Sarah back on Prison Break !!!!
From Ausiello :
"Prison Break fans, prepare to seriously lose your heads.
Sarah Wayne Callies — whose rather ugly contract dispute with producers led to her apparent decapitation last October — is returning next season. Full-time. As Dr. Sara Tancredi. Head and all. Seriously.
How? Why? When? WTF?! All legitimate questions. Good thing I just hung up with Mr. Answer Man (aka executive producer Matt Olmstead).
So... I take it that wasn't Sara's head in that box....
Matt Olmstead: Yeah, that wasn't.
But initially it was supposed to be her head. What changed?
Olmstead: What changed was.... once we realized that the emotional hook of Season 3 was going to be the death of Sara, when we didn't get the actress to do it, as soon as we wrote it and shot it, we realized that there was actually a way she could still be alive. Lincoln glanced at the head in the box for a split second. That could've been anyone. He wasn't about to pull it up from the hair and inspect it closely. And then we were fairly careful thereafter of references we made to that and who took credit for it and what was seen or heard, and we left it fairly [vague]. But initially when we realized that we never actually saw the character get killed, we just had that knowledge in our back pocket and moved forward with the narrative as we intended. Which was: she's out of the picture, Michael's [feeling guilty] and Lincoln is freaking out because if they did that to her, they could do that to his son. It really gave us a real push for the season.
Don't you think that was a little unfair to the audience — particularly fans of Dr. Sara — to jerk them around like this? They had every reason to believe she was dead.
Olmstead: I don't think it was unfair, because it gave us some real juice storytelling-wise — it put teeth in the antagonists. Obviously they were now capable of killing somebody. It also gave us a couple of episodes where Lincoln withheld the information from Michael, and that gave us conflict with the brothers. But also, what were we really going to do? Were we going to see Sarah Wayne Callies tied to a chair for 13 episodes? And then if she broke free, what is she really doing? It was almost a disservice to that character to keep her around last season. Certainly, we could have put her on a cruise ship and she's off sailing away. But we felt that if we're going to lose that character, why not get the most drama out of it? We didn't look at it in terms of [us] trying to tell the audience to go, you know, do something to themselves.
What role did the fan response to Dr. Sara's death play in her return?
Olmstead: It factored in. It was kind of a confluence of events. We saw on the message boards that a lot of fans were wondering if she really was dead. And then that led to conversations of, "Well, what if she isn't?" But then we put that on the back burner and moved forward with what we had to do, because it wasn't anything that could be dealt with right then. And then when we came back after the strike and we realized that we were not going to finish Season 3... we creatively decided to blow it all out, jump forward in the timeline and get a fresh start. And so, when we pitched that, a lot of those elements remained, but we were still looking for that emotional core for Michael. We were kind of exactly where we were in the beginning of Season 3, which led to her demise, quote unquote. So we went back and revisited [the idea of bringing her back to life]. And once we started talking about it, it was mentioned again that fans are still wondering about her. And when people who are fans of the show — and of Sarah — are asking, "Is she really dead?", what they're saying, essentially, is, "I hope she's not dead." And then it became a kind of groundswell.
But then you have to get the actress to agree to return, which I assume was no easy task given the bad blood that seemed to exist last season.
Olmstead: There wasn't bad blood on our side. It was a business decision. I understood where she was coming from in that she was given a provisional assurance that she was going to be a part of Season 3, but we had to revisit Season 3 a couple of times in the pitch stage in order to get it picked up. Fox was still looking for that emotional hook. Once we came up with the idea of her character going away, that gave us what we needed to push things over the edge. And although we were comfortable with it, she wasn't. I also understand on a personal level how it factored in. She was pregnant at the time and looking forward to giving birth, and this wasn't something she was interested in doing.
What changed for her that she's willing to come back now?
Olmstead: She and I spoke a couple of days ago at length about what we have come up with creatively for her character.... We're jumping ahead a little bit in the timeline. There's a little bit of a mystery period for all of these characters in terms of how they got where they are and what happened to them. And we have some interesting things for her, and she responded to them creatively. We won't just be picking up where we left off with her character. And she won't be a damsel in distress waiting for her hero to return. There are some complicating factors involved with her character and things that she's looking forward to. So we spoke about it, she thought about it, and we made a deal.
No hard feelings, then? Everyone's moving on?
Olmstead: Moving on. She's a very smart lady, and we're all adults here. It was never personal. It was a business and creative decision, and we're absolutely moving on.
Can you say how she'll be reintroduced next season?
Olmstead: It's going to be about figuring out what happened to her during that mystery period [between the end of Season 3 and the start of Season 4], and how she and Michael deal with it.
How much time will have lapsed?
