Hart Hanson on Bones: "The Change in the Game Is Going to Be One of Those Shows the Bones Audience Will Talk About and Enjoy Hugely"

Hart Hanson said it plainly: "The Change in the Game is going to be one of those shows that the Bones audience will talk about and enjoy hugely. If an…" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

Hart Hanson worked as a Canadian television writer and producer for 10 years before moving to Los Angeles in 1998 to work on the network series Cupid. He rose through the ranks on Snoops, Judging Amy, and Joan of Arcadia before creating and executive-producing BONES, which was in production on Season Six at the time of this interview.

In a recent interview, Hart discussed Emily Deschanel's pregnancy, the creative process behind Bones, and casting Geoff Stults in the Finder crossover episode — "The Finder" — airing Thursday, April 21 (9:00–10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX, featuring guest stars Geoff Stults (She's Out of My League), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile), and Saffron Burrows (Law & Order: Criminal Intent).

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What can you tell us about "The Change in the Game"?

HART HANSON: The last two episodes of this season I think are going to run the whole gamut of tone that Bones does — from, I'm going to say A to Zed, but I better say A to Z. A lot happens in those last two episodes, and I think the title of the season finale, "The Change in the Game," is about as much as I want to say about it in any kind of detail. I just think it's going to be one of those shows that the Bones audience will talk about and enjoy hugely. If anyone feels there's an anticlimax to it, then I totally failed in my job.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: About the spin-off — what is it that grabbed you and made you want to create another series around it?

HART HANSON: "Spin-off" has always been a troublesome term to me. It's more like we did a crossover with a series that doesn't exist yet and that we hope does come to exist. I have an overall deal at 20th — I either write or work on a pilot each year, it's part of my deal. This year I was kind of laying low, and then Lisa Katz at 20th gave me The Locator novel called The Knowland Retribution by Richard Greener, and it is such a good idea — a simple, clear good idea for a network series. A guy who can find anything: find people or things. There's a line I put in the Finder crossover/pilot episode where Walter says to Brennan, "It's amazing how many times people ask me to find something and the real treasure is something else altogether." Good stories are generated by people after a tangible thing or outcome, and then if what they really want — their desires — are at odds with that, you get a good story. It seemed to me that doing a series based on a guy who could find things, both tangible and intangible, for people would be a really good idea. It just generates so many stories. And the idea of doing it as a crossover really appealed to me because last year when I went to do a pilot I was away from Bones for weeks and weeks — this being a Bones episode meant I didn't have to leave home. I could keep an eye on getting through the end of the season on Bones while doing this spin-off at the same time. It's also a really good financial model for the studio and the network. It just all came together and turned out quite well.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: With the crossover, which characters are we going to be focusing on the most?

HART HANSON: My worry is that the Bones fans will feel away from their Bones people more than they'd be comfortable with — unless these guys charm them instantly, which I hope happens. The only character from Bones who doesn't appear in it is Sweets. Everyone else is in it and interacts with Walter. So I hope we're not away too much, but at the same time we had to make an episode that showed what these other characters can do and showed them together enough that we'd see what a series with them would look like. It's quite an experiment. I guess we'll know Friday morning how the Bones fans took to Walter, Ike, and Leo.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What did Geoff Stults bring to the role that made you choose him over other actors?

HART HANSON: Casting the Finder was hilarious. The part played by Michael Clarke Duncan was originally written for an old, skinny white man — and instead we got Michael Clarke Duncan, who is none of those things. And Geoff — the role of Walter Sherman was written a bit darker. He had some brain damage in Iraq and had a darker side. Then this man came in — Geoff Stults came in to talk to us and read the part and he was just really funny. He feels to me like — if we don't make him a star on Finder, somebody else is going to grab this guy and make him a star. I felt it was akin to how they must have felt when they saw Tom Selleck walk in the first time. A big handsome guy who's very funny and doesn't seem to be at all vain about his looks. And then the three of them — Saffron Burrows is in it as well — have a great chemistry. It feels like a show to me. We did make some shifts as we cast, which you always have to do, but it was a delightful shift — not one that curtailed the project.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What do you find most gratifying about working on Bones each season?

HART HANSON: Oh, there's a lot of things. The Bones cast and crew are like a theater company — we really enjoy each other. It was really fun to have some outsiders come on for Finder and react to our cast and crew. It was very gratifying to see people from the outside recognize what it's like to work on Bones. These are great people. I think as long as people keep murdering people we'll have stories, and the chemistry between all the actors allows us to go in many, many directions. Bones is fun to work on. Of all the shows I've ever worked on, Bones is the most gratifying and fun, and it gives us a wide variety of tones. We can make you cry. We can be odd. We can make you laugh and maybe throw up a little bit — and that's a lot of fun to work on for all of us.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: How will you incorporate Emily's pregnancy into the series? And will Brennan have a one-night stand with Stephen Fry's character?

HART HANSON: Who wouldn't want to see that?

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Will it be difficult — will she be covering up a bump, or will this be the game-changing thing at the end of the season?

