Interview: Emily Deschanel & Hart Hanson from Bones

We were recently able to sit down with Bones actress Emily Deschanel and creator Hart Hanson to chat about the future of the series as well as last season’s finale. Check it out below!

Can you tell a little bit about your reaction to the fans’ reaction to the finale episode?

Hart Hanson: The first response, I guess, came on the internet. I always get in trouble when I talk about this stuff because the second response was to the ratings. Which were very good and went up on the half hour. That’s the real response. I did check to see what fans thought. I would say the first blizzard of responses were negative, and then there was a lash-back of positive response, and then I left and let them argue it out.

Emily Deschanel: Honestly, I hear from Hart about the reaction. I think it was somewhat anticipated on a certain level. I don’t know what the percentage was of how many people hated it, and how many people loved it. We knew that some people would be upset, because it’s a very different episode. We were also talking about them getting together, and it wasn’t in the real world. At the same time, our hands are tied because if we get them together in the real world, it’s a tricky thing, and it’s not really ready. We wanted to give the audience something. You see the characters together, as a couple, and that kind of gives people an idea how they would be even though it’s not really them, and it’s in a different world. It’s from one of their brains, or both of their brains. I guess it’s like not giving them a full meal, but a taste.

Hart Hanson: Yeah, here’s a taste of what it would be like if they were together. It looked kind of nice. I was thinking this is a good spin off.

Emily Deschanel: My grandma was upset. She was like ‘I didn’t know they were changing the show. I didn’t know you own a performance place.’ I said no, this is the end. She was confused by end scene. That it was another world, and that we don’t own a performance place.

Hart Hanson: We are always delighted that there’s a response. Any response is better than no response. And there was a good response.

Emily Deschanel: The strength of the response, rather than the direction.. that’s what really matters.

Hart Hanson: It’s great that you guys have built an audience that care so deeply about what happens to you.

Emily Deschanel: Well, you built that audience too, Hart.

How much of it was a placebo effect that you were trying to put into the finale?

Hart Hanson: A bit, I think the first idea was to really make something for our stone fans who love the show and have been with it from the start. I’ve been told, and it seems anecdotal, that we have a very faithful audience. They follow us all over the place. It’s all those things that indicate we have a strong opinionated audience. So my initial idea was to say thank you to them. Here’s something for you guys. It was full of inside jokes. It was full of inside references. It was full of echoes and insights, I hope. We’re going to carry some of those things we learned in that alternate world into the real world. It was kind of a bridge thing. So I would say, let’s see what it looks like to have Brennan and Booth in love, and be a really strong couple. One of the debates was do we have their marriage in trouble in the alternate reality. We were like, ‘no that’s a bad idea.’ Let’s see what they look like as a solid married couple. What everyone wants them to be.

Emily Deschanel: And you get to see all the other characters that we love in a different sort of light. I think that’s kind of fun for the audience. There’s so many other things going on in the episode besides us getting together. That seems to be the thing that people are really opinionated about. People say that they want to see us together, and at the Comic Con panel it almost seemed like more people wanted to see us not get together. I also think people would like to see us together, but not… It’s almost like people enjoy being angry that we’re not together. You know what I mean?

Hart Hanson: We asked the audience to clap if they wanted Brennan and Booth together. There was big clapping. Then clap if they shouldn’t get together, and it sounded like a little bit more to us up there. It was pretty close. And Emily said, I think some people voted twice. I thought that makes total sense.

Emily Deschanel: You can be conflicted with it, and I think everybody is. This is a way of kind of doing something without it being final.

Have you made up your mind where it’s going to go, or are you still confused about what to do with it?

Hart Hanson: I do know. I’m not going to tell you. I do know if and when it happens and where it might happen in the season. I said this many times, I’m not weaseling. A series is very organic thing. I found that with Bones, you kind of let the series point in the right direction. We have a very good company of actors, producers, writers, and directors. It has its own force to it. For me to just say ok here’s what we’re going to do, is not a good idea.

