VISITORSITE.NET - V INTERVIEWS

Return Home

Interview: V Executive Producer Steve Pearlman Talks About V Season 2!

by Craig Byrne

On our V set visit from September, VisitorSite.net was a part of a group of journalists who were able to visit the Vancouver office of V Executive Producer Steve Pearlman, who showed us a sneak peek of the new season and told us a bit about what to expect from the new season, which premieres Tuesday night at 9PM (ET) on ABC.

Pearlman was asked about the new season's throwbacks to classic V and some new recruits to the Fifth Column... and even answered the question of "What exactly is going on with Marcus?"

Enjoy the interview, and come back tomorrow for some words with Laura Vandervoort! Past interviews can be found at the bottom of this page.

Please do not reproduce this interview on other websites. If you would like to re-post this, please e-mail and ask permission before posting.

"The driving force of this season, certainly through the first half of the season, is the repercussions of the red sky. We learned in the season finale last year that Anna released the red sky earlier than she had anticipated. We didn't learn what her plan was at that point, but just by that one line of dialogue, you knew that she obviously had a plan, and the plan - - she initiated it earlier [than she was supposed to]. So, when you initiate something earlier than you intend to, there's got to be repercussions of that. Things will go wrong. Things that, if she had waited and done it on the right timetable, all of the I's would have been dotted and all of the T's would have been crossed. Well, she didn't wait. She blew it. Kind of. We're basically playing up the repercussions of that, over the course of the first part of the season," he reveals.

Anna will likely try to play off the red sky and the red rain as something that is beneficial to humans, much like she manipulated reactions to the Blue Energy and the healing centers. "She will be able to turn the public back to her, and explain to the world why a red sky is a good thing for them," Pearlman reveals.

Another person Anna will have to explain herself to is her mother, Diana, who is played by the legendary Jane Badler from the original V series. "It will be and continue to be, basically, a game of cat and mouse. Diana was the ruler of the V's prior to Anna, and she earned it. We'll find out in the first episode [that] she's been in exile for fifteen years. She's bitter about that, and angry at her daughter, but she never wants to let her daughter get the better of her," he tells us. "That's kind of the dynamic that we're playing with them in the early part of the season, which I think is very relatable on many levels, just between a parent and their kid, that you never want to lose. As a kid, you never want to show your parent that you know that you're losing, and as a parent you never want to show your kid that you know you're losing, so it's that kind of dynamic. Just when it looks like one of them's gotten the other by the throat, they come out of it. It's really fun. The two of them are relaly quite great together," he says.

Could embracing the past with guest actors like Badler and Marc Singer lead to more homages to V's past, with moments like the famous guinea pig eating scene? "I think that there are great opportunities based on the original source material to have fun with and pay homage to the original series, but the way we try to do it, is we don't just want to do what was done in the original series. We want to try and contemporize it or go a step further than what they did in the original series, with a particular beat. It has to work for the fans of the original series, but it also has to work for people who are coming in new, so that they don't just go 'Why is she eating a rat?' It has to work on two levels," he explains.

Right now, Jane Badler is listed as just a guest star on V, although she'll be in most of the Season 2 episodes. Pearlman points out that that might not always be the case, pointing out that Charles Mesure's Hobbes was a guest star in Season 1.
"She's great. Home for Jane Badler is Melbourne, Australia, so she has a long commute, so I think that if we were to go another season and want to keep her, then my guess is that we'd make some kind of bigger deal with her," he says.

Fighting the good fight in Season 2 will be more Fifth Column members from across the globe. "In the first episode, we introduce Bret Harrison as a new character, as a scientist. As you kind of put the pieces together of an ensemble, and a good portion of the storytelling of this series has to do with science, and Joshua serves that role on the V side of things, and now since he's kind of back in under Anna's control, I don't know that he's going to be so able to help the Fifth Column anymore on the ship. That voice was missing in terms of humanity's side of the equation," he tells us.

Others will also join the team as time goes on. "We have Oded Fehr is joining us for a three episode arc, and he will be introduced as a member of another sect of the Fifth column. There are these sects of Fifth Column all over the place. So he will come in and interact with our guys. You can't fight a war with five people, so we will expand beyond that. We're playing a story for Episode Seven where Erica and Hobbes are going on a case to Tokyo and hook up with Fifth Column operatives in Japan," he reveals.

One lingering question fans had over the summer is the true intention of Anna's right hand man, Marcus. In the final moments of Season One, it seemed he was one of the good guys, with reviving Joshua. But was that the approach they were going for? "That was actually a very interesting reaction to that scene, and it was a reaction among viewers that was not something that was ever really discussed or intended among the writers. I heard people - my own friends, say 'Oh my God. Marcus is Fifth Column!' That was not the intention. But I think that that reaction has certainly given us some opportunities with Marcus, and ideas about different ways to play him. I think we will start to see in the first episode, in fact, that he starts to become a little suspicious of Anna. Can she really handle the job? She released the red sky before she should have, and in the first episode we find out that the captains of the 29 ships are not very happy about this, because this happened and they weren't told about it, and so Marcus starts to question Anna and say "Are you up for it?" Are you really prepared to lead? And she doesn't like being questioned. So, their dynamic, right from the very first episode, has a little bit of a different shading to it," Pearlman says.

V Season 2 is almost here - Tuesday, January 4 on ABC! Come back to VisitorSite.net TOMORROW for another interview!

Swing by the V forum community at KryptonSite! - Send Craig Byrne some feedback

More V Season 2 Interviews: Jane Badler - Elizabeth Mitchell - Scott Wolf - Charles Mesure - Logan Huffman

Return to the VisitorSite home page

V returns January 4, 2011 on ABC.