvall came up and had made a very Christian movie with The Apostle, and he said “it’s so true, but it’s so sad.” And then each priest and the Archbishop said “somebody had to finally say that.” It’s kind of cool, but yeah, she was a pleasure to work with.

In the fourth in our series of interviews with the cast and creative team of BURN NOTICE, theTVaddict.com proudly presents a Q&A with the the ever so cool Jeffrey Donovan — who was kind enough to spend time with theTVaddict.com Senior Editor Amrie Cunningham [as well as numerous other media outlets] on a recent visit to the set.

Panel: [laughs] Uh oh!
Jeffrey Donovan: How’s it going? Have you had a good day today, so far? You got to interview everybody exciting so far…

We’ve been waiting for you!
It’s all downhill from me. All downhill.

Sharon Gless talked you up a lot.
Oh, my mama. My mama. [laughter] Isn’t she amazing?

She said nothing but lovely things about you.
She’s been like a mother to me down here. She is so great. Her and her husband, Barney – you know famous producer – they’re just so great. I wish they were my parents.

She seemed like she’s pretty much adopted you.
Yeah, she has, she has. I’m filing papers next week.

Jeffrey Donovan with numerous members of the digital press

Everyone said you don’t sweat, what’s the secret to that?
[laughs] Who’s everyone?

Everyone. [laughter from all]
Well, it’s like the yogurt, it’s like a running gag now. It’s not that I don’t sweat, I don’t look like I sweat. I can’t do this job without thirteen to fourteen hours of energy per day, you know? So, what I did… I got in pretty good shape last year but I got in better shape this year. And I don’t mean just working, I really looked at my diet and how athletes train to peak during a game? Well, they’re looking at a sustainable energy of three hours, let’s say, well mine is thirteen hours. So I started talking to a nutritionist about that and learned a lot about diet, learned a lot about your body as an eco-system and a furnace at the same time and how all the organisms live with the food and burns, blah, blah, which will never get printed… But, anyway, your body is an engine and I just want it to run as efficiently as possible so that I can have sustainable energy in the dip because, if I’m in every scene and I give my all to a scene with Gabrielle, I don’t want to walk in and short change Bruce or Sharon. So, I try to parcel out my energy throughout the day and I realized everything has to do with diet and that’s my fuel. So, long answer is that my diet allows me to burn energy the most efficient way throughout the day so I never get hot.

Did you have to radically change your diet to do this?
Uh, no. My diet was like 80% there then I met with a nutritionist and talked it out and showed him what my day was like and he said, “You’re doing pretty good, just I would eat more of this in the morning and this is what you should have throughout the day and blah, blah, blah…”

The stunt coordinator said you’re naturally good at the stunts and the props guy said you’re naturally good with the guns so… were you in fact a spy at one time?
I owe them so much money! [lots of laughter] Man! Uh, no, I’m like a jack of all trades but I’m not great at any one thing. I mean, at any thing, I’m just good at a lot of things. And because it’s a TV show and you have a true— I mean, Charlie Props is a MACGYVER, I mean that guy’s really MACGYVER. He’s unbelievable. So he’ll do it and I just have a particular ability to watch something done once and I’m able to repeat it [snaps] right away. Like lines, I never know my lines before I walk into a scene and I’ll have the script and I’ll rehearse with you and I’ll know that I sit a certain line and I kinda of move over here [gestures] on a certain line. And then I’ll memorize it physically from that and as soon as we shoot, fifteen minutes later, I’ll know three pages of dialog. I don’t know why but, then, I don’t know – we just shot – I don’t know one line now. It’s all gone. It’s like a toilet, it just flushes away.

How did you get this role?
[knowing look] Everyone’s been asking that, right?

[laughs] No, but I’m wondering… [more laughter]
That’s great. There’s a lot of confidence now…

No, I’m serious, how did it come…
I met with Matt Nix. The script was sent to me from USA, they wanted to work with me again. Bonnie Hammer and Jeff Wachtel, they had done Touching Evil with me. So I went and met with Matt and did a couple of scenes for him. He basically said, “You’re my guy.” And that was it. It wasn’t that I was that great, it was my take on the material. I didn’t know all my lines, I didn’t have everything right. He just saw my angle on it and my angle was: Bring levity to a serious situation and be real serious about something that’s real casual.

So, saying hi to Mom was like, [lowers voice, straightens face, real serious] “Mom.” And that was an intense moment. [laughter] And when I’d walk into a knife fight, I think in the second episode, he comes out with a knife and I stop him and he comes out with a second knife and I’m like [surprised look of delight], “Wow, he’s really good.” [laughter] So that kind of levity I brought and I ad-libbed a little bit and he knew I wasn’t do it to be funny, I was doing it to kind of sell this character to him, saying, ‘This is my angle on it.’ And he bought it and USA was already on board so it was kind of an easy fit. And we were really lucky to strike gold on our first season with ratings and reviews. Hopefully we can repeat that this year.

Sharon said you went to her for advice. What kind of advice did she give you?
Well, she’s been around the world in so many different roles and so many different series but mostly it was about Cagney & Lacey. How do you do this role, any role – a specific role like hers or mine, for such a long time and not burn out? And she kept on talking about how it was always everyone else. It’s always about, “Well, I don’t want to let anyone else down.” So she was really great, kind of sage advice about knowing that you’re part of a team and just keep thinking that, that five guys go out there and play in the NBA finals – and the Lakers got spanked, Go Celts! – but you’re part of a team. It’s funny, I don’t know if you read the New York Times today, the sports section is about Doc Rivers coaching style is all about selling ‘team’ to superstars. And you’ve got Bruce Campbell, Gabrielle Anwar, and Sharon Gless and then a little guy named Jeff Donovan. So I’m like, “Oh, what the hell am I doing…” They all think it’s my show, they keep telling me that, but I said, “No, it’s our show.” Because I can’t play Michael the way I’m playing him, without how great their energy is towards me, making me who I’m supposed to be.

How do you keep your head on straight knowing that so much is riding on you— it’s a team but…
Wow, you guys are just killing me here. [laughter] No one had said that yet… [laughs] Umm, it’s almost a joke on this set. I drive my bicycle – I have a bicycle because it’s just easier to get back and forth from set – and a grip will yell out, “Don’t fall.” A teamster will walk by and go, “You’re messing with my children’s education.” I mean, and it’s a joke, but they’re serious! To know that 300 people are employed every year, not because of me, but because of the show is a great responsibility to know, don’t let anybody down. That’s why I worked out so much on the off-season. I got healthier. Because if I do a sick day then the show shuts down and loses $125,000 a day. I had a film in Cannes and I wanted to go. They told me it would cost them $250,000 because they had to pay everybody while I was away and there was no scene they could shoot without me.

What’s your take on Michael? Is he truly stuck in Miami? Is he starting to adapt to it, how do you see it?
He is stuck in Miami for a couple of reasons. Not just because of the BURN NOTICE but I think he’s stuck in his life. He’s been running away from who he is for so long and his family and now he’s been thrust back into his family because of his work. His work allowed him to get away from his family and his work is forcing him to now be with his family and that’s a real interesting dilemma. Miami is Michael’s Gilligan’s Island and, if he ever gets off that island, then the show’s over. So there is a type of conceit that you have to just go with that he’s stuck in Miami but, for a viewer, like “Don’t ever leave Miami” but, for Michael, “I got to get the hell out of Miami.” So that kind of conflict I think is perfect for the show and I don’t think it’ll ever leave.

Season two, though, it seems like it’ll be a different dynamic. Now that he’s sort of taking orders as far as Tricia Helfer’s character is concerned. How does season two find him? What is the new dynamic?
I guess you’ll have to watch. [laughter] Ummm, did you talk to Matt Nix? What’d he say?

He said, “Jeff’ll tell you anything you want to know!” [laughter off Jeff’s look in response]
No, he didn’t.

He said to ask about your shortened version of Law & Order… So we want to hear that before you go.
[laughs] Great.

There always has to be the bad guy that is against Michael. It can be Tricia. It was Phillip Cowan in the first season. It’s Carla this year. I don’t know who it’ll be next year or if there will be or if it’s always Carla. I don’t actually know but there’s always going to be a kind of manipulative secret force that is forcing Michael to do things he doesn’t want to do. But the great thing about Matt and all the writers and what they do is that Michael accepts the job under those conditions but somehow manipulates it to his own benefit. It’s easy to write a show where, and I actually like this show, Prison Break. Two guys, they’re in prison, they have to break out. Well they did [laughs], remember? Now what do they do?

What Matt is going to try to do, and I think it’s great, is that there’s always going to be some force that keeps him in that little aquarium and all these different fish keep going in, some of them predator and some of them prey. It’s his way of just keep surviving, just keep swimming, don’t ever stop, you know? I don’t know if that answers it but it’s the best I can do.

How is it working with Tricia? I know you’ve only done couple a days together…
I’ve only done a couple of days. She’s great. I really haven’t gotten to know her that well. Her dynamic is unique in the sense that I’m now face to face with a force that’s keeping me down and I have to just keep getting information from her whether she knows she’s giving it to me or not and that’s going to be the fun spy stuff.

Did you do a lot of research to prepare for this?
I read a lot. I’m more of a reader actor than a seer actor. I think I went and saw three movies in the last six months. I’m not a big TV and movie guy. Matt and all the writers have seen everything and they’ll say, “Hey, you remember on…” I watched stuff as a kid but, when I research a role, I just kind of read. I read about spies, I read biographies, autobiographies, fictional stuff. Anything that just showed me the world that these people had to live in. I’m less concerned with a person but more of the environment they have to survive in. I extrapolate from that how I would do it, what are the circumstances that are similar with Michael and I go from there.

Because it seems like everyone we spoke with today – I was trying to find the one method actor – and it seems like everyone is kind of laid-back and just kind of takes it as it comes. Does that make for a better working environment? That you’re not dealing with people who are really intense?
I think the demands of a TV show, especially this one, wouldn’t allow a type of – in the worst sense – method actor. Because we’d constantly be waiting for them to shift their method to the scene but these are pros, everyone on the crew as well, and you’re just dealing with everyone really good at their game. So just play your game, expect that everyone else is going to catch the ball that you throw to them and, uh, occasionally someone just goes above the rims and dunks… on the Lakers’ ass! [laughter] And then everyone’s really happy.

