EMILY DESCHANEL TALKS BONES @EMILYDESCHANEL @bonesonFOX @FOXTV

The talented actress, EMILY DESCHANEL who plays “Dr. Temperance Brennan” on the FOX series BONES took some time to talk to us about her role and her relationship with Booth and Hannah.

BRENNAN IDENTIFIES WITH A VICTIM ON AN ALL-NEW “BONES”THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, ON FOX -Katheryn Winnick (“Love and Other Drugs”)and Enrico Colantoni (“Flashpoint”) Guest-Star

Brennan gets a glimpse into her own life when the body of a brilliant and career-driven surgeon is found in a rough neighborhood with multiple fractures in her skull and no indication as to how or why she was there. While the team investigates the case objectively, Brennan struggles to separate her own life from the victim’s as she perceives many parallels between them the more she learns about the victim’s past. Meanwhile, evidence found at the crime scene brings the team closer to solving the case, but it’s Brennan’s unique perspective that propels her to retrace the final events of the victim’s life. With the reassurance of a new friend and Jeffersonian security guard, Micah Leggat (guest star Enrico Colantoni), Brennan makes a discovery about herself and learns a lesson about taking chances in the all-new “The Doctor in the Photo” episode of BONES airing Thursday, Dec. 9 (8:00-9:00 PM) ET/PT on FOX.

By_Daedrian McNaughton

In the upcoming episode, Brennan’s became very vulnerable. How do you feel knowing she was in this position?

EMILY DESCHANEL: It’s hard because you have to go through all the emotions that she’s going through. At the same time, it’s refreshing because it’s a very different episode than most episodes of the show. It’s kind of strange. It’s a different episode. I think it was one of my favorite scripts. I haven’t seen the actual final cut yet, but hopefully, it’ll be one of my favorite episodes.

It’s just very unique. It’s very personal to Brennan. She is facing her own mortality and also looking at her life and seeing what she would be leaving behind when she dies. You don’t see that side of Brennan very often. She becomes very vulnerable trying to solve this case, which she believes to be— If people haven’t seen or don’t know basically, there is a woman who is killed. She’s a doctor. When they started listing the different qualities of this person, Brennan thinks is sounds very familiar, whether they’re physical or personal qualities. Then, even looking at the photograph of the person who died, it looks like Brennan when she looks at it. It’s from Brennan’s perspective, this episode. It’s very interesting, but kind of terrifying for Brennan and confusing. She’s visited by a night watchman who we’re not even sure if he exists or not in real life. Enrico Colantoni played that part, who I’ve always loved as an actor, so it was a lot of fun to work with him.   Yes, it was definitely hard to go through that because I was also in every single scene of this episode. There were absolutely no breaks whatsoever.

Brennan seems serious and a play by the book character, does it ever get exhausting?

EMILY DESCHANEL: Yes and no. I think that Brennan has (a) become a lot more open over the years and you get to see her kind of dorky, quirky side at times, which is fun. I hang on to those moments and try to incorporate things like that in every episode. My favorite things about people in general is that they have contradictions. Brennan is no exception to that rule. I love exploring the contradictions of her character and all of that. No, I’m an actor, too. So playing a character who’s very different from myself is one of the best things to happen to me, especially in a television series. So many times people are hired to play something very close to who they are in real life. It’s a wonderful opportunity to play this character who is very different. I can’t say that I don’t possess some qualities that are similar or that sometimes I don’t remind myself of her, when I behave like a real, I don’t know, nerd—I say that in the most affectionate way—but, I’m very different. So, I love the fact that I am different from the character. But, that’s true sometimes, especially when you’re doing certain episodes. You come home and you take it home a little bit with you.

I have tried to make boundaries for myself where I leave work at work. If I have lines to learn, I do all my acting work on the weekends and then I learn my lines the day before. If there’s any work that needs to be done before the next day, I do it at work. I don’t leave work until I’ve finished that. I don’t like to take work home with me. That means staying late even after working 15 hours. I’ll stay late an hour or two just to make sure I get everything right. I try to set those boundaries so I don’t take things home, but that said, it does leak into your personal life sometimes. I think that was a really long answer to your question, but maybe I answered like ten more.

