Q: We find out right away that a plague is killing the vampires and Aidan kind of doesn’t like vampires very much so he’s going to have a mild dilemma as to whether to try to end the plague and save vampires or just let his rage die out. Any hints of what Aidan’s going to do?
Sam Witwer: Which way is he going to go, what’s going to happen? You’re dead on; you’re tuning in to what’s going to be a big conflict for him because even if you dislike, even if you profess to hate, a group of people like frat boys, you don’t necessarily want frat boys to be wiped off the face of the earth, you know…
The thing is that Aidan does belong to this group of people, and so with their existence threatened, certainly his feelings of loyalty and belonging are challenged. So, yes, we get to see him make some choices that are sometimes questionable, sometimes dead on, sometimes dead wrong concerning that issue, but I can’t tell you too much because it would definitely spoil it.
Anna Fricke: I would say that our show has always been a lot about balance – the balance in nature and what it is to be human and playing with that moral ground… that’s why [this year] we have the theme of ‘be careful of what you wish for’ because you may get something that you thought you may have been striving for, but a deeper nature in our character kicks in, and I think that’s what we’ll see in Aidan and the other characters.
Q: I love Bishop (Mark Pellegrino) of course, and he’s coming back in some ways. In the British series, his parallel character was revived in a very interesting and weird way. Can you give us any hints about how we’ll see Bishop?
Anna Fricke: We obviously love Mark Pellegrino [too], which is why we keep trying to dream up ways to bring him back. The great thing about vampires is that you can always have things live on in flashbacks, and that’s obviously part of how we deal with Bishop, and there are other creative ways that we find him.
I know how the British series brought him back, and we have discussed that. If we brought him back in that way, we would want to make sure we just weren’t repeating the same dynamic so that particular way may not have fit in well with this season, but the great thing about a supernatural show is that you don’t really ever have to say no to anything because anything is obviously possible. So that’s a fun idea to play with; that’s not exactly how we do it this year, but we do try to find organic ways to work Bishop in because Bishop is a huge part of the makeup of Aidan’s long life and is always present with him in a way, so that’s how we try to address it.
Sam Witwer: I’ve been steadily pressuring Anna to bring him back, and I have to give her credit that she stood her ground and has been doing what’s right for the series. I keep pushing because Mark is a close friend of mine, and I also just love working with him… I love those scenes; they’re fantastic and he’s such a great actor, but Anna has been exercising restraint because ultimately you want it to be a dramatically satisfying thing that works within the logic of what we’ve laid out and so she’s taking all my calls and my emails and exercising restraint, and I thank her for that because, you know, my job is to be unrestrained and her job is to say, ‘Okay, but here’s what we’re actually going to do.’