I can’t tell, are you a Celtics fan?
[laughs]

Sharon said that at first it kind of freaked her out a little when you just wanted to go without rehearsal but now she’s really getting into it and that it’s fun for her to go at a faster pace.
Well, Sharon… we rehearse, don’t get me wrong, we do a rehearsal. What she means is we won’t rehearse, rehearse, rehearse then decide ‘oh, there it all is, now let’s shoot what we know it is.’ I’m more of a believer in rehearse so that we are all on the same page but we haven’t decided what we’re actually going to do in the scene. So that when we actually go through it, it’s actually being created right in front of the camera and that’s what you capture. Then you cut it together and find out what you have, rather than deciding beforehand, planning it all out, shooting something that has now become stale and now you have to artificially bump it up in post and edit and blah, blah, blah.

Sharon is so much better than she thinks she is. So she wants to feel secure before she acts because she wants to please – because all actors want to please – but she’s so much better than she knows she is that her rehearsal is ten times better than most people’s prepared. So what I do is I encouraged her and I asked Matt, “Let’s just do it and see what happens.” It’s a riskier way of working but I think the gains are greater.

How does that compare to your working with Bruce?
Umm, similar. Bruce likes to rehearse to know where everything can be just the same as Sharon. I’m just less concerned with it being right. [laughs] I don’t know why, I’m just less concerned and they haven’t fired me yet so I must be doing something right. I’m just less concerned…

When you ad-lib on the show, do you allow to improvise and ad-lib or is more like the writers’ are like, “Stick to the script.”?
It depends. If it’s a story point, I won’t ad-lib. I am story first, character second. In my thinking. You’ll never hear me say, “Oh I think it’d be kind of cool if Michael…” That’s thinking my character is more important than the story. My whole agenda, every time I walk on set, is what is the event in the scene that is utterly crucial the audience get? As long as we know we hit that, everything else can be played with. So, if I walk in, and the scene is something like I sit down and I need to get information from you and that big information is ‘it was a red car,’ now we know, right? We’re all on agreement? Yep, the red car was the thing. So now when I come in I can play around with how I come in, what’s my attitude towards you, I can ad-lib a little bit at the beginning, maybe at the tail, maybe there’s a funnier button to it. Do you know what I mean? So it’s not like, “Oh, I’ll ad-lib every scene.” It’s what can withstand improvisation but never at the expense of the story.

Well in the case, then, say when you’re sitting with Bruce and – I know you both can probably like improvise and banter back and forth – do they let a lot of that slide and go into the show?
We banter, it’s funny, you’re very smart. Bruce and I can banter ‘til the cows come home. It’s an easy thing for us—and he listens, he’s a really good actor—I’ll say something, he’ll respond to it and the scene is over and he’ll continue and we’re just, “Blah, blah, blah.” What the writers and producers have learned is let us do that. That doesn’t mean they’re going to shoot it, doesn’t mean that they’re going to use it, but it’s informing, not only us, but it’s informing everybody of where is the limit of the scene. We’ll all hear it, we’ll all, “It’s spilled over, we can’t go that far.” But the only way you’ll know it is if you jump. That’s what I’m saying, it’s risky. Just jump into it. I mean, I’ve fallen on my face so many times and things are funny and people are like, “Well, why’d you do that?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” But then the next time I won’t do that but because of that choice it will inform an actual line and that line pops for some reason.

At what point do you do narration, do you have the narration in mind when you walk into a scene and you know this is your voiceover stuff? Have you already done the voiceover stuff and know it?
I usually do the voiceover stuff at the end of the episode, of the shooting. Last year was brutal, last year they put the narration anywhere I had a break and I never had a break. So they found that when I would finish one scene and they literally had to move from my loft to here, I would have five minutes before rehearsal because it took that much time. And right behind that ‘Food & Drink’ sign is an ADR sound room and I would run in there, put on the headphones, do two pages of voiceover, and then run back. And it became so much that I actually very sick. I got tonsillitis and a huge bronchial infection. I was out in the middle of a scene, I couldn’t talk anymore. It was about halfway through the season. And I was talking like this [imitates talking with no voice] and I was trying to act, like that. And they said, “Well, we should probably send you to the doctor but, uh, we’re trying to get this shot.” [laughter] And, literally, going, “We could always just dub it later.” [more laughter] And I was like, “I gotta…”

So I went to the doctor and he’s like, “You have tonsillitis, you’re almost getting bronchitis, I’m checking for pneumonia…” So I go home. They sent me alone – you know with a driver – I went back to my apartment and I laid down and I assumed everyone knew but they’re calling going, “Are you coming back?” [still imitating having no voice] “I’m not coming back.” “You sound really sick.” “Because I am!” [laughter] “Alright, take tomorrow off.” “Thanks! Wait a minute, tomorrow’s July 4th, everybody has that off.” They gave me July 4th off and I had to come back July 5th and I showed up on set, I gargled with salt all morning to get it clear, and then they shot me with B12. And I just…

So you did the whole show on steroids.
[chuckles] Yeah, basically.

What would you say is the most dangerous or most challenging stunt that you’ve performed?
What’s interesting is that it’s not what you think. I was going to say that in the pilot I rode a motorcycle in the first scene and it was a dirt bike, which are big knobby tires which only grip in the dirt not on flat surfaces but it was cobblestone. So, I told them I rode, which I do, I was spinning it around doing all these fun things. Then one time the director, in the middle of the shot, went, “No, go that way.” [motions the other way] And I tried to turn and I laid it down and I tore my ankle open. And I was like, “Oh yeah…” And everyone’s scared and, you know, “Hundreds of thousands of dollars…” And, you know, they wrapped me up and said, “Get back in there.” [everyone laughs and says it with him] So that would seem like that was the one but it wasn’t. It was the second to last season finale episode where I meet Phillip Cowan on the roof and he’s shot? Well, he was right in front of me and he had an exploding pack which is, 9 times out of 10, is very inert and it doesn’t really do anything. It just usually explodes and then the blood comes out.

Well, for some reason, it exploded and there was a coagulated piece of blood and paper that was about the texture of Play-Doh that came out of the explosion at about 300 feet per second and went right into my mouth and blew my mouth open and it was just all inflamed. It was like a golf ball, if you put a golf ball in your lip that’s the size. And, if it had gone two inches above, I would have lost my right eye, without question. If you go back to that episode, after that scene is a phone conversation where I’m telling Nate to come get me. Well, I have it right here [holds an invisible phone over the upper-right side of his mouth] because I’m covering a huge blood clot that had collected right underneath my nose and they were icing it in between scenes because I had to shoot the rest of the day. So that was the most dangerous thing…

Does that make you leery of doing other stunts?
Not other stunts because I don’t mind laying a motorcycle down, I don’t mind twisting my ankle doing a run because I’ve done all these things. I’ve had glass shatter and cut me all up my arm. I don’t mind that stuff. That kind of stuff, I just should not have been in that position that should have been a stunt man. I want to do all my own stunts and now I can’t do any of them because of that. Because something like that – everyone was surprised – but, of course, who expects something to go wrong. Everyone’s thinking, “Well we’ve done all the precautions…” That was the most dangerous thing that happened last year.

You have some great action hero moments in this show. They just showed us the scene from the first episode of season two where you’re trying to break into a place and, when it goes wrong, you pull this giant Terminator-sized gun out of the bag.
[laughs] A grenade launcher!

Yeah and you do this thing where you throw the propane tank and blow it up. When you’re filming that stuff, do you sometimes just go, “This is pretty bad ass…”?
Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty cool. I like that stuff, I like that stuff a lot. But I like the propane tank better than the grenade launcher because anyone can carry a big gun. But to design that thing, to throw it, to know you have to hit it at a specific thing and rotation… that was pretty cool.

Do you show that stuff to your family and go, “Don’t piss me off!”
[laughs]

Do you feel like MACGYVER sometimes? Do you like the MACGYVER aspect of the show?
Yeah. Umm, I never feel like MACGYVER because… I love MACGYVER, I grew up on MACGYVER. MACGYVER did things that were, for the most part, implausible. That was kind of a fantasy show. I looked at MACGYVER before I did this. I watched this and said, “How is this going to be different?” Everything we do on the show, you can actually do in real life, that’s what’s neat about it. And what I really like about it is that we try to take responsibility if we introduce anything to the audience that is dangerous, like an explosive device. That we always hold back a key ingredient that without that keeps it from working.

But everything we do— There’s an episode coming up actually, and I don’t think I’m revealing anything, but I make an x-ray machine in my trunk and you can actually do that. And that’s pretty cool. I mean, this is stuff that they work their butts off to research and you can do it. It may take a little longer than what we do it but what Matt’s saying is that, “Make sure on this show you can do everything, we just do it in a condensed time.” That’s what’s fun about it.

Do you think you’re going to be able to do this and keep it up at the same pace for the long run, for another 5 or 6 years?
I was just asked that today in another interview. My honest answer is that I’ll do it as long as my body doesn’t give out. But that doesn’t mean I get old. [laughs] My body may give out after two, three seasons because it’s just so physically demanding. I’m trying to stay healthy. I’m always trying to stay a step ahead of this role. In my first season, I knew a hand full of dialects and accents. I have a black belt in karate and six/seven years of aikido. That was good for the first season but I wanted to get better. So, in the off season this year, I took ju jitsu for three and a half months. I studied ten other dialects that I’ve never really studied before. I hired a nutritionist. So, you know, I’m just trying to stay above it and as long as I do that I’ll probably have some longevity with this role.

Do you think people realize the physical nature? I mean, it’s one thing to say, “Oh, I’m an actor…” but do you think people know—
No one has any idea how hard this job is and they don’t understand how dedicated I am, or any of these actors are, to this job. I just have to be – not more dedicated – I just have to have a dedication to a lot more facets and a lot more areas. The irony is… I make it look easy and it’s the hardest job I’ve ever done. [chuckles] So, I love that you guys – and I can tell that all of you actually like the show and are fans of it – but, in some ways, the people who like it doesn’t realize how hard it is to make it look this easy.

Well Fred Astaire and Charlie Chaplin said the same thing; they worked so hard to make it look so simple.
So simple.

It’s just funny that it’s fun, escapist television but that much work goes into it.
Yeah and our goal in this show, at least Matt and I’s, is how do we take something that everyone has seen for years, standard spy thriller/action/comedy show, and bring levity to it. That’s, I think, difficult without making it campy. MACGYVER was, in some ways, campy. The A-TEAM was an action comedy, campy. You never believed it, did you? You never believed The A-Team actually was real.

