Today was NBC’s day at the Television Critics Association (TCA) winter press tour. The day kicked off with a panel for Hannibal Season 2, and featured other highlights including panels on the comedies About a Boy (panel pictured below) and Growing Up Fisher; the dramas Believe and Crisis; and the returning game show Hollywood Game Night. (There were also panels on NBC’s late-night changes, to come in another post.)
Hannibal Season 2 (Feb. 28)
At the Hannibal Season 2 panel, executive producer Bryan Fuller noted upcoming guest stars for the gruesomely terrific series, including some returning favorites.
“Eddie [Izzard] is back,” said Fuller. “One of the great things about last season is that we had all of these guest characters that came onto the show and expanded the family, and most of them are back. Raul [Esparza] is back, playing Dr. Chilton. Eddie is back, playing Dr. Gideon, and we have Gillian Anderson back. … Amanda Plummer, that was actually one of my favorite scenes in the show because it was she plays somebody who will make you think twice about going to get acupuncture. And she’s pretty fantastic. Jeremy Davies is joining us. Jonathan Tucker is joining us. We have a lot of fun with the guest psychopaths, and every time we do one of those guest psychopaths on the show, it’s serving as a metaphor for what’s going on with everything else with the other characters. So we are continuing that tradition, and it actually gives us a spine to the stories and allows us to structure a story around something so we are just not a freewheeling soap opera.”
Believe (Premieres March 10; airs in regular day/time starting March 16)
Eleven-year-old Johnny Sequoyah plays the main protagonist in this new series from executive producers J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón, who directed the pilot. Sequoyah plays Bo, a girl with supernatural powers pursued by ruthless forces and protected by a small group. Jake McLaughlin, Delroy Lindo, Jamie Chung and Kyle MacLachlan round out the cast.
At the panel, Abrams stated his longtime interest in working with Cuarón.
“[O]ver 20 years ago I met Alfonso Cuarón. And I’ve wanted to work with him desperately ever since,” said Abrams. “I was a huge fan of every movie that he made, and each one made me more and more desperate to try and figure this out. And it wasn’t until Alfonso, through some magical moment, called and said, ‘I have an idea for a TV show,’ that it gave this opportunity to me and to Bad Robot.”
Showrunner Jonas Pate also expressed what it was like to be the second director on the series, following the tone set by Oscar nominee Cuarón (Gravity) in the pilot.
“Way more difficult,” said Pate. “I was the first man up after Alfonso. Believe me, I wasn’t happy about that. But we’ve tried to really faithfully execute we’re shooting on much wider lenses than I think you would on a normal TV show, and we’ve tried to keep that style going.”
Crisis (March 16)
Gillian Anderson (left, at today’s panel) and Dermot Mulroney lead an ensemble cast in this thriller about the children of Washington, D.C., elite being kidnapped on a school outing. While some viewers who have been burned on serialized storylines such as this (that seem to be drawn out with no resolution, or get canceled before a resolution can be reached), creator/co-executive producer Rand Ravich said the initial season would have 13 episodes, culminating in a hard ending.
“We have a climactic, satisfying — both emotional and plot — conclusion that leaves a small five percent seed for next year to go back into a world,” Ravich said at the panel, “but we do have an ending this year. We have an ending every episode. We have an ending this year as well.”
Ravich reinforced the “hard, satisfying ending” notion a few times during the panel, so should Crisis run all of its episodes, viewers will see the school bus hijacking storyline resolved.
About a Boy (Preview Feb. 22; regular date/time premiere Feb. 25)
Fans of the Nick Hornby novel should take to this charming adaptation of the 2002 film version of the novel. Those fans will also notice that the pilot episode pretty much takes care of the entirety of the film’s plotlines and at least one key scene right off the bat, leaving the door open for the series to take its own route. Executive producer Jason Katims expounded on that at today’s panel.
“I thought that what we wanted to do was tell the first story in the pilot, and we wanted that to be the first of obviously many,” Katims said. “I felt like sort of in adapting it, what we wanted to do was take this what was so beautiful in the book and in the movie and something that I felt really a story that I really loved and honor that and then give us the room to be move forward with telling new stories with sort of making it our own. So that was kind of what was behind how we structured the pilot.”
Thirteen-year-old Benjamin Stockham, who plays Marcus, stole the panel handily with his cheerful “kidness.” When asked if he knew this would be a good role for him, Stockham replied, “Mmm, I did know it was going to be a good role because it’s called ‘About a Boy.'”
Growing Up Fisher (Special premiere Feb. 23; airs regularly starting Feb. 25)
J.K. Simmons and Jenna Elfman lead the cast of this comedy, a semi-autobiographical sitcom from DJ Nash.
“It’s based on my childhood,” said Nash. “My dad went blind when he was 11 and hid blindness from pretty much everyone outside the family for a long, long time. And then when my parents were getting divorced, he got a guide dog so he could be the dad he wanted to be even though he didn’t have the help he had before. And so we went from sort of helping him hide this secret to him becoming a poster child for the blind like he’s never been till right now. Yeah, so it’s all the story in the pilot is pretty much exactly what happened.”
Although Simmons is sighted, he plays the blind character inspired by Nash’s father. Nash addressed the fact of having a sighted actor playing a blind character (which Simmons does, admittedly, pull off remarkably).
“I knew that if we went with a visually impaired actor, it would have to be my dad,” said Nash, “and I simply couldn’t do it. It would just be too many hours with him.
“It would be amazing to have my dad do it, but he’s 80, and the story we’re telling is a younger person. But J.K. is brilliant in the role. … And what is amazing to me, the biggest test about the blindness stuff — and we spent a lot of time getting that right in the show. We have a blind consultant. We have a visually impaired consultant who has a guide dog. We have a sighted consultant who has worked with blind people helping them assimilate to their world. We spent so much time, the two of us, getting that right, and the biggest test was showing my siblings the pilot, and they were like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s like looking at Dad.'”
Hollywood Game Night Season 2 (Jan. 20)
The game show Hollywood Game Night begins Season 2 with back-to-back episodes, featuring celebrities like Retta, Martin Short and Michael Chiklis. Jane Lynch is back as host, and at today’s panel, she touted one aspect of the new season.
“We have a lovely new set; so lovely and glamorous and expensive that Justin Bieber has already egged it,” Lynch quipped.
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Photos: Chris Haston/NBC