Emily Deschanel: Hart is very good at adapting. I’m not so good at adapting. There will be different elements that we have to change in an episode like maybe an actor is not available, or a location is not available. He just writes it and changes it, and goes with the flow. I’m just so impressed with it. He’s able to just go with it, there’s no grumbling, and he just does it.

What kinds of things have happened that surprised you in the series?

Emily Deschanel: That’s a good question. I’ve been surprised several times. I always get excited when I read the episodes. I like to read the next episode as soon as I can. I get so excited to see what’s going to happen. I feel I’m on a show that I’m always surprised by what’s going to happen, or how my character behaves. It always makes sense to the character. I remember being surprised in the circus episode last year when Brennan gets carried away by the performance and gets so excited to do a performance. I just love that element, but I would never predict that for her to love performing for everyone and the attention of the crowd. Brennan’s not somebody that gets carried away often. That was a wonderful surprise for me, and I loved playing that.

Hart Hanson: That’s a good example. I was in the editing room, and Brennan and Booth were joining the circus to come in and wave to the crowd, and Emily made me laugh so hard I farted. When she was doing her grand gestures to the audience and telling Booth that he should work harder to make the audience like him, she was a little bit clumsy. There was a little stumble in there and the actors surprise me constantly.

Can you talk a little bit about the role Kathy Reichs plays in the writing and the science content? Emily, how has this helped you shape your character?

Hart Hanson: Kathy reads every script. She is a very busy novelist. She is an actual Forensic anthropologist. We don’t always get notes from her, but well over half the scripts have notes. It’s important to her, and I think it’s crucial to our series that the science be way more accurate than not accurate. Kathy was very concerned to not besmirch any other forensic show, but that we be way more accurate than any other forensic show. We won’t name that show… We might have cheated more, if we didn’t have Kathy looking over our shoulders. She keeps us honest in that way, and also she is a character and kind of a force. I enjoy talking to her. I don’t know how much you’ve talked to her in the last couple of seasons.

Emily Deschanel: Well, most of the time I spent with her was at the beginning because she was there for the pilot, so I kind of got to pick her brain. I talked to her about herself, and her life, and being a forensic anthropologist, and different things. That’s where I got most of it from. It’s confusing for a lot of people because the characters named after the character in her book. We have the rights to her and her life because my character is supposed to be her, but very loosely based. My character also writes novels and is a forensic anthropologist. From the beginning we’ve said this character is loosely based on Kathy, but it’s not exactly Kathy. It’s something we’ve all created. We have a forensic consultant on the show who is always there. Being scientifically accurate is very important to us. Sometimes we make things look fancier than they are. Sometimes we compress time. We try to keep everything as accurate as possible. That’s basically how involved she is right now. It’s hard, because sometimes she’s in Montreal working as a forensic anthropologist. She writes a book a year, and that takes a while.

Hart Hanson: We’re trying to get her to write a script, and she always comes up with these ideas like I think we should go to the pyramids. Or she’s says, I want to write the crossover with House. It’s always like, oh Kathy, that’s not going to happen. She writes novels and she can do whatever she wants. She’s like well why can’t we, we should go to the moon.

What kinds of places would you like to see Bones travel to?

Emily Deschanel: We’ve talked about a number of different places.

Hart Hanson: We came very close this year to going either to Monte Carlo, Spain, Madrid, or Buenos Ares. We were very close to going to one of those. The economy has changed. There’s no money to throw around.

Emily Deschanel: We’ve never been to D.C. That’s what’s amazing to me. People have gone to shoot second unit photography for the backgrounds. You may have seen a double of me walking in D.C. My family friend who lives there said ‘you came to D.C. and you didn’t call.’ I said ‘no, I haven’t been to D.C. since I was a very small child.’ I have actually been meaning to go because I would love to go to the Smithsonian and do that. With time off it’s just so crazy.

Interview By: Emma Loggins

– Bones Official Site

– Comic Con Gallery