Only when I was eight.
Well, yeah, eight. You wanted to be “B.A.” Baracus, with the chains. [makes a gesture toward his neck where the chains would hang if he had him as laughter sounds] But I think, 9 times out of 10, you ask any BURN NOTICE fan, “Do you think it’s real?” It is, meaning that the world Michael Westen lives in and is doing things in, is real, he’s actually doing… I don’t think people are deluded but I think that people will buy it. That is so hard, so hard to do, and that’s what we try to do. Not every episode, every day. Every day we walk into a scene going, “Would this fly? Would this really go down?” And, then on top of that, “How do we make the audience smile?” That’s basically our mantra.

So everyone says this is a really fun set, can you give us some examples?
I wish I had anecdotes, I don’t have any. I mean, “The other day, Bruce…” I don’t have any. I don’t. It’s just, everyone’s really good at their job and with that confidence of allowing people to do their job you get a comfortability. People make jokes, people laugh, people will be sarcastic, just like any work environment. Everyone feels like we can joke around and we’ll still get our jobs done.

Does having such a small cast foster that sense of community?
Well, what’s interesting is that I hardly see Bruce, Sharon, and Gabrielle. And Bruce hardly ever sees Sharon, Gabrielle, and me. We do have scenes but a lot of it is the A-story which is all going off with where the espionage is and what’s behind the BURN NOTICE. And then the B-story is all the guest stars and how do we help them out. It’s really a rotating family, it’s never feeling like we’re all just there— it’s not SEINFELD where we’re there every week like it’s just the four of us.

[Editor’s note: here is where Jeffrey did his own version of an hour of LAW & ORDER in 5 minutes. It’s hard to explain in print. Just know that the next time you see him, you need to ask him about it!

Thank you for coming out here and taking the time out of your busy schedules. I really appreciate the support you give our show.

…Michael Westen had bid Fiona a fond farewell, shared a bro-goodbye with Sam, and was ready to accept the fate that he may have said good-bye to his friends for the last time, as he drove into the back of an 18-wheeler.

The season premiere, airing tonight on USA Network pick up a short time after that. As we find Michael trying to get himself out of the truck. He gets a phone call from a mystery woman (Carla, we come to find out), who lets Michael know that he now works for the people who burned him, whether he likes it or not.

Following a slightly lackluster resolution to last year’s finale, the first two episodes take off – they’re full of action and the fun we’ve come to love from BURN NOTICE. There are some great scenes between Michael and Fiona. Gabrielle Anwar gets to show another side in the premiere that just made her climb higher on my favorites list. I love the Sam and Michael relationship – everyone needs a best friend like that. Michael’s continued exasperation with his mother is classic. Jeffrey Donovan and Sharon Gless share a scene that just kicked my sappy ass, so I’m interested to see where the mother/son relationship heads this year. I am starting a petition right now for more Fiona/Sam scenes. They’re great!

What I loved most about these first two episodes (besides the super sweet accent Jeffrey Donovan adopts in the premiere – cut to me, swooning) is the interaction between Michael and Tricia Helfer’s (ridiculously beautiful) Carla. Even over the phone, the tension is high. They joke with each other, kind of pick on each other like kids on a playground, all the while getting down to business. I love that we’re going to see this duo continue to go at each other; I can’t wait to see what the writers do with the storyline (and what happens when Fiona finds out how smoking Carla is).

If you haven’t seen Season 1, go out and get it on DVD, cram those 11 hours of TV in before the premiere – you will not be disappointed! If you watched Season 1, watching these episodes of BURN NOTICE is like welcoming a friend back from a long vacation.

In the third in our series of interviews with the cast and creative team of BURN NOTICE, theTVaddict.com proudly presents a Q&A with the radiant Gabrielle Anwar — who was kind enough to spend time with theTVaddict.com Senior Editor Amrie Cunningham [as well as numerous other media outlets] on a recent visit to the set.

Panel: Do you enjoy working in Miami?
Gabrielle: I actually love it. I would much rather be too hot than too cold. I’m perfectly happy melting all day long. Jeffrey has to wear full on suits and ties, poor thing, and Bruce too. Although he gets to wear Hawaiian shirts a lot too. He’s Mr. Tommy Bahama.

How do you handle doing the martial arts and hand to hand combat that Fiona does?
Smoke and mirrors. Jeffrey’s actually incredibly advanced in martial arts. He’s like triple billion black belt or whatever, he’s pretty high up there. Although I don’t know who actually judges that stuff. But I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s basically just choreography. I did dance, so that comes in handy. But as far as hitting the right artery or chopping the right part of the body, I have no idea what I’m doing.

Do you know any martial arts?
No, I don’t.

You look like you do?
Well, thank you, but I can tell. When I’m working and I’m looking at the dailies, I go, ‘Oh, God, I hope they cut around that one.’

You work with guns on the show a lot…
Yes, I’ve actually been fortunate enough to go out to this huge warehouse full of props out in Los Angeles. It’s very exciting. Next time I go I’m going to take a shopping cart and fill it with all the fun stuff. There’s a shooting room there. It’s literally a metal storage room with thousands of bullet holes in the wall. So I went in there and shot just about every weapon that is used from the second World War on. Because I’m a bit of a lightweight, I got blown back more than a few times by automatic shotguns and machine guns. It’s very empowering experience to be wielding a weapon and I am by nature very much a pacifist. So if I can get turned on by it, I’m a little terrified what really happens in the military.

What did they tell you about Fiona’s back story – is she a terrorist?
I was pretty much told nothing. But I have a very rampant and vivid imagination, so you can imagine what I came up with. I think that her intentions are all in the right place. Those organizations are almost always formed with the best of attentions and then they often go awry. Think of Scientology. Not that I’m comparing terrorism to Scientology. I think Fiona is a seeker of justice, but she seeks it in perverse and extremist ways, which I find rather refreshing.

Does she have a background in special ops like Michael?
Either that or she’s bloody intelligent. I think she’s had some serious training to keep up with Michael. Yes, I think she’s been around the block a few times.

How does knowing or not knowing her background affect your performance?
I don’t know. I certainly have never been one of those actors who researches everything from my character’s astrological sign or whether I was raised by one parent or two. I have three kids and I just don’t have time for it. I have to put my priorities somewhere. Perhaps if I didn’t have three kids, I’d be an impressive actress.

Are you hoping they might show some of Fiona’s life in flashbacks? Or Michael and Fiona, there have been little comments about their history…
I don’t think much of flashbacks. I always get terribly confused with flashbacks. I like when there’s a card that says, ‘This is what happened once upon a time.’ I get really confused so if there was a flashback in an episode, it wouldn’t take much to confuse me.

Has Fiona encountered the new character being played by Tricia Helfer yet?
I have not, but I have plenty of ideas of how I would react. I did meet her briefly. She seems quite lovely actually, which sucks because I really wanted to hate her. Oh well.

At the end of last season, Michael took off leaving Fiona behind. What can you tell us about her reaction this season to what he did assuming he does come back?
Yeah, he does come back. I think Fiona is a little peeved that he made the choice to take off. Being a woman and having some sincere feelings for him, she wishes the choice he made would have included her, but it didn’t. So I think she’s dealing with a little anger for wont of a better word. There are not many other emotions that she deals with. Yes, I think she’s a little pissed. I know she’s a little pissed because we already shot it.

Did you choose to do this series because you wanted to spend more time with your family?
No, not at all. It’s kind of the contrary because I haven’t really seen much of them since they’re finishing up school. They’ll be here for the summer. No, my choice was purely because I thought the material was worthy of taking me away from my children, who have a life of their own now. It was time for me to get back on track with me as a woman, not just a mom, or a wife or a…

You didn’t care that it was TV?
No. This is such a cliché and I can’t believe it’s coming out of my mouth, but there are so few great women’s roles, so I could care what genre it is. If it’s brilliantly written, I’m in if they’ll have me. I’m really enjoying myself on many levels, particularly professionally which is such a coup for me.

Talk about the time you’ve had when Fiona’s worked with Sam at the end of last season while Michael was going off doing his thing.
It is an obscene amount of fun. I mean, it’s illegal the amount of fun we have. He is just such a fabulous man and an incredibly fun actor to be around. There’s no tension, there’s no ego, so it opens the creative channels like nothing else. It’s impossible to keep up with him.

Any pranks among the cast?
I think that only happens on the “Ocean’s 11” set. The Clooney factor. There’s a lot of good humor. It’s a really fantastic crew. Everybody’s really, really good at what they do. It’s a lot of fun.

Do you stay close the script or is their adlibbing?
Bruce is the king of the adlib. He has adlib diarrhea. I think because it’s television and there are so many cooks in the kitchen, that they’re pretty gung ho about sticking to what’s on the page. I honestly don’t blame them. There are so many writers involved and it has to pass through so many channels to be approved. As an actor, I don’t know if I’m qualified to improve upon their words. Improvisation is something I have had a hard time viewing.

How much of the stunts do you do?
I do a fair bit because it’s very hard to find stuntwoman who looks like a pre-pubescent child, so there a bit of problem finding matches for me. I actually do like to do it. I like to get in my body. Sometimes I get so caught up in my head with my American accent. You know, did I say that with my British accent or is that actor looking at me thinking my American accent sucks? To get out of that continual mental banter and do stunts is fun and hopefully I don’t break a leg.

Do you need to do an American accent for Fiona?
I was quite happy to go in to this with an Irish dialect because it was a little easier to get my mind around that then playing an American on a show indefinitely. It’s much more work for me, particularly because the audience is American. Part of my problem is that I grew up in a household where my mother corrected every other word I say because she was an English teacher. I’m so aware of every word coming out of my mouth because of my mother. She appears in my mind from somewhere telling me that I’m doing it all wrong. So now I’m changing the way I’m speaking. I find it very distracting in a scene to be thinking of how I sound rather than how I am just being. It’s tricky. Now my mother says I sound like an American.

Did you want to do an accent?
When I read it and she was Irish, I was thrilled. I had just spent the summer in Dublin shooting a film.

Do you look at the script and get excited about what Fiona is going to be that week?
That’s my favorite part. It makes me feel like I’m Jennifer Garner sans Ben Affleck. I love it. I have a great job as it is, but I get to mix it up a little bit. Matt Nix, the genius creator of the show, is so open to my crazy ideas. Instead of doing American club girl, I said can we do Kate Moss.

