Bones will finally be back for the second half of season 10 with the March 26, 2015 episode titled “The Psychic in the Soup.” And although it’s been a long while since the 200th episode aired on December 11, 2014, executive producer Stephen Nathan promises the wait will be worthwhile.
“We’re going from death row to miniature golf to Tehran to yoga studios and I would strongly recommend you get a seat on the bus because it’s been a terrific year,” said Nathan during a conference call with the media in support of the spring premiere. “We left off with the 200th episode. We’ve been gone for a long time, but we have been packing little surprises away in our little sack for you, and we’re really looking forward to the second half of this year and I can promise you won’t be disappointed.”
Bones star Emily Deschanel joined Stephen Nathan to discuss the upcoming episodes, the pregnancy, and Booth and Brennan’s relationship.
Emily Deschanel and Stephen Nathan Interview
Can you talk about how Brennan’s pregnancy is going to be handled this season on the show?
Stephen Nathan: “Really, the pregnancy is just going to have a little bit more impact on them this season I think because Brennan now realizes what it is to have a child, having the family expand and grow and now she knows the tremendous risk that she and Booth’s job have in terms of how it affects their family. So, she’s going to have to deal with that, something that I think she was a bit oblivious to before, because she didn’t have the experience, so there are emotional considerations that surprise Brennan and will affect the pregnancy for the rest of the season.”
Emily Deschanel: “Yes, you’ll see Brennan going through a whole thing. She doesn’t really accept her pregnancy for a period of time. I think that having a second pregnancy is different than having a first pregnancy and each one is different. Brennan is experiencing that, and like Stephen said she realizes what it means.
When you’re working in this kind of world, crime, putting yourself in danger what that is, so she’s out of the field a little bit more this time and you’ll see there’s a lot of emotional things that happen for Brennan because of this pregnancy. It’s been different for me, Emily too, the second time around let me tell you, so it’s interesting. Probably my naiveté was helpful last time, too, from Emily as well as Brennan.”
Stephen Nathan: “I have three kids, so I know the second one is not double. It’s usually quadruple or ten times the amount of children.”
Emily Deschanel: “I thought it was smooth sailing after one. No one told me…”
Stephen Nathan: “But it’s smooth sailing when they’re all out of the house.”
Emily Deschanel: “Then you got the grandkids in your house.”
Stephen Nathan: “That’s right. But really Brennan’s pregnancy will have a tremendous impact on this series, certainly, giving us a season finale that is deeply affected by it.”
Is there a scene in this second half of the season that stands out as one of your favorites?
Emily Deschanel: “That would require us remembering what we’ve done. We’ve done 11 episodes since that last one aired, so we’ve done so many. We’re even trying to remember what we’ve done. Stephen, do you have a favorite?”
Stephen Nathan: “You know it’s always hard for me to pick favorites, but I think the storyline that is kind of the most emotionally rich for us is Booth’s relapse into gambling and how it affects Brennan, the family, and it just has the ripples go out from that and cause a lot of changes not only for Brennan and Booth but for the other characters as well. But, there are so many really. There’s great stuff between Cam and Arastoo, Arastoo going off to Iran and their relationship being in jeopardy and his life being in jeopardy. It’s hard to pick favorites. And, of course, there’s always all of the revolting bodies that delight us.”
There have been mentions of “complications” in the upcoming episodes. Can we expect some medical complications or bed rest or perhaps a multiple pregnancy? What kind of things are we going to get to see this time around that we didn’t last time?
Emily Deschanel: “There’s not anything so big medically that’s a huge problem or something. It’s more the emotional repercussions and the realization of Brennan having another child and then of course coupled with Booth’s relapse into gambling that makes things ‘complicated’, I guess. I guess that’s why we’re using that word. At the same time it seems like Brennan is a little more delicate this pregnancy, but there’s nothing major that that she’s on bed rest necessarily or that she’s having many babies that we know of yet. Hey, I haven’t read the last episode yet, so…”
Stephen Nathan: “The baby/babies will not — possible babies – will not appear this year. I know everyone kind of expects it, but we’ve had a lot of births on the show and we kind of know how.”
Emily Deschanel: “I told them I’m not giving birth again…”
Stephen Nathan: “That’s right. Brennan will be four years pregnant.”
Emily Deschanel: “…until we finish the show.”
Stephen Nathan: “That’s right.”
Emily Deschanel: “And the series is done.”
Stephen Nathan: “But we’re just kind of trying to approach the whole thing a bit differently to see the emotional complications rather than the physical complications of this pregnancy. Because as we’ve said, this pregnancy is much more fraught emotionally for both of them for many, many reasons.
There’s also the preponderance of cases that have affected their lives over the past 10 years of working together and how that affects their perception of their situation and their perception of the world and the world they want to bring their new child into and raise their family, so all of this has a tremendous impact on them. Do they want to keep getting shot at? That’s a real question.”
Emily Deschanel: “They had their house blown up last season. It’s big risks in this job. Booth is in prison or jail, it’s a really dangerous, risky job to have especially the way they do it, so it’s something that they’re considering heavily.”
Stephen Nathan: “And we’ve never even seen them take a break. When they separated before, Booth went to war, so we’re going to be treading some new ground.”
After ten seasons and ten years, is there anything the characters haven’t gotten to do that you want them to do?
