Danny Glover on Touch: "The Show Provides an Audience the Opportunity to Find and Nurture Those Experiences in Their Life"

On March 12, 2012, Fox held a press call with Danny Glover ahead of the March 22nd premiere of Touch, the new drama starring Kiefer Sutherland as a father whose mute son communicates through sequences of numbers that reveal hidden connections between people around the world. Glover plays Professor Arthur Teller, a mysterious figure who understands the boy's gift. He spoke about what drew him to the role, why television has become a genuine creative home for serious actors, and why he believes the show taps into something the human species has been searching for across centuries.

The show provides an audience with an opportunity to find and nurture those experiences in their life. The human species has always looked for different ways of finding the connection and living on another plane.

What drew him to Professor Arthur Teller

Glover described Teller as a character who inhabits a world apart from the other figures in the show: "He brings us into this world where numbers matter in a different way — the sequence of numbers, the world that he is in contact with, one he himself understands, or has a glimpse of in his own relationships. He comes to a world that facilitates us finding answers to what is happening with this young boy — his world is solving problems and finding the interconnection. When you think about Professor Teller, it's always about the interconnection between people and between certain things." On why he said yes: "There's something mysterious about him, something other-worldly about him that I was attracted to. This is the first time I've done a series outside of doing an arc in two other series."

On the appeal of television for serious actors

Glover was candid about the shift in where meaningful work is being made: "Some of the writing and storytelling on television — whether cable or network — provides another platform for actors who want a little bit more, who have considered acting a craft they wanted to explore in different ways. The small screen provides that opportunity." He also acknowledged the practical reality: "Fewer of the feature films that we get associated with are being made. Wherever an actor finds work, and work that sustains him both as an artist and as someone who needs to be gainfully employed — that's what you do. There's no mystery about that."

On interconnection — and humanity's next advance

Glover spoke at length about the show's central theme and what it means to him personally: "I have a storehouse — a file cabinet — of experiences where some kind of connection I make is connected to another relationship I have. I'm blown away by it. I like the idea of this sense of inter-connectiveness that we often find and then dismiss or pay little attention to in our own lives." On what the show offers viewers: "It provides an audience with an opportunity to find and nurture those experiences in their life." He then went further: "I'll jump out on a limb and say that perhaps our next advance as a human species is to rediscover those particular things and really understand them — given all this technology that has dictated our lives. Maybe because of our own alienation from each other as individuals in relationship to community, we lose those things. Maybe we have a chance to rediscover them." Touch premiered Thursday, March 22, 2012, at 9/8 Central on Fox following American Idol.

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