Do the directors micromanage or do they let you interpret the role as you wish?
I think that Matt has created such a great combo of genres in this show that we have a little bit of artistic license because it doesn’t take itself too seriously which allows for me to play a Kate Moss club girl for instance. They’re all pretty lenient about where we want to take it. We can pull it back if it gets too silly. That’s when the director approaches and says quietly, ‘Let’s do it again.’

How many directors?
Last season we had a different director for every episode. I love television, but that was a little bit confusing for me. I guess the theory is that it keeps it fresh and they can also determine which of those directors really has a unique vision for the show. We’ve had two directors this season so far who have done piggy-back shows, and now we’re back to Ron Hardy who did one episode last year. And I guess there’ll be some directors who are not invited back.

Is there anything you’ve gotten to be this season?
Kate Moss. I can’t remember. I have an odd way of deleting what I’ve just done. I keep deleting my previous files in my mind.

Do you have a favorite storyline?
This last episode, when I read it, I said this is my favorite. It involves these tattooed Russian types which I find rather appealing. It’s that gun-wielding characteristic I possess. I can’t remember any more – how lame is that? But it was really cool.

What’s been the most difficult thing you’ve done?
To be truthful, the American accent really throws me for a loop. It really does. It’s odd because any other accent I feel fine… Here’s the thing, I used to have a dialect coach on the set and she had the most extraordinary ear. We would have this shorthand between us and she would go slightly to the left with her hand which meant I had to roll my hard ‘r’ harder. There was a sense of relief in not having to really focus on it and have it monopolize my concentration. And not having that luxury for back on I get a little bit more anxious and a little bit more anal about it. There’s nothing worse than a Brit doing a bad U.S. dialect. And vice versa.

Have you ever suggested to Matt that she get a bump on the head and now she’s British?
Believe me, I have tried every trick in the book. One of the reasons I want to do Kate Moss is to get my British cockney in there.

You’re a pacifist but you like to play a character with guns?
I’m a mass of contradictions and a hypocrite at the same time. What a mess!

What reaction do you get from fans of the show? How is Fiona accepted?
Most of the male reaction is pretty obvious. Men are so predictable are they not? And what would we do without them. It’s another dichotomy like my totality. It’s either that she’s such a slutty piece of crap, which is what most of the blogs that my daughter reads and she calls me crying, ‘Your leathery skin…’ which is kind of horrific. There are other women who approach me are like, ‘Yes! You kick ass!’ It’s really been eye-opening to understand how many angry women there are out there who would love to shoot their husband’s in the head with a sawed off shotgun.

Have you worked with Sharon Gless?
Yes, we had a really fabulous scene where we’re both talking about Michael and she reflects on her relationship with him, and we really get to see the similarity between Madeline and Fiona mostly through Michael’s eyes. She’s wonderful. What a wonderful woman! What a strong, extraordinary life she has had. Yeah, I really admire her.

Would you enjoy it if it turned out that Fiona was in on whoever burned Michael?
Of course. But that would be when I get the boot and be unemployed.

Would it be fun if you or one of the other characters took over the narration for an episode?
That would be interesting. I love narration, particularly on a TV show where there is so little time to tell a story unless you turn it into caricature of the characters. There’s really not enough time to really indulge everybody’s little idiosyncrasies. With narration, you can really get through a lot than you normally be allowed without it. Because you can explain so much with a few lines. When it comes to the technical stuff, it’s fantastic. I don’t know if I can pronounce all the words in the narration. I’m glad that Jeffrey is in charge of that.

Do you think Fiona is like a Bond girl – like Pussy Galore?
Yes, there’s a little Pussy in Fiona. It’s interesting because the toughness in women has always been so unattractive, but I guess it works in some women. I think there’s incredible strength in every woman if you can maintain your femininity and still indulge that power.

In the second in our series of interviews with the cast and creative team of BURN NOTICE, theTVaddict.com proudly presents a round table discussion, well really rectangular table discussion with Bruce Campbell — who was kind enough to spend time with theTVaddict.com Senior Editor Amrie Cunningham [as well as numerous other media outlets] on a recent visit to the set.

What is, in fact, the latest and the greatest?
Bruce Campbell: You’re, you’re, you’re looking at it right here. Uh, the TV show that sparked a new industry in southern Florida. I mean since we’ve started, things have been going crazy here. We had to kick Owen Wilson out for loitering.

What happened to the productions in Miami, because I was…
Well, it’s coming back. I mean, it’s back with a vengeance, I think. Because, uh, for some reason, this has become a facility now. I mean, it’s an old convention center and they were going to tear it down. And, and uh, the BURN NOTICE guys thought it would be a good facility to just start it from scratch. So that’s what we’ve been doing; building a facility, at the same doing a show.

At one point it seemed like everything was shot in Miami.
Yeah.

And then it just disappeared.
Could be a lot of things are, uh, insurance rules would change what a state, or what insurance companies won’t cover for hurricanes, and producers get a little skittish, you know. So it’s about that, it’s about incentives that the state offers. So, you know, it’s all about where producers can save dough and have a show that looks good.

Tell us about the character of Sam; what do you think this guy’s all about?
What is he about?

Yeah.
He’s about fifty. He, uh, well you know like the other characters in the show, he’s sort of damaged goods. Which is why I like him. I like it. I like characters with flaws. So he’s a fun-loving guy, who, uh, is now by the end of the first season sort of officially loyal to the group. It was a little iffy there for a while, the first season. Cause everyone is sort of out for themselves. This is a show where you got these three strange people come together under weird circumstances and help the actor. Um, I like characters with a past. Sam has a past. Everyone has a past. So, uh, I also like the fact that these characters are adults. You know, I’m all for going to movies where they’re geared for seventeen year olds, but that kind of gets boring to a guy at my age. So, I love the fact that America is aging. It’s good for guys like me. So, you know, I’m glad for USA, they’re doing shows that are, in my opinion, more interesting from a character point of view. As an actor I’m much more drawn to shows that USA would air than, than a lot of other networks.

Do you think television is the place to be if you’re an actor? Do you think the characters, there are more characters…
It goes, look it’s cyclical. Because you know for a while the feature actors wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. You were a loser if you did television. Kiefer Sutherland would not have done a TV show, you know ten years ago he would’ve gone “click,” you know, and he would’ve hung up on that. And you know, name your big shot actor who now either has tried to have a TV show, or has had a TV show, you know, it’s just, I don’t know, I think it’s the, uh, I think what they realized that the, they want to keep working and television has a lot of opportunities, and it’s expanding like crazy; it’s going insane.

Do you think television is more [jumbled tape, but I’m fairly certain he was talking about cable channels]?
It is because there are so many. They’re so many, there’s so many channels you’re bound to get some good networks in there, with some really good stuff.

Do you also appreciate the fact that USA gives the show a chance to grow?
Absolutely, I think they’re in a great place right now, for a show like us. Every show wants to have time to grow and get better. We are hopefully better this season than we were last season because everybody knows each other, the writer’s know that, you know, we’ve figured it out how to shoot in Miami and the whole bit. So sometimes you need time to figure that out and get up to speed and get an audience. It’s a big country; it takes a while for people to find stuff. You just have to get out there for weeks and months, sometimes years, seasons. So, you know, we’re hitting them with the DVDs coming out, I think in June sometime. They’re airing all the episode right up and then the new season begins. You know, it’s all Machiavellian, but it works.

Sam seems to have a lot of problems in his love life, he’s always complaining about…
Yeah, well these people are good at their jobs and just bad at their personal lives. Like most actors, I mean honestly, you know, I mean you could have a bunch of good actors but they can’t keep a relationship to save their lives. Everyone thinks it’s so glamorous that Ben Affleck is sleeping with all these different chicks. It’s only because he can’t keep a single relationship because he’s working all the time, and their working all the time. So…

Is that why actors hook up with other actors?
Absolutely, cause they go, “you, you’re close, come here.” Then you do it, “my wife hates me right now, let’s go somewhere.” You know, I mean, let’s not get into that.

Does it make it easier to hook up with another actor, because they understand…
Oh, sure it is. We’re in the trenches together. We’re sweating in Miami together. You know, only we know the pressure that we’re under to succeed and make this show great. Only you know, right now, this moment, in my trailer.

So, have you gotten to do some fun stuff this season?
(Responding to Moira bringing him napkins to wipe off his sweat) Oh, it’s, it’s okay, it’s a lost cause.

Have you gotten to do some fun stuff this season so far?
Yeah, it’s getting more and more fun, because now they’re having us do, playing weirder, well, not weirder, but there’s more of a prevalence of you’re now being a snooty accountant, or you’re being a crazy drug guy or whatever. So, there’s a lot of that, and that’s always going to keep an actor very happy. You get to do a bunch of stuff, but you have to have the premise of the story that will allow that. That, you know, um, I think LAW & ORDER isn’t going to go, isn’t going to go there. So, you know, that shows probably not for a guy like me.

Do you think Sam has something to do with the burn?
Sam Raimi?

Yeah, no, your character, Sam.
I don’t know that many Sams. So, uh, Sam have anything to do with the burn? No, not a chance. Sam is a, Sam is a true and blue patriot. One-hundred percent. I’m not even kidding, the character is. He loves his country, but these are three people who don’t like to go by the rules anymore. And I love that. I love the premise of the show where the… they, like, if a cop catches someone who stole your identity, they might catch ‘em, but they’re not going to get your money back. Michael Westen will catch ‘em and get your money back. That’s what’s cool. It’s the full circle, the full… and it’s helping the little guys. It’s all these highly trained people now who use to do a bunch of different stuff on much higher stakes. Now there all these sort of crash and burn victims who are now helping the little person. Makes is, you can’t help it, makes it a show that hopefully people can relate to. That’s what it’s all about, I think. Can the audience go, “I like that character,” whatever. Because you can blow stuff up all day long, but if you don’t care, what’s the difference?

Do you like the fact that they let Sam dress, that he dresses like he’s in Miami? Wears shorts, he wears…
I love Sam’s outfits. I am a Tommy Bahama guy. Well, they’re really comfortable clothes, and I’ve always worn Hawaiian shirts anyway, and Tommy Bahama is the best brand of Hawaiian shirts. Tommy Bahama, write that down, because we want a bunch of free shirts. And, uh, and I think it’s a good match. I think it’s a good match. I’ve done plenty of parts where I wouldn’t wear those clothes in a million years, and then there’s other cases where I go “gimme’ those.”

Do you get to make fun of Jeffrey for being stuck in the suits in the middle of August in Miami?
He doesn’t sweat, though.