Olmstead: About a month. Enough to jump past expected events that we left hanging at the end of Season 3, answering those things, but also moving forward.
And Sarah is onboard for the entire season?
Olmstead: Yes."
From Kristin :
"And it's in the present day? It's not a season entirely in flashback—she'll walk in the door, and she joins the story in progress?
Season four is jumping-forward, hit-the-ground-running storytelling. But we are dropping back, in flashback, and explaining how the characters got to where they are and the situation with her, certainly.
So by the middle of the season you'll be caught up, story-wise?
We'll be caught up sooner than that. It's not like a 50/50 thing where it's half present-day, half in flashback. The flashbacks are much more economical, and you'll get it fairly quickly. There are some mysteries that we're going to extend out, but it's not going to be the bulk of the season.
Now, internally are you planning season four as a 22-episode season?
Yes.
As I said, we've gotten emails galore about Sara(h), and I'm sure you've gotten a few of your own. Was this decision made because the fans were so vociferous about how much they wanted her back? Or had this been part of your overall plan for the character? How did this come about?
It wasn't because of the fans that we did that, but it was the combination of the fans' reactions on the boards and emails, and people we, the writers, know personally would ask about it. And that led us all to have conversations internally, about the fact that there were a lot of people out there asking, "Is she really dead?"
We knew internally that when we didn't get Sarah Wayne Callies to come back in season three and be there to portray her character's death, as soon as it was written and filmed and we saw it on screen, we knew that it was actually a way you could describe how this wasn't Sarah's head in the box, basically. But at that point, we were going forward with other stories, so we kind of put that on the back burner.
But throughout that time we watched how people externally were really talking about what we thought might be the case, internally: The question of, "Is Sara Tancredi really dead?" So throughout season three we were mindful of references we'd make to and who took credit for killing her and all kinds of stuff regarding her death.
Ultimately, we came back after the strike to talk about season four, and that's when a bunch of things kind of came together, and we then had the big conversation. Is Sarah really alive and can we bring her back? And once we opened it up, it happened really quickly.
How did Sarah Wayne and Wentworth feel about this?
Wentworth is abroad promoting the show and I sent him an email, I have yet to hear back from him, I'm sure he's going to be very excited about it, but in terms of Sarah Wayne…Initially, the way these things work, there has to be an offer first, so once our pitch about how the Sarah character would be a part of the season was approved and met enthusiastically, the offer went out. And once the offer was on the table, that's when Sarah Wayne and I spoke, and I told her what I had in mind creatively, because what we have in mind is something she can definitely sink her teeth into creatively.
It's not just you pick her back up, and she's there as the loyal girlfriend and "Michael, go do your thing, and I'll be waiting for you when I get back." Again, we're jumping forward story-wise. There will be a bit of a mystery period where we cover what happened. It becomes about Michael trying to figure out what happened to her. It's his attempt to reclaim her, and her trying to figure out what happened and dealing with it. So laying all that out to Sarah, the actress, she liked that, and so she slept on it, and then we made a deal.
The end of season three seemed to imply that season four would have something to do with Michael avenging Sarah's murder. How does her return change any plans you had and what can you tell us about season four?
You know, the strike through a wrench into things in that there was no back nine for us, telling about all those stories, so we were asked to go right to a season four, instead of just picking up moments later, we took that opportunity to be ambitious about it, so we're jumping ahead picking up down the road. There's a fresh aspect to it, but there's a mystery aspect to it.
How did these people get there? How is that person talking to this person? And then we're dropping back and answering those questions, so it becomes about slowly discovering how Sarah got back, how Michael found her, those type of things.
If Sarah's back, will there finally be some romance and maybe some sex for Sarah and Michael?
Yes! They are finally together, but like I said there have always been these physical barriers between them. He was incarcerated, she worked in the prison hospital, so obviously there's a barrier. He was on the run, she was in another part of the country, there's a barrier.
Here they are finally able to be together, but we are jumping ahead [in time], so there's that period that's unaccounted for, so what happened to her, what happened to him and hope they both help each other get past that, get past these…invisible barriers.
There's no physical barriers anymore between them, but they're both pretty banged up when they see each other, and it's about how they get past that to really find that real intimacy.
So they're not necessarily living together in suburbia with a dog and a baby, but they reconnect and we're sort of watching them get to know each other again?
I mean it's Prison Break, so they're all still trying to clear their names avoid jail time avoid death and so there's still that locomotive feel to it, storytelling-wise, and while that's going on on, on the fly, these two people are trying to save each other.
I know the women's prison spinoff was under consideration for a while. Is that still something you'd think you'd want to do?
Very much so. We're working on a script, but right we're focused on season four Prison Break, and then we'll spin that off.