Nov 30, 2012
Nov 24, 2012
The Mentalist's Owain Yeoman is not shy and not retiring
BEFORE he joined The Mentalist to play Special Agent Wayne Rigsby, Welsh actor Owain Yeoman had never appeared in a show that ran longer than 13 episodes (think Kitchen Confidential and Generation Kill).
But with The Mentalist surpassing the magic 100 episode mark allowing it to live on forever in re-run heaven Yeoman is now set for life. Or is he?
So can you retire and live off the royalties now?
I had that same thing: I rang my agent and went 'Brilliant, I'm set now am I?' But it's not what it used to be. Whether I can retire on to my own island or not, I don't think I'm there just yet.
Simon Baker is one of the best paid actors on TV. Do you make him pay for drinks and lunch when you're out together?
That's funny (laughs). It's something you never really talk about. Simon is such a down-to-earth guy. He was joking the other day and said 'I've bought a Lamborghini' and Tim (Kang) and I looked at him, and he's not at all flashy, and it turns out he bought a Lamborghini tractor for his farm in Australia.
Why are there so many English and Australian actors pretending to be American on US TV?
I used to joke that we were cheaper! It does seem funny that when we look on our set and our executive producer, our main creator and our second EP are all British, I'm British, Tim's Korean and Simon's Australian. We struggle to actually come up with a real American!
Are Americans surprised to hear your Welsh accent?
It's a real compliment when people don't realise I'm not from America. It also allows you to get out of a scrape quickly if someone recognises you in public and says 'Are you that guy?' And you say 'No, no I'm British.'
Back home in Wales, do they treat you as a hotshot Hollywood star?
No I'm put firmly back in my place when I get back to the pub, surrounded by old rugby friends who remind me acting is a great hobby.
Simon's done Australian bank ads using an American accent. Would you do that for a Welsh ad?
Absolutely. I actually saw that ad and I think it's brilliant. (He's like) 'I know what you're thinking: I'm an Australian actor on Australian TV playing an American why am I doing this accent?' It's a very tongue-in-cheek way of sending up his own background.
Do you hope to follow your Kitchen Confidential co-star Bradley Cooper to success in movies?
He has the kind of career trajectory I would love to emulate. It was a real education, for he was in the same situation I'm in now.
He'd come off five years of doing Alias and I think he was very, very ready to show people he was capable of doing a lot more than that. I'm really keen when the show comes to an end to maybe do a great little indie role and have people say, 'Oh, we've never seen that side of Rigsby' you know?
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Nov 19, 2012
Polskie napisy: The Mentalist 5x08 "Red Sails in the Sunset" (s05e08)
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 16, 2012
On the set of "The Mentalist" (podcast, Mary Lynn Rajskub)
24 star Mary Lynn Rajskub has won a guest role on The Mentalist. The actress plays a rehab patient. While she was on the scene she recorded a podcast from there.
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 7, 2012
5x07 "If It Bleeds, It Leads"
"If It Bleeds, It Leads" — The team investigates the murder of a reporter who may have become too close to her story, while Jane insists on pursuing his own leads to find Lorelei. Henry Ian Cusick ("Lost") guest stars as Tommy Volker, a multi-millionaire adventurer playboy who becomes a suspect. Ted McGinley guest stars as Ed Hunt, a news anchor who worked with the victim.
Zespół prowadzi dochodzenie w sprawie morderstwa dziennikarki, która mogła znaleźć się niebezpiecznie blisko prawdy prowadząc dziennikarskie śledztwo. Tymczasem Jane nalega by poszukiwania Lorelei prowadzić samodzielnie. W odcinku pojawi się postać multimiliardera, rozrywkowego playboya, który będzie jednym z podejrzanych.
Nov 4, 2012
Owain Yeoman Q&A: 'We'll come within inches of Red John'
The fifth season of hit crime drama The Mentalist reaches UK screens this week, courtesy of Channel 5 - 'The Red Glass Bead' picks up right where season four left off, with the CBI and FBI at odds after serial killer Red John was able to evade justice once more.
Digital Spy caught up with Owain Yeoman - who plays the faithful Rigsby - to chat about his character's role in the new season, how dark Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) can afford to get and whether our heroes will ever catch up with the elusive Red John...
When The Mentalist first began, Rigsby was a little immature. Do you feel like he's grown as a character?
"Yeah, it's funny; I was talking about this the other day actually. We've obviously all grown with the show - we looked back at the pilot the other day and it's always funny when you look back on something and you think, 'Oh I looked good then, I was really proud of that'. I looked back and I was like, 'Oh my God, I was a child!' so yeah I like to think [that Rigsby has become more mature].
"There's been a lot of things that have happened this season, like all the returning characters coming back. I just finished filming a wonderful episode with William Forsythe, who plays Rigsby's father, and that was a real kind of reckoning moment for me and for the character.