Oh, he doesn’t?
He is cool as a cucumber. He’ll heat up a little bit, but meanwhile I’m like projectile … , and wardrobe’s like “another shirt,” so, you know, we line up t-shirts and Hawaiian shirts. So, Tommy Bahama should be really happy, because we’re not just buying one of each, we’re buying like four of each shirt. So they should give us at least like a twenty five percent discount. It’s only fair. So that’s how we combat it. If I was Sam right now, I’d have a t-shirt on, underneath, soaking this all up, and when that failed, I’d do a full change over, and it goes like this all day long.

Last night we had dinner with Matt Nix and he told us that you and Jeffrey tend to try to get each other to break when you’re doing off camera lines. How did that develop?
Mr. Donovan is very irreverent. Sometimes off camera I’m far more professional, I think that should be on the record. That’s all I have to say about it.

What about ad-libbing?
Ad-libbing?

Yeah.
You know what, it all depends on the situation. I never show up in the morning going, “man, I’m going to do some ad-libbing today.” Sometimes they’ll put Sam in a situation where he’s sort of a blunt (to Moira, giving him water) “thank you very much,” he’s like a loudmouth guy who stalls. He stalls while someone else can steals something in another room. You can’t always script that, because it would be a page of dialogue. We just had a scene in a Pakistani consulate, where Sam is supposed to be an irate business man while Michael steals something in the back room. So, Sam has to be obnoxious enough to get the attention of the security and all of that sort of stuff, so that had hired an actor who had had an improv background, and it just sort of happened that way. And anything I said he would throw right back. And, so we could stall, we could go on for days. So, they’ll use some of that, but I think you got to respect the writing. But I only change stuff if A, I don’t remember it correctly, or I can’t say it. If my mouth can’t so those words in that order. That’s about the only time. So, we have a good relationship with the writers. We don’t, you know, they’re the ones coming up with this crap, not us. We’re just trying to make it makes sense, or to enhance it in whatever way.

Have you had a favorite storyline to film?
There’s fun stuff coming up. Sam’s going to be cooking with Madeline. They’re going to be spending some time together. So, that’s always fun cause Sharon Gless is really fun, and very old school, and likes to rehearse and things like that. So, she’s great, and we’ve only had one scene together so far. One or two scenes. After a while you have to put every actor with every actor, you have to figure out every scenario. That’s the only time Jeffrey’s going to get any time off, by putting a bunch of other actor’s together, and not him. So, I’m going to be spending time with her, which is always good. And, you know, we always look forward to the guest stars, because when you have a successful show now you can start getting some decent guest stars. Cause they go, “Yeah, let’s do BURN NOTICE,” instead of “oh, that crappy BURN NOTICE, nobody watches that,” so, now they’re going “what’s this hip show?” So that’s good too, it’s good for the quality of the show. Instead of a low-rated show, it would be tough getting good people in. We had Lucy Lawless last year, we’ve had some, a lot of good people, Esai Morales. Who’s working now? Robin Givens is a guest star. It’s awesome.

You’re a convincing guy, what has been the buzz so far in BURN NOTICE? Are people coming up to you and asking you a ton of questions about BURN NOTICE now?
I’m starting to get e-mails that they didn’t know who I was until BURN NOTICE, which is, that’s great. I love that it’s a good sign, because there’s a whole batch of new people out there watching. I don’t know what our demographics are, but I think we’re doing good in the big one, eighteen to forty-nine. I think we’re kicking some ass there.

[Are you hearing from different fans that you had in the past?]
Um, I’m hearing it from lot’s of weird people, which is good. Um, in that, you know, you need a diverse group of people to watch your show. Not just twelve people to watch your show. You need a really broad audience. I have a neighbor who has a brain tumor, and he says, “I don’t know what it is,” and this is his e-mail to me, “I have a brain tumor, and I have no idea why I’m watching this show. I have to watch this show every week.” So, it hooked him, it got him, so it’s getting people from all walks of life. Even people with certain troubling situations.

Having been on shows that both have struck a chord for whatever reasons…
It failed horribly.

I love BRISCO COUNTY, but my point, did you…
Yeah, you’re the one.

Did you think early on, did you get the vibe this one is gonna’ hit?
Every actor loves to look back and go “I knew it, I knew that BURN NOTICE was going to be a hit.” This is sort of a ball for me, cause I haven’t done television in about eight years, and that was kind of for a reason, cause I, you know, the last show kind of bombed, and I was like “enough of that.” So, this one came along, and my manager asked me to judge it slowly on it’s own merit. Don’t worry about whether it’s a TV show or not. But I thought the pilot was good, because it felt fresh. And then they said that Donovan was going to be involved, and as an actor who’s been around a while, you try to pick who you’re working with. You got to, TV’s a tough gig, who can handle it, who can get in there and tough it out for a while. And Jeffrey has a lot of experience too. And he’s at like the perfect place and time to do this show, I think. So that worked out, that element worked out. So, it just built bit by bit, where you go, “Oh, USA’s really behind us,” they were really getting Sharon Gless and Gabrielle Anwar. So, it wasn’t like they were trying to get together a bunch of hack, you know, sort of know-nothing cast members. So this is a legitimate adult cast. So, that to me meant that the producers were serious, that the network were serious. So, when those sides are good, that’s really encouraging. Matt Nix is a really bright, young guy. It’s great to have a young, energetic show-runner, cause we’re going to beat the crap out of him over seven years. We need those young, bright guys. The writing staff, I think they’re good, they’re getting better. Just like everybody hopefully is. But then the ratings, that’s another whole thing. We didn’t know, I didn’t really track it. For the first time I never pay attention to ratings. And normally I really try to get overnight and numbers and bug agents, “what were the numbers? What were the numbers?” On Monday. We’ll find out, we’ll get the numbers, so they’ve been good and increasing. And so, we’re just frustrated that we can’t get the show out to people quicker. Cause they’re getting pissed, you know, “where’s the show. Where’s the second season,” so, you know, July 10th, coming at you.

The writer’s strike didn’t help you?
Didn’t help anybody, but you know, strikes are meant to cause destruction.

Are you at all concerned about the potential actors strike?
There’s two ways to go, my theory is that actor’s don’t have the spine to do it, uh, “what if I’m unemployed,” but then the other theory is that so many are unemployed, like ninety-nine percent, they’ll go, “why do we care if we strike? I’m already working at Luigi’s.” You know, so it could go either way, I think. I hope they settle something. Look, if the producers have settled with the writer’s and directors after now, then they’ll be kind of putting a big fist in front of the actor’s thing, “c’mon, shape up, let’s go, sign on the dotted line.” So, we’ll be getting something cheesy out of it, something insignificant, and then we’ll all move on. What kills me about the writer’s strike, the best, here’s a little trivia on the writer’s strike, the revenue lost on the four months of the writer’s strike was so much greater than any of the gains that they negotiated. They could have had that money. That money lost was more than the gains that they got. There’s irony for you.

So you have a desire to write or direct any future episodes of BURN NOTICE?
No. No, I’m a really bossy director. Actually I just made a movie, my second feature called “My name is Bruce,” and I like it how I like it, and television is a much bigger situation. It’s about the show, it’s not really about what I think specifically. As a director, TV has very specific needs.

Is it more fun playing a character…
I’m happy being Jeffrey’s second fiddle. I don’t want to get in his face, cause he’ll go, “get out of here, what are you, get out of here.” Yeah, are you kidding? Absolutely. Jeffrey’s carrying a big log of loads uphill in Miami, in the summer. I come in and crack a few jokes, and then I go swimming. But, yeah, it’s a good situation to be in. Because then you can give support, and you can support. You try to be there and help him out, schedule wise, and things like that. There’s lots of things you can do.

Because of the writer’s strike there’s actually a lot of shows won’t be back this summer that usually would be on, say FX or HBO, you think that’s really great for you guys, because you know….
I wasn’t aware of that. I didn’t know what those ramifications were.

Yeah, like RESCUE ME isn’t coming back, and ENTOURAGE won’t be back until fall.
Huh, cause it took them too long to gear up or something?

Yeah, exactly.
Or there on a weird different schedule.

I think it just took them too long to gear out. I just figured a show like BURN NOTICE, it could only help them.
Right, and they can’t twenty-four for the whole season.

Yeah, right.
Oh, okay, I hope it does. I want the show to succeed. There are some shows I could care whether they succeeded or not. But, you know, we’ve invested a lot of time and blood and sweat into this, and we want people to like it.

Are you living down here, in Miami?
Oh, yeah, I’m a local. I rode my bike here, that’s why I’m sweating like a pig. Yeah, we’re living because they expanded the season, which we interpret as a good sign. They want more, so we’ll give them more, but it means you got to kind of live here.

What are they doing, twenty episodes?
No, sixteen, is my understanding. I don’t know where it peaks out, you see, but we’re doing sixteen, so yeah, I’m living local, Coconut Grove.

I asked Matt last night why you and Lucy Lawless didn’t have a scene together, and he said “yeah, we didn’t think about it until afterwards,” did you ask him that question?
No, I just wanted her on the show. I didn’t care if we had a scene together with her or not, I just thought that she was good for the show, she was. So, cause after a while you can look back and be like “well, that person would be good for the show,” and I’ve just been tossing out names of people I’ve worked with, and we’ll see whoever comes out to play.

He said that Kevin Sorbo is a possibility.
Yeah, but we’ve got to find something good. Let him play like a horrible drug dealer or something. Some guy we can just wail on.

Do you think Sam sees himself as some sort of a mentor to Michael?
Just different, Michael’s more new school. Sam’s more old school. Sam’s more psychological operations, fist fights, you know, just bug him, bug him and listen to him. Surveillance, cameras, and stuff like that. Michael’s more of, certainly more physical, more of the, can fight anyone, can do anything. Really smart, very chameleon-like, just different styles, I think. So, Micheal’s sort of the super-spy, Sam I don’t think is gonna be, not Michal Westen, because he’s the man.

What about conflictions between you and Fiona?
That’s there problem. She doesn’t care about me. They’ll work that over time. Because Sam’s always, they always argue, but Sam’s always going back for advice. There’s a lot more advice that he’s going back for on this, because he’s having relationship problems. So he’s asking Fi, who’s insane, so I don’t know why, what the purpose is of that. So, yeah, they’ll be more of that, they’ll be more of us sitting in a car, talking.

