Creator and new star sound off on “Heroes”
By Casey Gillis on Oct. 19, 2007
Does Kristen Bell have a thing for cult TV series or what?
The star of the “Veronica Mars” — which achieved cult status during its three seasons on the CW, but didn’t have enough viewers to earn a fourth — is now joining the cast of NBC’s “Heroes,” another cult series, just one with a larger audience.
“The thing with cult shows for me is that I would so much rather be on a show that people are wildly obsessed with and watch because they can’t not than on a show that people just turn on because it’s on primetime television,” she said in a conference call Tuesday.
“I think that the whole reason as a performer and as a creator of a TV show, you want people to invest in your project. You want people to love it, not just like it.”
Bell joins the cast Monday night in the plum role of Elle, who shows up in Ireland looking for amnesiac Peter. Though Bell wasn’t at liberty to reveal what her power is, she did reveal that Elle was raised by the shadowy Company and because of that, she’s “a little messed up in the head.”
Those of you already concerned about the show’s overpopulation in its sophomore season needn’t worry.
“On a show like this, you have to be able to fold people in and fold people out,“ Kring said during the conference call. “So the audience should fully expect to see characters leaving in the near future.“
Kring acknowledged that the show can sometimes get a bit cluttered, but said it just comes with the territory of starting a new season.
“But we have now settled into a pattern of telling fewer stories, which I think allows for a deeper sort of experience with the show,” he said.
Another pressure is the amount of screen time devoted to the series’ core cast members.
“Not everybody can be in every episode,” he said.
“Part of what happens on any show is that you enter a relationship with your viewers, where you teach them how to watch your show, and they teach you what they seem to be responding to. So for us, we are in this process of teaching the audience how to get used to the idea that not everybody is going to be in every single episode.”
Here are some other things the audience can expect this season:
—Shorter story arcs. Last year, the entire season was one volume, and “by the end of the year, we were dragging a tremendous amount of story behind us that had to be paid off in that final episode,” he said, “which made for an episode that the expectations are so high, (and) it’s hard to meet everyone’s expectations.”
To guard against that, they’ve divided this season into multiple volumes. The first one, called “Generations,” began with the season premiere and will run for 11 episodes.
“Every question that is raised will be answered within these 11 episodes, so that it’s one complete volume, which then slingshots us into another (one),” he said.
“We actually are not a show that tries to keep answers away from the audience. Our … feeling is that no answer is so precious that we can’t tell the audience what it is. That being said, there’s a certain amount of fun with drawing things out.”
—More information about the older generation of heroes, 12 of whom we glimpsed in a photo last week.
“We will be seeing the people in the photo (on the show),” Kring said.
—More interaction between characters who weren’t fully in contact last season, like the new, interesting family unit of Matt, Mohinder and Molly.
“We wanted to sort of do a, in a way, our version of ‘My Two Dads’ — a kind of domesticated life for these two characters who we saw circling each other all last year,” Kring said.
“One of the interesting things that’s happening this season is the joining of different characters that we never saw last year. Mohinder and Matt is certainly one. And Matt and Nathan last night. Suresh and HRG, Claire’s father. … And so it’s a continual sort of quest to try and shake things up.”
—More of Bell. After tomorrow night’s episode, she’ll disappear from the canvas for little while before making a comeback in the season’s eighth episode.
She originally signed to appear in 13, but said she’s open to doing more.
“I have been such a fan of ‘Heroes’ from the very beginning that this sort of would have been the dreamiest situation I could have possibly thought up as my next job.”
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