Will the relationship between Hannah and Booth get more intense?

EMILY DESCHANEL: Yes, it actually does get more serious. That creates the whole situation for all of them. One thing I must say I love about this dynamic between Hannah and Booth and Brennan is that— Hannah is not a bad person. So many times, you see a character come in as a love triangle. The two leads, people want them to get together. I think that you have to like her and—that’s not an order, but I feel like she’s a nice person—Brennan certainly likes her and respects her.

I think there’s a lot of internal conflicts rather than there being external conflicts. There’s internal conflicts in Brennan because she loves Booth. She wants to be with Booth. She’s realizing this, but because she loves Booth, she wants him to be happy. Booth is happy with Hannah now and that’s really hard to see. But, then she also wants him to be happy because she loves him and she cares for him. Then, she also sees that Hannah is a wonderful, smart, tough, cool, beautiful woman. You can’t really blame Booth for falling in love with her. There’s all these conflicting emotions just within one character alone. I just love that. I think it’s great to have conflict between characters, within characters where no one’s intending bad things. It’s just life. It’s just what happens. I’ve seen this happen in life so many times, where there’s feelings for people and they don’t feel the same way, but then you can’t blame them. I think it’s a wonderful kind of push and pull and dance, if you will, between the characters. I really like that dynamic, but it does get more serious with Hannah.

What about playing the role of Brennan surprises you?

EMILY DESCHANEL: Yes, yes. I think I was surprised as she started to open up more. What I just love, this was a couple of seasons ago, but there was a scene where she asked Sweets to help her learn facial expressions because she’s kind almost on the autistic spectrum, almost Aspbergery—not quite, but has some characteristics that fit into that. She doesn’t really understand how to read peoples’ emotions. I just love that she recognized that she didn’t know how to do this and she wanted to get better at it. I just love that. I loved the Jersey Shore episode. That surprised me just how much Brennan had studied this culture of the guidos and how seriously she took it. In a way, things surprise me and in a way, things don’t. Because of course, she studied these guidos. Of course, she takes it very seriously as an anthropological study. She’s going to throw a guy the crab, doing a body building pose to scare someone away. It’s a lot of fun. Yes and no I guess is my answer. I love so many of her qualities, especially when she’s trying to grow as a person and open up.

It was interesting to hear you talk about the work you do that you don’t want to take home. What sort of extra work did you have to do on this episode?

EMILY DESCHANEL: You just spend more time working on it. I work with my acting teacher on it, but there’s just a lot of work you do on your own. I hate talking about the acting process, but it’s a lot of creating thoughts and memories and all of that. So, there’s a lot of work to do. When it’s such a heavy episode, you’re facing such serious emotions as a character. It’s just more demanding. It takes longer to do. You’re just working harder on that. It’s stuff I love. I love doing that. I like the challenge. I don’t think I could do it every single episode. I don’t know, maybe I’d get used to it, but it demands lot.

Does directing demand even more from you then?

EMILY DESCHANEL: Oh, yes, absolutely. When we postponed the directing, so much has happened in my life recently. There’s a lot going on, so in a way I was disappointed that we had to move the directing episode but I was also relieved. Because I am going to be able to take some time in the Christmas break to (a) I’ll have more time to spend doing things I want to do, spending more time with family and stuff, not having to work as much because I’d be preparing while I was on Christmas break if I was directing the next episode.

So, since I’m not doing that, I can spend time preparing, but in advance whatever I can do about directing, figuring out, anticipating things that I’ll want and need for the episode. Yes, absolutely. I probably won’t know entirely what it will demand of me physically and mentally and everything, until I get to the point where I am actually directing. I think it’s one of those kinds of jobs that you just can’t completely prepare for until you’re in it, and certainly, until you actually get the script for the actual episode. I’m sure it’s going to demand a lot of me. I’m excited for that challenge, but I’m also happy to push it a little longer because there’s a lot going on right now.

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