It was fun last season, at the end of the season, when just the two of you were kind of working together without Michael. Was it fun to have a different dynamic?
It always is, it always is, cause we have four main actors. So, I think you want to shuffle it up as much as you can. Cause Fiona’s had scenes now with Madeline, and I’m starting to, and yeah, it makes sense. The three of us together to sort of discuss the mission, and then we all split up and come back together and do the Mentos moment. See, what I like about the show, is it’s old school, little Billy’s going to get his medicine at the end. I like that, it’s not mean-spirited, it’s not cynical, cause Michael Westen could be a very cynical guy, cause he’s been through a lot. The shows really about the humanization of Michael Westen. Because he’s had to train to become a machine, and now he has to learn to be human. Sam’s good at being a human, but he has to train a little better.

Now in the season finale of last year, when you and Jeffrey are running, and they blow up the bridge behind you, you have such a great facial expression. Was that rehearsed at all?
Well, I’m a ham actor anyways, so that’s going to happen. And when they blow up a boat behind you, it’s not hard to react to it. It was a little bit, it was somewhat knowing that Michael Westen would not be doing the big reaction, cause he’s too cool. Sam is kind of an idiot, so he’ll react a little more viscerally, Michael’s more cerebral, how’s that?

Matt told us last night that he’s trying to convince you to do a flip on the show. What do you think the odds are of that happening?
Um, pretty low. Depends on the situation, if I land in water maybe. I don’t know. Look, if the show stays on the air long enough, there going to have to figure out all kinds of stuff. We’re going to be doing really silly stuff. Like, I want to know when the first episode is when we’re in drag. When is that going to happen? How many seasons in does that take? Like, when is the bratty kid episode? Where one of us is stuck with a really bratty kid.

Is it going to be a very special BURN NOTICE?
Sure, very special magic, very special BURN NOTICE. I don’t know. I pity the writers because they really have to chart it all out, it’s a lot of work. I don’t know what’s up Matt’s sleeve. But I think the audience will like what’s coming down the pipe. Because, I think like any smart show you can’t, why reinvent the wheel, here? So, you will see similar elements that you will have always enjoyed. Only you will see new situations, that you’re favorite people are now in. Oh, oh, oh, will they get out of it? What will happen next? Will Fi blow something up?

Now, you obviously have a lot of die-hard fans. Have you had any like really crazy fan experiences?
Pretty low on the scary scale. One guy was taking pictures of my house in LA. But it wasn’t even my house, I was renting it, and I wasn’t there. So, I don’t know what that was all about. And it was a cul-de-sac, so my neighbor’s were like “what are you doing? Get your shitty car out of here.” So, that wasn’t so bad. When I hear stories from, like, Kevin Sorbo, because he was like Mr. Studmuffin, doing Hercules, said he had a woman move to New Zealand, from the United States, find out where he went to the gym, she found out everywhere he went, telling everyone along the way, “I’m going to marry Kevin Sorbo,” and I’m like man, I have no problems in the world, at all. I have some chick coming to Coconut Grove, “I’m your neighbor.” So, no, you know most of the EVIL DEAD fans are very, very shy. Most sci-fi horror fans I have to like pull words out of their mouth when we do a signing, cause they just kind of throw a photo down and look the other away. I’d be like “hello, how are ya’?” “grumbles.” So, they’re pretty shy, most of them. On the outside they look like they’ll kill you. They’ll kill you in an alley, for five bucks. You just get the Mohawks, and the EVIL DEAD crowd is very tattooed, heavily tattooed and pierced, and first it’s startling to look at the fans. Cause you go, “ah, they’re pirates, half of them,” but they’re really sweet, introverted people, but on the outside, they’re actually nice, kind of a weird…

Are you going to be appearing in DRAG ME TO HELL?
They were fooling around with something, but I was actually prepping for this, I couldn’t do it. They were toying with a few things. But Sam’s just shooting away now, missing me everyday, I’m sure.

What has been the scariest stunt you’ve done?
Scariest stunt? Ah, in BRISCO we were suspended by cables three stories up above a concrete, no, above a wagon full of farm implements, so they could get a camera above us, so I’m hanging on a ledge, and the camera’s above us. And before they hauled us up there, and you know, we’re held on aircraft cables, so it’s, and you’re in a harness, but that doesn’t mean anything, cause you’re still three stories up going, “yeah, that could break, that could break, we could all go. We could go any second.” And it’s even worse when the stunt guy comes up with a video camera before the stunt goes “Yes, Bruce, you’re comfortable with what you’re about to do, right?” I’m like, “Are you shitting me? Are you videotaping? What, is this my last will and testament?” He goes, “you’re comfortable with the safety precautions we’ve taken,” I went, “I didn’t screw that thing up into there, I don’t know if that’s going to hold.” “But you’re comfortable with that, right?” “Well, I’m going to do it. Am I comfortable? Not really, but you’re satisfied with the preparation,” I’m like “God,” you get that occasionally.

Matt told a similar story last night about you staying up on some huge pole or something
On the ledge

On a ledge, with a shotgun. He was talking about…
Well, I don’t think there was a… what he was talking about was the being out in public with a gun. This is how my epitaph is going to read: “Picked off by do-gooding citizen, thinking he’s stopping a vigilante,” because there’s one episode where we’re in downtown Miami, Friday at noon. I’m seven stories up on a building that has a weird ceramic shell on the outside of it, so we’re out on a little three foot ledge going on the outside of it. And I’ve a deer rifle with a scope, and it’s loaded with full loads, which means it’s the loudest concussion you can possibly have. And I’m just shooting at a bank across the street (makes a shot noise), and the way they were shooting it there was, usually you would, if someone looked up to see a guy on a ledge, you’d see a soundman with a mike and you’d see eight other crewmen looking bored, and you’d go, “Oh, there just doing, make believe,” but, now, they just go, “go up there, Bruce, go up there. Just take the rifle and start shooting,” and I was like “Kerpow!” and it’s echoing, and you see business men all down, with looks like “what the hell?” This is Miami, it’s a little bit of the wild west here, and I’m just waiting for some guy to go “Shooter, shooter,” (gun noises) “Got him, shooter down, shooter down,” and I’m like “ahhhhhh…” So that’s how it’s going to go. That’s happened twice now, I shot from an overpass before. There’s a cop, and I’m like, “can you stand closer please? Just look casual, with your hands in your pockets. Don’t be doing this here, someone will hit me with a car. So that’s how it’ll go, cause when you shoot downtown, you can’t always lock up everything, you don’t have the crew big enough to, it’s not like a Spider-Man movie where you can just lock up ten blocks of New York City. It ain’t going to happen here, people are, you know, this is Miami. These people will drive through anything. You really got to be aware. It’s a little off the cuff here.

Are you at the point where you’re still happy to do your own stunts?
Well, you know, when you get to be fifty, they don’t really ask you to do anymore. I’m very happy to do a lot of stuff, but they just, they stopped asking, they go, “ah, it’ll probably hurt him, either Bruce or that, we’ll have that stuntman pull out of that parking lot, that’s fine. The gas pedal might hurt his leg.” No, no it’s fine, I’d rather, cause you have to survive for the whole season, so you can’t really do something that’ll stop the whole show. “Like on BRISCO, I wanted to, there’s this stunt where a horse had to go through a plate-glass window, and I said “let me take the horse through the plate-glass window,” and they’re like, cause it’s a special glass and all that sort of crap, and they practice it, but the guy, they finally checked with the insurance company, and they said, “you can do it but you’re not covered. If you get hurt, you’re not covered, so you can’t do it. So, you have to let the stunt guy get all the glory. My mom still thinks it me, though. She does. I got a phone call after a BRISCO shoot and she goes, “Bruce, you’ve got to stop letting them force you to do these dangerous stunts.” “What are you talking about?” “That stunt where you picked up that little girl in front of the bar and it blew up; what if you had dropped the little girl?” I went, “mom, first of all it wasn’t a little girl, it was a little African American little person, who has acting as a little girl. He was a fully qualified stunt guy.” “Well, what if you had dropped that guy?” “I didn’t pick him up. It was a stunt guy that had picked up the little stunt guy.” “Well, what if he had dropped him?” “They didn’t blow it until they were clear of the building, mom, it was called editing.” “Oh, whatever,” and I’m thinking “God.” So, my mom doesn’t want’ me doing anymore stunts. She gets nauseous. During EVIL DEAD, she got really sick to the core watching the movie.

About one more question and we’ll…
Ask your last, most amazing questions. Insightful, revealing, you want great answers, though, you have to have a great question, though.

Give us a great scoop.
A scoop is that the cast members get along.

How about this one, on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate BURN NOTICE?
As?

As good work.
Oh, eight. Eight. Very high. Very high. Cause if you get up to ten, that means you’re having too much fun, and the show will probably suck. Cause you actually have to put your time in, you know. So, we’re having as much fan as you can on a TV schedule, which is tough, it’s a tough production schedule.

Are you planning anything big for your fiftieth in a couple of weeks?
No, but I’m going to tour this Fall with my film MY NAME IS BRUCE.

Oh cool, what is MY NAME IS BRUCE all about?
A small town in Oregon is having problems with a monster. So, someone comes up with the idea to kidnap Bruce Campbell to help fight the monster. He turns out to be a jerk and an idiot. So, it’s how a movie hero has to become a real hero.

Who’s playing Bruce?
Some guy. Get ready for BURN NOTICE, season two.

Can’t wait a week until the second season premiere of BURN NOTICE? Neither can we!

That’s why theTVaddict.com will be helping to pass the time by posting a new interview from Senior Editor Amrie Cunningham’s recent trip to the set of BURN NOTICE each and every day leading up to July 10th premiere.

Today’s interview: BURN NOTICE star and legendary TV icon Sharon Gless.

Panel: So what’s it like to be a TV icon?
Sharon Gless Oh my goodness! Am I?

Yeah, absolutely!
Well… I’ll tell you, I don’t know if I’m an icon, but I’ve really been… working more than most my age. And I come from gratitude every day – it makes me cry – I come from gratitude every single day. Because I have so many friends, you know, my age, who I was in the industry with, who aren’t working any more. And it feels like a really swell thing that I get to keep working.

Do you fellow cast members look up to you and come to you for career advice?
[Laughs] Um, well, I don’t know if they look up to me, but Jeffrey when we first started just wanted to know, ‘How did you do it?’ Just the stamina that it takes to be, as he is, in every single scene, which Tyne and I were in CAGNEY AND LACEY. It was devised that way on purpose. There was never a scene we weren’t in. But that’s how this show’s been devised. I think this year they’re giving him a little break, because you can’t kill the golden goose. But normally he’s in every single scene. So last year, sort of the only advise he would ask me was, ‘How did you do it?’ I said, ‘You have to get an assistant. You just have to be able to give stuff to other people and just focus on your work.’ He’s so amazing.