Stephen Nathan: “Yes, absolutely, many, many things. I think in the same way that everyone’s life becomes surprising as they move through it and events change, the people’s reactions to those events evolve, so everything has the potential to always be new and surprising. Don’t you think, Emily?”
Emily Deschanel: “Yes.”
Stephen Nathan: “I have to say the fact that Emily comes to work every day and her work is always so incredibly fresh and surprising and new and is a testament to the longevity of the show, and it just seems like it could go on forever because of that.”
Emily Deschanel: “That’s very, very kind, Stephen. I would argue that you guys keep it so interesting that it’s always, as an actor you can see other shows… I’m not going to name anything, but you could see how people could get bored after several years. But when I think about all the different things that I’ve been able to do on the show, it just keeps it so interesting. And between character dynamics, but also just working with snakes or working in the Everglades with an alligator right there and scuba diving into a tank in an aquarium and being weightless in the vomit comet at one point and tightrope walking and all the…”
Stephen Nathan: “You really have done a lot.”
Emily Deschanel: “..the martial arts that I’ve done, I’m sure there’s something that’s going to happen and you’re like that’s awesome I get to do that now in my job. This is so fun.”
Stephen Nathan: “The show is easy for us to write tightrope walking. Emily has to do it.”
Emily Deschanel: “I will give credit, I had a double who actually did a tightrope walk high up, but I did get to learn how to do it lower to the ground so that they could film me closer up actually tightrope walking, which was a lot of fun. You go to circus school for an hour or whatever, whatever time was permitted for me to do that and things like that are just a lot of fun. That’s why the writers are writers and they get to think of these amazing things and we just get to come to work and have so much fun doing them.”
Stephen Nathan: “You could bring back Circus of the Stars.”
Emily Deschanel: “I don’t think I could do it now pregnant. My center of gravity is a little different.”
Stephen Nathan: “Your center of gravity is little off, but it makes it that much more interesting.”
Is there a new big bad or a recurring villain that we can look forward to in addition to a lot of the emotional things that are going on for the rest of the season?
Stephen Nathan: “Yes, we’re going to be dealing with more than one. We have an interesting new serial killer who appears and gets somewhat resolved in the second half of the season and is resolved when someone is on death row about to be executed. But at the very end, someone resurfaces from beyond the grave and comes back to alter everybody’s life yet again.”
Emily Deschanel: “A ghost?”
Stephen Nathan: “No ghosts, but I would imagine people who have been committed to the show will know that our favorite serial killer was Pelant, and although Pelant is in fact dead – Pelant himself does not resurface – the effects of Pelant’s life have not gone away.”
It’s pretty impressive that you’ve been able to play Brennan in such a way that you’ve maintained how she’s been in season one with her kind of standoffish and scientific talk and being very specific and yet over the years kind of opened up emotionally. How have you accomplished that?
Emily Deschanel: “I think that’s one of the beautiful things about doing a television show for a long period of time, you really get to see people change slowly in a lot of ways. It’s something that even from the beginning Hart [Hanson], who originally created the show, and I talked about from season one about how the character would be changing and taking down the walls that she’s built up.
I always looked at it as people change when somebody comes into their life that is important and meant to be there and a good match for you is that they help you be the best person you can be, not that Brennan wasn’t the best person, but she’s opened up emotionally over the period of time. So, I think that Booth has opened her up a lot or she’s opened herself up as a result of being involved with Booth in her life. It’s been a really lovely thing to explore this character in different ways and see how she is still her same self, but she is able to be more vulnerable and open. At the same time, she’ll say some things that are very kind of insensitive to people sometimes still and all of that, which is fun to play.”
Stephen Nathan: “We can’t have that go away. But anything we write, Emily can do and it’s always remarkable to us. But the advantage of having a show go on for so long is that the changes that occur in the characters almost occur in real-time as they do in life. Relationships between people in real life evolve slowly and incrementally and you become closer to those people through those changes. You go through it with them almost in real-time.
When you go to a movie in two hours somebody changes dramatically, you’re a bit outside of that story. But with a series with, I think we’re on our episode 799 or something, you have felt the evolution of these characters. It seems natural, hopefully, if we have done our job properly. And the joy to us is seeing, honest to God, there’s nothing we can’t throw Emily and David that they can’t work with and make better than we ever thought possible on the page.”
Emily Deschanel: “I don’t think that’s true, but that’s very nice.”
Stephen Nathan: “No, no, it’s true I got the research back. We did some tests. We did tests. We got it from a medical lab that said that you can make anything better than we write.”
How is Cyndi Lauper to work with and what went into casting her?
Emily Deschanel: “Cyndi, that’s like a dream come true. Just growing up I’ve always been a huge fan of Cyndi Lauper, so she’s a dream to work with. She’s such an interesting, eccentric, lovely, talented person, so much fun and she does a good job as an actress as well. Obviously, she’s an amazing singer, so we’re already fans of hers in that way and we loved having her on set. She brings such surprises; she’ll surprise you with choices she makes and just she’s so interesting to work with. She’s such a unique human being.”
Stephen Nathan: “I second that. She’s just fabulous to have around. She’s so much fun and it’s just such a wonderful character.”
Emily Deschanel: “Very funny, too, she’s just a really funny person. She’s great. I’d have her all the time if we could have her.”
Stephen Nathan: “And she’s Cyndi Lauper!”
Emily Deschanel: “And she’s Cyndi Lauper for God’s sake.”