HART HANSON: Well, those are big Season Seven questions, and I don't want to be too obstinate, but we have a lot of decisions to make as we move forward. Season Seven would probably be a curtailed season in some respects — we don't know how much yet. We have a lot of things to figure out about how to deal with Emily's pregnancy, never mind anything we decide to do with Brennan, and there are an infinite number of ways we could handle it. We can hide it. We can not hide it. We have a plan right now. I'm going to be stubborn about saying what our plan is going into Season Seven. We're shooting the final episode of Season Six right now and we've had no cause to show or hide much of Emily — she's not showing all that much yet. That will happen soon, but if I told you how we were going to proceed into Season Seven, it would give you too much information on how we intend to get out of Season Six. Good effort though — and I love the Stephen Fry idea beyond all.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: How will having a baby affect the working schedule of Angela and Hodgins — or will the baby just become a member of the lab too?

HART HANSON: Well, the person most concerned about this is Michaela, saying, "Does this mean I'm staying home or anything?" — and it's like, as far as that baby goes, he or she folds into the family. I think the Jeffersonian probably has top-notch daycare and it will become another source of stories, but I don't expect it to diminish Michaela's/Angela's participation in the show one jot. Although we would like to show that it's not nothing to have a baby in your life. It changes your life — anyone who's had a baby knows — and so we will make that part of the storytelling, but we don't want to in any way diminish one of our most important characters' role in the show.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Did you always plan to have baby Hodgela have something medically wrong with it, and how is that going to affect not only the parents but the rest of the team at the Jeffersonian?

HART HANSON: I always think of Angela and Hodgins as just the greatest couple in the world. They don't have very many internal problems, so they have to go through obstacles that come at them from the outside and we watch them deal with it. As things stand now, the baby has a 75% chance of being born with sight absolutely fine — and a 25% chance of being born blind. We just want to see how that looks to Hodgins and Angela. And I think it's all right to say that the season ender has a lot to do with the birth of Angela and Hodgins' baby. We'll find out then how they are going to proceed in their lives as a family.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: If The Finder does get picked up, what sort of additional characters or cast members do you anticipate adding to the mix?

HART HANSON: Aside from the three central characters, the other main character will be Isabelle, who is attached probably to the Miami FBI — it could be the Miami field office of the FBI or the Miami-Dade Police Force. She is Walter's main squeeze on and off. I'd like to really avoid doing another "will they or won't they" series — it's more emotional than romantic. She is his law enforcement connection with whom he sometimes has an on-again/off-again affair. Those would be the four main recurring characters right off the bat. It's also possible that we need someone else in the Ends of the Earth Bar where Ike runs the bar — but that would be down the line.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: You mentioned how Emily's pregnancy might result in a "curtailed" Season Seven. Do you mean it might start later, have fewer episodes, or that Emily might be in fewer episodes?

HART HANSON: We're still contending with the effects of Emily's pregnancy on the show. One possibility would have been, if we had enough scripts in the pipeline, to keep going through this summer instead of taking a hiatus — and then take the hiatus when Emily was unable to work and have her baby. We don't have scripts in the pipeline because we haven't been picked up for Season Seven yet, but there are any number of possibilities. Do we do shows without Emily? Do we simply shut down when Emily's not available and thus do 16 or 18 episodes? Do we do a few episodes without her? These are all choices we have to make. I'm ready to pitch a bunch of alternatives to the network, but of course we haven't had those conversations yet. We've had creative conversations on how to get out of Season Six, but we haven't had any creative or production conversations with the network about how to get into Season Seven. In the end, the network will weigh in heavily — for example, were we to do four episodes without Emily, is the network interested in that for Bones, or does their testing show that would hurt the show? Those are all conversations we haven't had yet.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: We haven't heard about the renewal yet. What's the latest on that status and your deal with 20th?

HART HANSON: It's just business stuff — a license fee negotiation. They are talking like crazy over there, I know. In 2009 it wasn't settled until the weekend before Upfronts, so I imagine this could be anywhere between now and May 15th that we'll come to a deal. I'm very confident that we will, in fact, come to a deal, but there are all sorts of hoops and hurdles to jump through and over.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Would there be any option for a truncated season?

HART HANSON: Those are part of the negotiations as everyone tries to figure out what exactly it will look like. Are we going to make 16? Are we going to make 18? Are we going to make 22? I guess those are all the models they're going through, although far be it for me to say how that affects the license fee negotiations. We're kind of used to that over here right now because House is in a very similar place to us.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Will the cast be going to Comic-Con?

HART HANSON: I think so. I have not heard details. To be honest, around here we look like the walking dead getting through our 23rd episode including the spin-off. There will be a presence at Comic-Con — I just don't know what it will look like yet. Traditionally David and Emily go. I don't know if Emily will go this year or not. She understands how important Comic-Con is, but I can't speak for her. We have not had a lot of conversations about it.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What is your general approach for each season?

HART HANSON: The first thing we do is sketch out where each of our main characters are going — what their arc is for the season — and sort of lay those out. Then we start coming up with arenas. We have a very good story room. Carla Kettner runs the story room upstairs directly over my head — I can hear them pounding their feet every once in a while. What they do is come up with arenas, areas. One good example in the last year was the Jersey Shore episode, which I had turned down every single time it came up. I've always said, "If you can come up with a story that makes sense of it, I'll accept it." Mostly I say yes or no to arenas. Then they come back with a story that fits into the arena — who the victim is, who the murderer was, who the suspects are, and what the stakes are in that world. Then we go back and forth, and I say yes or no to various things. It culminates in a writer who eventually gets that story pitching the six-act structure, and then we torture them more, and then we go to outline and everyone tortures us once there's an outline. Studio and network chip in on it, and generally — I mean, I'm working on double golden rods right now on the season finale. We just keep changing things and trying to improve them before we're finished shooting it.

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