I recently spoke with Kim Cattrall, who told me that you and her…
…were under contract together! I just saw Sex and the City. I said to my friend, ‘I know her.’

She remembered you well.
Oh, I remember her very, very well. One of her first parts…

And Jamie Lee Curtis too.
And Jamie Lee Curtis, right. Jamie Lee… When Kim and I were there, she and I were doing television. Usually contract players only do television. Jamie Lee never did television. She just immediately went into features. But that’s sort of rare. But what’s interesting about Kim is that the first time I met Kim I was doing this series called Switch… Did I just kick you?

No.
Want me to? [Laughs] Um, I was doing a series called Switch with Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert and Kim came and played a Salvation Army girl. She was a beautiful brunette. I mean sort of – I know this sounds weird – but when I looked at her, I thought, ‘You know, she could play the Virgin Mary.’ I swear to god! And you know what’s happened to Kim Cattrall! That’s what a good actress she is. She was wonderful and sweet and just heartbreaking as this Salvation Army lady, so that’s what a good actress she is.

When you first read the part in BURN NOTICE, did you quickly respond to it and know it was something you wanted to do?
I read it, I was just sitting alone, and I laughed out loud. There was nobody around, and I thought… That’s sort of a key to me that… I loved the voice over stuff. It just made me laugh, and I thought, ‘This is so interesting. Everything he’s saying has nothing to do with what he’s really doing on film.’ And the fact that I got to play… They described the character as a chain-smoking hypochondriac. My husband said, ‘How happy are you they’re paying you to smoke?’ So I thought, ‘This sounds fun! I’d like to do it!’ It was like two days work – it was one day’s work and then they decided to separate it into two days and I thought, ‘Well, it sounds really, really fun.’ And it was in Miami and I just happen to live in Miami! But I was in Los Angeles when they sent it to me. I never know anymore when you read scripts or you do things, what the audience is going to want. Television’s very different now. And lucky me, it became a hit.

Have you reached a point where you’ve read so many things that you’re not paralyzed to make a choice?
Oh, you flatter me! You mean so many offers? [Everyone laughs] No, no. But the things that I’ve been sent to do or asked if I’d be interested in doing just end up being hits! [Laughs] Yeah! I just think, I don’t know if it’s luck or just instinct… But please, I don’t want you to think that people send me thousands of scripts and I can’t decide which. I’ve just been very fortunate that I think the ones that are sent to me, I think the people knew that I was right for that and I think if you get all the characters….Well, it’s a brilliant piece of casting. Everybody’s just fabulous in the roles. So I guess the credibility goes to the producers and the network – whoever took you, you know? And there’s a chemistry between the actors that’s really, really important.

Well, chemistry is something you know a lot about, because you and Tyne had the most amazing chemistry. You were the best Cagney of all the Cagneys. Did you know right away that it just worked between the two of you?
Did you know that I was offered that role twice and turned it down? So actors are not always the best judges of material. It’s true! And Tyne was so generous. And I can say that about Jeffrey and Gabrielle and Bruce, because I think it matters. You don’t do this alone. You just don’t. She was very, very generous in accepting me. Obviously, she loved Meg and she had to swallow that and watch her friend be fired and then bring in the blond. It was difficult for me, because I knew what she was going through and she was wonderful. To answer your question about the chemistry, I don’t believe that actors can take credit for chemistry. I never have believed that. The person who thinks to put you together; who sees that… Tyne and I may have just adored each other, but on film we could have sucked. It may not have worked. And so I had no idea. I don’t know anything about that.

Since you don’t believe in chemistry, how did you and Jeffrey develop your relationship? Did you guys hang out off set or….
No! No. He really doesn’t have time. We do now. I mean, I took him and Gabrielle – Bruce couldn’t come – but I took them on a boat the other weekend for Stone Crabs. We do really respect and like each other very, very much, but no… I met him, ‘Hi, nice to meet you! Wow, you really bit off a lot, didn’t you?’ He said, ‘Yeah, be careful what you ask for.’ That was our conversation. We got in a car and did our first scene together. So I think you have to be prepared as an actor; know what you’re going to do; be flexible enough that the director can manipulate it and manipulate you if he wants; and I just lucked out. I hope Jeffrey feels he lucked out. He’s just a wonderful actor and it just worked. That was my very first scene, was riding around in this car. I don’t know if you saw it in the pilot, but it’s like a chase scene and I’m having to throw dialogue in where… You have to be very loosey goosey on this show. You have to be very… I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Jeffrey, because Jeffrey and I work differently. Jeffrey’s very spontaneous. Just, ‘Anything happens, man!’ Just, ‘Let’s just see what happens!’ And I’m going, ‘Well… Don’t you want to run the lines?’ He said, ‘No. You know them, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I know ‘em. Let’s just do it.’ And it’s working! He keeps me on my toes.

What did they tell you about the character of Madeline, besides being a chain-smoking hypochondriac?
Well, Madeline’s gone through some transitions – some changes from the pilot. I talked to Matt Nix about it. I wanted to wear a wig, because I said, if she’s a hypochondriac, she’s obviously needy and I read the script and she hasn’t seen her son in ten years. I wanted to make her also someone who wanted to look younger than she was. I didn’t want to play down the age. I wanted to play a woman that age trying to look younger. So I talked them into letting me wear a wig. [Laughs]. Anyway, the wig is no longer with us! But anyway, they did let me wear it in the pilot and then the network… He talked to me about how she was needy. He wrote it that way. She wanted his attention. And then the network saw it and they said, ‘We really like it. We like what she’s doing, but we want more of who she is.’ And so then it was discussed that – and happily – that she’s very, very smart. She has a lot of moxie. And that’s where he gets his stuff, is really from her. As screwed up as she is and she’s got her own thing going and manipulative – they didn’t take that away. Very manipulative. But you have to be smart to be that manipulative. She can get him. I love it when they write the directorial suggestions in the script – you guys don’t see it unless they show you the scripts, but it’ll end the scene with Jeffrey and it’ll say, ‘She leaves the room and he’s still there, wondering why she’s the only person who can get to him.’ So it gives me courage to match it, but obviously in a more devious way.

Are you the type of actress who needs to know everything about your character before you can play them?
Well, I do like to have a back story. I make it up myself if it’s not given to me. I just think up what she went through to get to where she is in that scene; I mean her whole life and what she’s experience. For Madeline, I think Madeline was really smart. I think she went to college. That’s where she met her husband. I think she had fabulous dreams about his success and what was going to happen with them. And he ended up being a disappointment and a ne’er-do-well. It’s suggested that he was abusive. This is written in, and it’s not a lovely note but it’s a very interesting note – that there was some abuse with the children and how much she defended them is questionable. And how much abuse she took. It’s just every once in awhile just mentioned…

But she also strikes me as, in her own way, very, very proud of Michael.
Yeah. Oh, I think she loves both her boys. Loves them very, very much and she knows she screwed up, but she did the best she could and yeah, she thought she may have lost one, but she really hasn’t. Michael loves her. You know he loves her – you can see it, even when he plays with her. It’s frustrating, but it’s his mom. And the other one… It’s her baby. But, he’s a bit of a disappointment. [Laughs]. But there’s love in this family. They’re just very dysfunctional. Very, very dysfunctional. And that’s what makes it interesting. This isn’t Father Knows Best.

The end of last season kind of had the spy world come into Madeline’s life more when she was in danger and Bruce had the scene with you when you were holding the gun.
[Laughs] I know! I loved that.

Was that fun for you to do and would you like to see a little more of her not going out on missions, but getting a bit more involved?
That’s interesting you should ask. I don’t know. I don’t want to kill anything that I don’t know about, but I don’t think it’s the kind of show where she goes on missions with him. It’s a very real… It’s a fun show, but there’s a reality to it, you know? But when I heard that there was the rifle in the scene, I called up the prop department and I said, “Do you have the rifle I’m going to be using in the scene?’ They said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Will you let me know when you get it, because I want to come in and I want you to teach me. I want to be able to use that thing!’ That she knows how to handle an uzi or a rifle or whatever… it’s a little part of her past that you don’t know about. Maybe the husband would go hunting or something, but she knows how to use a rifle. And I wanted just that moment that I thought would say volumes, that she could look at it [Mimes handling the gun]. I was tossing it back and forth with the prop people and then threw it to him. I practiced for about an hour and it was only one moment of film, but I’m so glad that you mentioned that, because I thought it said volumes about her.

It did hint at more. Not that she was a spy or anything, but that maybe she could handle herself.
What came out of that scene – because I never get to work with the other actors; very seldom. I got to do a scene with Bruce there and I thought, ‘Well, she’s often being babysat with, to protect her, because of all that’s going on.’ So obviously, he sends Bruce over. No one’s admitting she’s being protected, but she knows what’s going on. And I said to Matt, ‘Could he just come and babysit with me one day and the two of us just get ripped? Just ripped! And we discuss nothing that has to do with the show; the case. Just talk about life.’ ‘Here, have another one!’ And just, out of nowhere, just to add to another little dimension. And they loved it, so we’re looking forward to seeing it someday. And last week I got to do a wonderful scene with Gabrielle. I had a very brief scene when she first comes to meet me with him at the house, but we had a one on one scene where… Well, I’m not telling you the story… But I want them together and they’re not and it’s a very, very… Matt Nix, or forgive me, whichever writer wrote that particular scene… It’s a wonderful scene of two women. I felt like I was doing a CAGNEY AND LACEY. It was that kind of caliber of writing of two totally different generations and me wanting her to be with him. She’s wonderful in it.

Do you think they’ll be a CAGNEY & LACEY movie?
You know, there’s been talk about it. That’s interesting you should ask about that. There’s some interest in England to do one. Not with us, certainly! But it’s probably timely. I don’t know… There’s talk about it and then it goes away.

It could be CAGNEY & LACEY: THE NEXT GENERATIOn.
Yeah. Well, she had two boys and a girl, and I had a niece, Bridget, who was always in it. Bridget Cagney, who was in that show. I mean, if they were gonna call them Cagney & Lacey, it could be some relatives, you know? If anyone buys that… I don’t know!