"The nature of an ensemble means when you're a supporting character and not the lead character, you get little tidbits here and there, but you're usually there to provide bits of comic relief and little bits of action or something. So when you get the spotlight fully thrown on you in an episode like [season five, episode four] 'Blood Feud', then it really gives you a chance to draw a much bigger picture of who this guy is.
"He's transitioned into more serious problems - he's got his job on the line, he's lost the woman that he truly loves and he probably still hasn't given up on her, he's had an unwanted pregnancy with a woman where the relationship hasn't worked out, so there's an awful lot of real-life adult problems that I think would force anyone to grow up really quickly."
What was it like working with William Forsythe again?
"He's quite an intimidating force in the best possible way. He brings such a level of preparation. He's currently working on another show called The Mob Doctor where he is the head of the mob, so if that's not intimidating enough... you know, 'My Dad is being played by the head of the mob!'
"But he's just so full of ideas. We had him for 24 hours to shoot probably 15 scenes and every single one of them was a huge emotional scene. You'll see from the episode, it's a real kind of growing up moment for Rigsby where I think he reflects upon the father that he had and the father he wanted to be.
"I love that, I love coming to the challenge. I guess William threw down the gauntlet and it really is a question of... you either bring your best game or you'll just get lost. He's so on all the time and we actually spent almost the entirety of the episode just doing our stuff together, which was lovely.
"He's a fantastic actor and I'm really excited for the episode to come out and also I'm excited for Rigsby, I think people will finally get the chance to see that there's more to him than just a quip here and a joke there, with a doughnut or a bagel in his mouth!"
Can you give us any hints on where the Red John storyline will head this season?
"I think the big question has been, 'When will we see Red John?' and the challenge that Bruno Heller has as the show creator is that it's the raison d'être for the show - if you take away Jane's hunt for Red John, the serial killer who killed his wife and child, you take away his whole reason for being and his whole reason for being in the CBI, so it's a fine balancing act of how much you can tease it out without boring an audience.
"Bruno's been very tactical this year and promised we will get within inches of Red John. You know, I'd love to pretend I'm being all kinds of sneaky, but I'll just be dead honest with you and say I really don't know who Red John is! It makes me laugh when you hear actors go, 'I'm gonna have to be top secret about the truth' - I really don't know! I think only Bruno really knows - he decides on where to go with that.
"But we've got Emmanuelle Chriqui coming back playing Lorelei this season, which I think was a wonderful injection of life last season. It's really interesting to see the dynamic between her and Jane, and we've got William Forsythe coming back and Summer (Samaire Armstrong), Cho's prostitute girlfriend, is making a return. We've also got Virgil Minnelli (Gregory Itzin) coming back...
"It's a season full of old faces and we actually will get to see Jane's daughter, but I can't say in what context. It's a season that really explains where Jane came from and his journey to the CBI and we've been promised from Bruno that we will get literally inches away from Red John this season. This is the big season if you are a Red John fan."
Some fans noticed that Jane started going down a darker path last season. Do you think the show can ever get too dark?
"I think it's sort of a challenge. I always thought that the show found its groove in the first two seasons by being a mixture. You know, we all love our cop shows like the CSIs and Criminal Minds - all those shows that have thrived for years because it's a classic whodunnit, and everybody loves to solve a whodunnit.
"I always thought we kind of managed to stick out from the pack by having that element of human interest. We're not just faceless cops - we're all having relationships we've all got problems, Jane's got his demons, Lisbon's got the issue with authority, Van Pelt's got the trouble with her romantic stuff, and you know Tim's character Cho battled addiction last season, so these are real people and the human interest element is what keeps people going.
"We've found that people seem to be responding more to grittiness at the moment. I don't know if that's down to the economy being in a bad place or people just being in a darker place, but they just seemed to have really responded to that and I think it makes the Jane character so much more interesting - under all this lightness, you suddenly see a very dark and possibly slightly mentally unstable place that he comes from.
"I think that layers it and I think you'll see this season with every single character, we peel the onion away and see that none of us are stable characters and none of us have come to law enforcement through a very traditional path. Hopefully that'll make it interesting. You know, I'm not saying there's not an element of humour there, but I think Simon wanted to deliberately take Jane down that path to see how much they could push that envelope."
How long do you see The Mentalist going on?
"I never like to guess. To be honest with you, when we filmed the pilot, I think every part of you as an actor just wants to say, 'Well great, see you next pilot season!' because you daren't wish that anyone will respond to it. This was my sixth series and none of the others had gone, so you just never take it personally. You roll on and you hope that the next one will find an audience.
