Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-06-25

Interview:
We had the honor of sitting down with Denis Leary and Peter Tolan to discuss Rescue Me, the characters, the minisodes, and what's in store for next season. Here's what they had to say:

I watched the minisodes. I think they're hilarious and I was wondering would any of the stories in them be, you know, feeding into season - the new season as we wait for that?

Peter Tolan: Well there's a couple of things as we've been writing them that not only foreshadow stories that we know are occurring in Episode Five, but they also weirdly, psychologically tie into some of the past knowledge that we have of these characters and that the audience has too.

So it's - some of them are just out there for laughs and some of them are - we just shot one that is a little more dramatic. And again, it's interesting - if you watched all ten of them in a row, I think you'd start out laughing and then somewhere in the middle you'd go, oh that was an interesting thing.

I wonder what that was. And then by the end you'd go hey, I wonder if this is stuff that's going to be happening in Season Five. And some of this stuff actually will be.

It's particularly inevitable that we would have ended up writing in little clues and hints, and things like that that sort of bridge the gap, you know.


I wanted to ask you specifically about Timo and Rosemary. Why is it that they kind of both were the siblings that never were?

Denis Leary: Well because it's a very large Irish family and as there's (all want), we can't cover everybody's story because we have about eight guys in the firehouse and we have the love interests which, you know, includes not only Janet and Sheila from season to season but in general, a couple of guest stars or one guest star a season.

So, you know, then you got the other guys and their lives. So we - I think as a natural course of events, focus more on dad which is Charles Durning's character and Johnny Gavin, Dean Winters' character, because that's where the strengths fell.

But, you know, it's like I said, a large Irish family. You have to have a (systemic planet) but, you know, like Uncle Mickey - I mean, cousin Mick - Father Mickey -- Bobby Burke's character who has been with us since season one -- he is very busy at the beginning of season five.

It depends on where we're at story-wise, you know.

So Timo and Rosemary were just - they're sort of satellite siblings at this point.

Peter Tolan: We've also established just like a lot of families -- even beyond Irish families -- there are a lot feuds going on and people who have a falling out. And clearly, Tatum's character had that with Charlie and the Rosemary character had that with Charlie's character.

So there have been a lot of - maybe - that was probably a very contentious household, I get the feeling.

I'm just wondering because FX has kind of a habit of renewing really long, you know, lengthy seasons -- 22 plus episodes. Do you know once you guys come back are all 22 going to air consecutively?

Peter Tolan: Yeah, they are.

Denis Leary: Yeah.