‘Warehouse 13’ Showrunner and Stars Talk About the Upcoming Season

FanBolt had the opportunity to chat with Warehouse 13 showrunner Jack Kenny and stars Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly last week. Check out some of the highlights of what they had to say about the upcoming season!

So in the midseason premiere you have guest stars James Marsters and Polly Walker, […] what other guest stars we can look forward to seeing the second half of the season?

Eddie McClintock: Sure. You know one of the great things about being on Warehouse 13 is when you’re on a successful show, successful people want to be a part of it and so I think we’ve been really lucky in regards to our guest cast. And having James Marsters and Anthony Head in the same show in the same season it’s pretty cool. The legions of Buffy fans are just going to go crazy.

Jack Kenny: They were – I have to say they both dove in feet first into our family and really fit in nicely. I mean we had a great time. The first episode as you know is mostly – more James than Polly. Polly has a couple of beats in it and then Polly comes back later in the season and has a very big episode, Episode 18, with Artie and Pete and Myka. And they sort of partner up together in search of an artifact which is kind of fun. […]

And then we’ve got coming up this season we’ve got Joel Grey is coming to join us in Episode 14 with Steve Valentine and Nora Zehetner. In Episode 13 we do an episode where Pete and Myka fall into a world of film noir and we’re joined by Missi Pyle and Enrico Colantoni, sort of a Galaxy Quest reunion. I mean Enrico had such a great time on the show, he came back to hang out on the set on another episode just because he liked everybody so much.

Jack Kenny: But we also have…

Eddie McClintock: Ricardo Chavira

Jack Kenny: Ricardo Chavira, Charlie Weber comes on to play with us in Episode [16].

Eddie McClintock: Cynthia Watros.

Jack Kenny: Cynthia Watros is in Episode 17.

And of course Anthony Head is coming to join us for the last three episodes and he turns out to be quite a powerful character. As it’s been released he plays a 16th century alchemist, rogue alchemist names (Paracelsus) and I like to joke that our show is probably one of the only shows on TV that you can have a great time, laugh, cry and get course credit for watching because we do lots of teaching.

I wondered if you could share what originally motivated the decision to kill [Leena] and what the loss of Genelle has meant to the behind the scenes Warehouse 13 family.

Jack Kenny: Well it was very difficult for all of us because Genelle was so sweet and wonderful. There’s a lot of different levels that that played on for me as a showrunner and head writer too.

Essentially we needed somebody to die and stay dead because we’d brought back Artie, we brought back Steve and if death doesn’t mean anything then the stories no longer have stakes. If you can bring back anybody from dead then death is no longer a danger and so it becomes impossible to make something dangerous to raise the stakes in the story. So we had to lose someone that stayed lost so that we could deal with real mortality since mortality was such a strong element of our season this year. So that was one thing was very important.

Then it became well who can we lose, who in the cast can we lose and yet it would still have a powerful impact on everybody. And Leena was the obvious choice because it was hard to get Leena into stories, into artifacts snag and bag since she’s not an agent and yet it would have meaning for the cast to lose that character for the characters to lose her because she’s such a warm and lovely presence and such a loving presence in their lives.

So it was sort of the perfect opportunity to really punch everybody in the gut and have them have to deal with something monumental in their lives. Any other external character wouldn’t have meant the same thing. And also such an innocent, such a pure innocent who was literally turned around to help Artie when she thought he needed it, essentially gave her life.

And then in the second episode one of the things we tried to show was that everybody knows what they’re getting into when they take this – when they go to work for the warehouse. It is a dangerous job. It’s like joining the military. You could lose your life and you have to be prepared for that. So that was also very important.

But everybody – Genelle was so lovely and so sweet and everybody loves her. We do get to see her in a few more episodes because as you know it’s sci-fi, once you’re dead it doesn’t mean you’re off the show just because you’re dead.

I’ve heard that you’re anxious to explore the thing with Claudia as the future caretaker of the Warehouse. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Jack Kenny: Absolutely. Actually that’s a big driver to our season finale.