"I know we're aiming for seven [seasons] and that Simon is the producer for this year, so he gets to have a real direct say in the creative [side of things] and I think he's directing a couple [of episodes]. The workload is so squarely on his shoulders with the amount of heavy lifting that the Patrick Jane character does, I think how long the shows continues will rest on; a) If an audience is still reacting to us and b) How much time Simon feels that he can keep the Patrick Jane character interesting, because he works tirelessly to keep that creative and fresh.
"I'm a cautious optimist and I would love to see it go the full seven seasons. We are in a world of uncertainties, but we could give the show a nice proper conclusion if we said, 'This is our final season', and we could get the chance to tie everything up. Having said that, would I mind if it ended up lasting for twenty seasons? Not at all."
You're a Welsh actor and you've had this big US success. Why do you think there is this trend of non-US actors - Damian Lewis, Andrew Lincoln, yourself - making it big out there?
"I always joke that we're cheaper! But seriously there seems to be a real response to British theatrical training and there's a real respect for that. I had the good fortune to go to Oxford and go to RADA, so training is really respected over here.
"Also, I remember speaking to a casting director and he said to me, 'It's really funny, America's filled with these very good-looking boyish leading men but we can't get many men's men, so we looked to Australia and the UK because you guys... have that rugged element.' If you look at your Russell Crowes and your Eric Banas - those kind of real leading men - they're all coming from overseas.
"I came over to the US in 2004 and it was quite trendy to be British, but now it's quite trendy to be American. It's like, 'Can we get an American to play that American? I'm getting sick of all these Welsh people playing them' [laughs]... but as long as this show continues, I'll be very happy!"
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Nov 2, 2012
The Mentalist's' Robin Tunney Talks Series' Future, and Hers
"The Mentalist's" 100th episode has aired and the team that makes the popular Simon Baker drama has made it clear that this season, they're going to get closer to solving the central mystery of Red John -- the serial killer that took the lives of Baker's character's wife and child. Does all that indicate that Baker and series creator Bruno Heller are envisioning an ending for the series?
Not according to leading lady Robin Tunney.
"I think it's a creative conversation," she says, speaking of the show in general and the Red John storyline in particular. "I feel like they'll go along as long as the audience wants to, as long as they keep it interesting and not too frustrating. Historically, with television, people will get on the bandwagon with something and then it's very clear when they've given up," she continues. "Everybody wanted to know who killed Laura Palmer in 'Twin Peaks' -- but it went to a certain point and then everyone turned on (creator) David Lynch. I think there's a certain point where you resolve something when the audience needs it."
According to Tunney, Heller and the other writer-producers "read everything that's written about the show, I think. Bruno actually reads letters that people send in. I think they are genuinely curious. Both Bruno and Simon are really into what the fans think and sort of servicing them."
The fans' devotion has helped "The Mentalist" remain a strong show despite the fact, "the move to Sunday nights has been rough, because we get pre-empted by football," Tunney acknowledges. "People can't watch when the show starts at 11 o'clock -- and they can't even properly TiVo it, because they don't know when it's going to start."
The Chicago-born actress, who rose to fame as the suicidal teen who shaved her head in "Empire Records," and as a girl with occult powers in "The Craft" -- and counts the series "Prison Break" among her credits -- says she is happy to continue playing Agent Teresa Lisbon of the fictional California Bureau of Investigation.
In fact, she says, "I love playing this character, and I think as far as female roles on TV, it's one of the great ones. I feel like she's incredibly three-dimensional. She's strong, she's powerful. I think she's effective, but at the same time I think she's human. I don't get bored. I think that's largely due to Simon because I do most of my scenes with him and I enjoy acting with him.
"At the same time, this has created a perfect atmosphere for me. It's not soapy, where I have to jump into bed with men or wear negligees, or cry, or play something ridiculous, like I'm the twin," she adds with good-natured distaste. "Or comedy like you watch sometimes and think, 'Oh my God, this is not working'. I'll watch a show that's meant to be humorous and think there's something wrong with me because the laugh track is laughing, but I don't think it's funny."
Tunney, who is divorced, has a family of sorts among her "Mentalist" cast and crew, particularly Baker. They are close enough, as she disclosed in a CBS video, that their relationship even survived her throwing up on him one day when she was working despite a stomach virus.
"He has three children so he's had his kids throw up on him," she cheerily observes, when the incident is mentioned. "I think if you're going to throw up on somebody, you should try to throw up on somebody who has children. It doesn't freak them out quite as much."
As far as the show's marking of 100 episodes and what it means to her, Tunney says, "I was just reading about the 300th episode of 'SVU.' That just dwarfs this achievement. Television actors are sort of like athletes. You don't admire it as much until you do it yourself. You spend your life going, 'Oh my God, Meryl Streep is so amazing.' And she is amazing. But Mariska Hargitay is like Muhammad Ali."
She feels that Simon is a champ as well. "He has an abnormally strong work ethic. The fact that our show has stood up so well is really a testament to him and Bruno. They both work astonishingly hard and, you know, it all comes from the top."