So now that they’re trying to give Jeffrey a break, are you liking it more, because your character is focused on more and you’re getting a chance to work more with other people?
Well, I love to work. I don’t care what they hand me. I’ll come in and I love to do it. And I love working with the other actors. But Jeffrey and I have a thing going now. We’re good at it! I’m feeling more comfortable this year than last year. Obviously the more you work, the better at it you get. But most of my scenes are always with Jeffrey. And I guess you can’t… Can we tell about… therapy? Anyway, they’re doing some fun, interesting stuff with the two of us this year. Obviously the show is not about Madeline.

But there are people tuning in because they love Sharon Gless.
That’s really nice of you. Thank you.

When I first saw BURN NOTICE, one of the things that kept me watching was you.
Well, that’s nice. Thank you! Thank you very much. Well, I hope I’m one of the reasons they watch, but Jeffrey is carrying it, you know? And brilliantly.

Do you guys do a lot of dress rehearsals, or…
No. Again, remember, Jeffrey Donovan is in every scene, so you get him just before your scene starts. This year, he seems to be… I see him sitting in his chair more, and if I’m sitting next to him, we’ll ruin them. He’s a little more available this year. If you’ve seen it, he’s carrying just an enormous, enormous load. And he does most of his own stunts! It’s pretty awesome what he’s doing. So yeah, any extra time I get with him to run a line or something, is great for us.

This season they’re trying to focus on the other characters more and you have something with Bruce, right?
Well, I know there’s going to be the one scene where he has to come and protect me or something and I think his character drinks beer as I remember. So I think there might be a lot of beer in that scene. I don’t know how often they’ll do it. It would be a funny running gag. But again, they have to keep it real and what the story is really about. I’m not putting myself down. I really believe Madeline is an integral part of this boy’s life – I call him a boy, because he’s my son – but she’s one of the reasons he is the way he is. So their scenes are interesting, but again, it’s a small section of who he is.

Have you had a favorite storyline?
Uh, yes, but… [Everyone laughs as she looks over at the publicist] Yes, in this season. You’ll see. I think it’s going to be a thread that’s going to be running through. They’re not doing it just once. [To publicist] You know what I’m referring to? [He nods] You can tell that they’ll be other attempts.

So does it turn out you burned Michael?
[Laughs] No. There’s one scene I can’t refer to right now, but he… It’s my idea. Something I want him to do and it’s my idea, and he does it and it backfires on me. So I think it’s going to be a running thread. Yeah, it’s a personal… Oh, it has nothing to do with the story. With the main story of his involvement in spy stuff.

So, do you sit there and go, ‘I have a son who’s a spy. Maybe he can come and take care of this little problem for me.’
[Laughs] Maybe! I don’t know, I have to wait and see. The very first… not the pilot, but then the first episode, I did get him involved with someone. A friend of mine. The neighbor across the street. And I’m trying to get Tyne Daly in here. Matt says that he’d like to have her on the show.

That would be fantastic. That would be so cool.
Yeah. I want her to come and play my sister. Tyne is very funny and I said, ‘She can play my sister.’ Tyne smokes camels unfiltered, so… ‘The two of us could be doing this scene where we’re coming into the house and Michael comes in and he hates smoking. Hates it. And it would be very funny, because you can’t see anything in the house because it’s the two of us in there [mimes smoking].’ And I said, ‘Tyne, just come and play his aunt. My sister’s come to town.’ I said, ‘If you really want to get complicated, you could come to stay, and now he’s brought someone to put in my house.’ You know, he hides people in my house occasionally. So where do we put Aunt… Myrtle? Unless Madeline of course has to sleep herself and [GARBLED]. That was a fun one last year. Anyway, Tyne said, ‘I’d love it. I’ll do it, but I want to play her mute.’ Only Tyne Daly! And believe me, she’ll steal the show. And Matt said, ‘Nope, I don’t think so!’ Well, he wants to use her but…

Not as a mute.
Not as a mute, yeah.

How amazing is it that she can sing on Broadway when she smokes that much?
She stops. She has great, great, great strength. This isn’t going to be part of your story, that Tyne Daly smokes… But if you’re asking, she has great will. When she got pregnant, she stopped smoking. She just stops. She stops.

Do you enjoy being able to play character roles? You were an ingénue – a pretty, young thing. And now you’re wonderful in character roles.
Thank you. Well, that’s how old I am! Yeah, I love playing them. You can still always be a leading lady and play character parts. I don’t mean to call myself a leading lady, but I’ve been very fortunate and usually in shows that I’m [the lead] in, but yeah, it’s only since I’ve gotten older that I’m in what people call character roles. Whereas someone like Tyne Daly, who’s brilliant, is always a character actress. That was always sort of painful for me, that they’d say, ‘Well, you’re the leading lady type and she’s the character actress,’ because I’d always think, ‘Well what? Do you think I can’t act?’ They’re sort of buzz words. But I love doing character roles, really. I love to work. I’m very, very fortunate. I didn’t start – I didn’t become an actress – until I was 27. I started very late, but I just fell in love with it and I’m happiest when I’m doing it. As long as they keep letting me do it…

Would you like to get a long term love interest on BURN NOTICE?
Well, I’m hoping they’ll bring back the man that… There was an episode last year where he brings a friend to hide him out at the house and she sleeps with him. ‘Mom!’ [Laughs]. I love this character! And I understand that he may be returning. Virgil – his name was Virgil.

Madeline needs to have some fun, too.
That’s right. But his friends? But I liked that. Where else can you really get to know the person except through Michael. I like that Madeline’s that… You know, she’s a mother, but she’s sexy.

The other son is coming back too?
Oh, he is back, yes. Yeah. Seth – Nate is his character’s name. He’s a wonderful actor. Very different from Michael. Well, Michael… I mean, in character, Seth and Nate are more intense than Jeffrey is as Michael. Michael’s more laid back; has more humor. Seth, or Nate, the character he’s playing, is the polar opposite. Very intense kid. Very handsome.

He’s always in trouble.
I know. [in character] It’s not his fault! [everyone laughs] He only got that way after Michael left! I just did a scene [garbled]. Interesting when he got into all that trouble…

How do you go from playing the nagging mother to playing the totally crazy person on NIP/TUCK. How do you do that? Is it difficult to switch between?
Thank you for commenting on that. I was very proud of that. Ryan Murphy, who created the show, said it’s the sickest arc he’s ever written. You just do it. You’re an actress and you set aside Madeline and then you go and… How I do it… How I do it when I… I always hire a dialogue coach on any project I’m on and I have them pound that dialogue into me. Pound it into me. Over and over and over for hours, I do it. And as I’m doing it, there’s nobody around, so I can start finding out about this person – just listen to myself say it or come up with ideas. When you do it like that, you can come up with independent business while you’re talking, that has nothing to do with your dialogue. That’s really fun. But especially in that show, it was very intense. I’ll tell you why I was proud of that particular show. She clearly was a villain, but I learned something. I don’t have a lot of training. There’s one man I trained with who died. But I steal from the best. I always have. I mean, when I was a kid I’d go to movies and watch actresses. But in this particular one, I read Judi Dench’s book, and she talks about playing villains. And she said nobody is born a villain. You don’t just play a villain. You can, but it’s kind of boring. She said that person became that way because of whatever they’ve gone through. Something happened to damage them. And so I think that’s why that character was so interesting, because there were times when… My husband came at it once and he didn’t like the show. He said, ‘That’s too sick. I can’t watch that show.’ He came out of one episode and he came into the kitchen and he said, ‘Okay, you just broke my heart.’ I said, ‘I did?!’ He said, ‘The thing with the bears.’ I don’t know if you saw it – where she’s caught. She’s caught selling these bears. She’s passing herself off as an agent. And I thought, ‘Yay! I love Judi Dench!’ And I think it’s that way with Madeline and Michael’s that way, and his character, Jeffrey is. There’s more than playing just one thing. Everybody comes in with a lot of shit. Somehow it comes out. So what was it like to do it? It was exciting. It was exciting to do it. They invited me back to open the season. But I can’t tell you what happens… It’s weird. If any of you’ve seen it, you saw how it ended. The wardrobe mistress, when I went in for my fittings, did not know the ending. We were sworn to secrecy by Ryan Murphy. And when you get the scripts, the fourth act is missing until the very end.

How much like Madeline are you?
I’m really not Madeline. I’m not a manipulative person. I’m not too much like her. I think my humor is hers, but I’m not a manipulative person. But that’s the comedy, you know? I really think her manipulation can be dark, but it’s still funny. You know what she’s doing. What’s really fun is to play it absolutely, absolutely sincere, where the audience isn’t quite sure if you’re manipulating or not. And it may be through him that you see that she is. He’ll take it. Or sometimes it’s fun just to be playing with him and he’s being sincere and then at the end [makes a yanking noise/motion]. But that’s all the brilliance of Matt Nix, who gives you a character like that. But is she like me? I think when she loves him, the love I feel for him, I’m capable of. That’s who I am. I think there’s a piece of an actor or actress in everything that they play. There’s a piece of you in there.

Is Madeline considering doing family counseling with her children?
[Laughs] It’s… Stay tuned.

I don’t have a question, I just wanted to tell you that on my blog we picked our favorite moms for mother’s day and Madeline was my favorite mom.
Oh, thank you! That’s nice! You know, there was a time in my career when I just swore… and I was working way past the age when I should have been playing moms, but I wasn’t yet. And I said I didn’t want to play moms. I didn’t want to be ‘the mother of…’ But the first mom I ever played I think was Queer as Folk. How cool is that?! And so when this came up, I thought, ‘No, being a mom is cool!’ If she’s well written, like Madeline is.

Was it a tough transition for you to go from being the hot lead to being the mother?
The only change that it was for me was the amount of time. I was used to working in every single scene in Cagney & Lacey, in Rosie O’Neill and in shows before that where I was playing the lead. And it was an adjustment. I didn’t have to make it here, but on Queer as Folk, to sit and wait my turn was just horrible for me, because all I knew how to do was 24/7; just never stop. And I had to learn how to. Protect my energy, because I’m a pretty energetic person. I guess you can tell! And that was the only transition that was hard for me, was that the producer of Queer as Folk said, ‘Now Sharon, we really want you to play this part. I said, ‘I want to do it! I want it!’ I went after it. They said, ‘You’re not the star of [the show]’ I said, ‘I know that!’ And I was offended by what he said, but I think he knew my energy. You know, what are you going to do while you wait seven hours, and on that show sometimes you waited seven hours for your turn. I learned. I learned and that was the only adjustment.