We’ve always teased that Claudia has a destiny at the warehouse beyond just being an agent. And one of the things we’ll learn into certainly into Season 4.5 and even in Season 5 that we’ve been talking about here in the writer’s room these days is that there are certain people destined to be connected to the warehouse, to be in the life of the warehouse no matter what the world does or what the world looks like, they will always be connected. And Claudia is just one of those people that was destined to be here as you’ll hear Artie talk about it in Season 4.5 that she was kind of born to this.

So yes we tap on it a couple times. As you know last year we had Mrs. Frederic take Claudia along with her to see the birth of an artifact so that she could have a little peak behind the curtain into what Mrs. Frederic does and we’re going to keep playing that dynamic of Claudia’s starting to sense her own connection to the warehouse, starting to sense that she actually is in a way organically connected to Warehouse 13 in a way that’s beyond what anybody else is. And it’s kind of beautiful.

And Allison plays it very nicely, very subtly and you’ll see it in Episode 14 as well. There’s a cool story where — sorry, Episode 15 — there’s a great story where she and Kelly Hu are on a hunt in the warehouse to find out what’s – something’s going wrong with the warehouse and they’re trying to figure it out. Kelly and Steve and Artie also are in this story and it’s kind of fun.

So yes we definitely will tap on that.

Warehouse 13 is notorious for its ability to crossover into other shows. As you look to 4.5 and beyond, are there any shows you would like to crossover that you haven’t yet?

Jack Kenny: It’s tough because some of the other Syfy shows don’t exist sort of in the same universe that we exist in. Like I don’t think we could crossover with Defiance unless we did a time traveling episode. And I’m not saying that’s out of the question, I’m just saying that’s what it would require. Or we put Pete in very, very old makeup.

But it’s – I think we probably could crossover with Haven because it’s sort of the same kind of kooky world where weird stuff happens. It would be tougher with Being Human, not that we couldn’t do it, it would just get to be a little tougher because we don’t – in the world of Warehouse 13 there aren’t real werewolves or ghosts or vampires, it’s always due to an artifact. So it would be sort of lying to our audience to do a crossover in that way.

But Eddie are there other shows that you want to crossover with?

Eddie McClintock: Antiques Roadshow.

Jack Kenny: That’s actually a great idea for an episode.

Eddie McClintock: And The Ultimate Fighter, like maybe I have to go and fight Jon Bones Jones.

You’re welcome, no problem. How do you want Season 4.5 to be remembered creatively from your standpoint?

Eddie McClintock: From my standpoint? As long as we continue to be thought of by the fans as, you know, the term we’ve coined is a “thrilleromedy.” You get everything kind of – you get fantasy, you get drama, you get romance, you get horror, you get sci-fi thrown in there and then you get great comedy in there. And I think that’s what keeps people coming back is because it’s an entire show you can watch – the entire family can watch the show and they get to really experience a lot of different beats in one episode and sometimes even from scene to scene.

So if we can continue to be viewed in that aspect then I’m good with that. And I think we pull it off again here in 4.5.

Jack Kenny: I’d like it to be remembered as the middle year of our nine-year series run.

Joanne Kelly: You know I think 4.5 is one of our strongest seasons yet. I really like the fact we don’t get to play characters for this long ever. It’s a real pleasure to go and play – to go on this journey with Myka and this is the fifth year and you know I’ve grown as a person and she’s grown as a character and I think it’s really – this year’s a really, really interesting perspective on that journey.

And something happens in this arc of this season that will change my character’s life forever. And because we have someone like Jack Kenny who continues to push the envelope and to really to delve into the personal stories of these characters, it’s exciting. And I’m excited to see how everybody reacts to her arc this season because it’s going to be a wild ride.

Jack Kenny: One of the things that we talk about in the writer’s room is how can we give these guys the next level of something to do? The last thing we want to do is for them to ever feel like they’re standing there holding a pad and asking then what happened. We always want to give them something bigger, something scarier, something funnier, something wilder, a bigger thing to play than in the last episode.

And I think by the way going into Season Five we’ve got some even huger things planned for everybody to do. So our goal is to make them excited to come to work which I think will make you guys excited to watch.

Catch Warehouse 13 Mondays at 10pm EST/9pm CST!