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Robin Tunney opowiada o sobie i Mentaliście
Wyemitowano już setny odcinek Mentalisty, ujawniono też, że ten sezon przybliży zespół CBI do rozwiązania głównej tajemnicy serialu, czyli ujawnienia tożsamości RJ. Czy oznacza to, że Simon Baker i twórca serialu - Bruno Heller, przewidują rychły jego koniec?
Nie zdaniem odtwórczyni głównej roli żeńskiej, Robin Tunney.
"Myślę, że to nie jest jednoznaczna kwestia. Mam wrażenie, że serial będzie emitowany tak długo, jak widownia będzie tego chciała. Póki fabuła będzie interesująca dla odbiorców, a jej ciągnięcie nie będzie dla widza frustrujące. W historii telewizji da się zauważyć trendy i mody na programy, i równie wyraźnie widać, kiedy widownia od nich odchodzi. Każdy ostatecznie chciał wreszcie dowiedzieć kto zabił Laurę Palmer w "Twin Peaks". Myślę, że w pewnym momencie dochodzi się do punktu, w którym należy dać widowni rozwiązanie.
Wg Tunnej, Heller i scenarzyści trzymają rękę na pulsie, i są na bieżąco z opiniami widzów, będą więc w stanie wyczuć tą odpowiednią chwilę. Bruno czyta nawet listy nadsyłane od fanów. Mam wrażenie, że Oni są żywo zainteresowani otrzymywaniem takiej informacji zwrotnej. Bruno wraz z Simonem naprawdę, chcą wiedzieć, co fani myślą, po to by móc na te oczekiwania odpowiedzieć.
Oddanie widzów pomogło zresztą przetrwać serialowi, mimo przeniesienia jego emisji na niedzielę, co było ciężkim wyzwaniem z tego względu, że serial poprzedzał bezpośrednio futbol. Widzowie nie wiedzieli nawet dokładnie, o której godzinie zasiąść przed telewizor, nie będąc pewnymi kiedy dokładnie rozpocznie się emisja odcinka.
Tunney jest zadowolona z kontynuacji serialu. "Lubię grać postać Lisbon, i biorąc pod uwagę żeńskie telewizyjne kreacje, uważam, że ta jest obecnie wciąż jedną z najciekawszych. Postać Lisbon jest bardzo złożona, wielowymiarowa. Jest silna, ma autorytet i władzę. Jest efektywna w pracy, a jednocześnie ma w sobie ludzki pierwiastek. Dzięki temu mnie nie nudzi. Myślę, że to także duża zasługa Simona Bakera, gdyż większość scen gram właśnie z Nim, i bardzo to sobie cenię.
Dla mnie to świetnie środowisko pracy. Nie jest telenowelowato, nie muszę wskakiwać facetom do łóżka i ubierać tiule, albo płakać, albo odgrywać jakieś niedorzeczności, typu bliźniaczki. Nie jest to też komedia typu sit-com, którą oglądasz z zażenowaniem, bo w ogóle nie śmieszy - gdzie słyszysz tylko puszczany w tle śmiech i zastanawiasz się, czy to ze mną jest coś nie tak, przecież to w ogóle nie jest zabawne.
Tunney, która jest rozwódką, mówi o ekipie Mentalisty, jak o rodzinie, szczególnie traktuje tak Bakera. Są na tyle zaprzyjaźnienia, że w filmie promującym Mentalistę zdradziła anegdotkę o tym, jak to ich przyjaźni nie popsuł nawet pewien niezręczny wypadek na planie. Będąc chorą, zdarzyło jej się bowiem zwymitować na Bakera. Aktor wówczas rozładował sytuację mówiąc ,że ma trójkę dzieci i one ciągle to robią. Tunney żartuje, że mając wybór na kogo zwymiotować, należy szukać osoby posiadającej dzieci. To nie zrobi na niej, aż takiego wrażenia.
Odnosząc się do setnego odcinka, Tunney mówi, że czytała niedawno o 300 odcinku "SVU", co trochę przyćmiewa skalę sukcesu ich osiągnięcia. Aktorzy telewizyjni przypominają trochę sportowców, zauważa. Nie doceniasz ich, dopóki sam nie spróbujesz. Całe życie podziwiasz świetne aktorstwo Meryl Streep. Bo to świetna aktorka dużego ekranu. Ale to Mariska Hargitay (aktorka telewizyjna) haruje jak Muhammad Ali.
Aktorka uważa, że Simon też jest takim mistrzem, prawdziwym tytanem pracy. To, że ich serial ma się wciąż tak wspaniale, zawdzięczamy przede wszystkim Jemu oraz Bruno. Wspólnie niesamowicie ciężko pracują na ten sukces.
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