Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-09-17

Interview:
We had the honor of speaking with Justin Bruening, Deanna Russo and Gary Scott Thompson from NBC's Knight Rider. Here's what they had to say:

My first question is for you and I'm wondering, you know, in terms of momentum as actors, because you shot a movie and not a pilot -- and because you did it several months ago -- how difficult was it to get back into your roles and into the Knight Rider storyline?

Deanna Russo: It wasn't difficult at all.

Justin Bruening: Yeah, it was not difficult at all.

Deanna Russo: Because we didn't take a break from it. I mean, once we wrapped shooting, we were... we just kept working on the show from when we shot the two-hour pilot and then we were promoting it. And then we immediately started training into the series, even before we even knew officially. We just wanted to be prepared.

Justin Bruening: Yeah.

Deanna Russo: And, you know, we just enjoyed our characters so much that it wasn't - you know what I mean, we didn't want to leave them behind just yet.

Justin Bruening: And I think deep down we had all confidence that it was going to go to series.

Deanna Russo: Shoot, it's Knight Rider. I mean, come on.

Gary, I wanted to ask you a similar question because, you know, when the movie came out obviously it was, you know, a re-imagination of something we hadn't seen in a long time. Obviously it sets the stage for a series but at the same time there was a fair amount of closure. So, you know, how challenging is it to excite the audience a second time as a series begins?

Gary Scott Thompson: Well it's not just the second time. It's now in 100 more times because we plan on going a long time with this one. So challenging-wise, it was pretty easy actually.

We've got great stars here and a great car. We've got a few new cast members, great writers. So it actually was fairly easy. There's a lot of stories to tell.

What can you tell us about the voice of KITT? Who is that going to be this time around?

Gary Scott Thompson: Same voice, Val Kilmer.

The talk at TCA was that the series was going to be in no way, shape or form even resembling the pilot, that everything was scrapped and writers were taking on a completely different mythology and storyline. Do you want to talk about that, and if that's true or not?

Gary Scott Thompson: It's still true. We went back to the original series to look at what made that work and (wrote a word). We went through the pilot and then, you know, we don't want to disappoint some of the fans of the two-hour so there was - you know, we have four characters coming from that.

So we made sure that those four characters clicked into what the new mythology was for the series. Again, it's 25 years later so we have to update the car, update the people and be in touch with the times.

So I think that's really what we did was just try to bring it up to date.