Exclusive Interview With Tim Kring Creator of Heroes - page 2

01-10-2007 09:26

“Yes I had come up with this idea and was really sort of thinking about it a lot, in my mind, and making notes, jotting down ideas and I just happened to see these two movies back to back on like a Thursday or a Friday, or something like that. Those films were very instrumental, which happens very often when thinking about something; too tend to draw things to yourself that could be very inspirational.

“Clearly The Incredibles for the obvious reasons that it was dealing with some of the issues that I was thinking about, ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives when they were extraordinary.

“Eternal Sunshine was kind of different I really love the tone of that these very anonymous people, people that you would pass on the street and never think twice about, I was very struck by the depiction of those characters and I think there's some of that in Heroes definitely.”

But the terms ‘cult’ and ‘sci-fi’, which have always been associated with the show, were a great concern for Kring and his team of writers that a mainstream audience may have felt alienated and put off by the tags that came with the show. “That was a huge concern from the beginning, and it was a huge concern for the network, I think part of what helped that is I didn't come from that background and I approached it like I do any other writing for television as a purely character piece.

“It was really only time was going to tell when we launched with it whether it was true of not. It was designed to have something for everyone, we relied tremendously on special effects and if you are a real genre freak you might be disappointed that it doesn't lean as heavily towards that. It was just a balancing act to try and make sure, I kind of used my own gut as a barometer I read a script and think 'well I would watch that.”

But up until recently the long running dramas with a large ensemble cast were not the done thing in television with companies opting instead for the self contained dramas which week in week out gives the audience all of the answers that they were searching for, a formula Kring was desperate to break away from.

“I was wanting to do a large ensemble drama several years ago they were not available in Hollywood because they didn't re-run well and suddenly, with the advent of shows like 24 and Lost, there was suddenly a new found interest in the serialised genre. So I was looking to do a serialised show and wanted to do something that dealt with the bigger issues in the world that we are facing now, these giant issues of real threat to the world, and started to realise that the normal avenue of police drama and medical drama and legal drama just wasn't going to be able to deal with that subject matter and that is what led me to the idea of super powers.

“Every writer would like to tell a longer story or delve more deeply into a storyline or character and the self contained, closed ended story telling is a very artificial way to tell a story, a story often doesn't end in four acts. So many of use were really longing for this. It is hugely challenging and it requires a diligence in the story telling because the threads are so connected to one another, they are not just connected to the episode before but they are connected fifteen episodes later so it really calls for much more communication on our writing staff. A lot of times on a writing staff, with a closed ended show, you can send a writer up ahead to written an episode and that luxury has gone now.

“This particular show is so huge, it's logistically the most complicated television show I believe to ever be produced, and it's complicated to break the story because we are generating a huge amount of stories so it's very reliant on a team process. There are eleven writers and we work as a big giant organism and most of the episodes are written by multiple people, four or five different people are writing each episode, and the multiple story lines certainly lends itself to that and this is how it was done from the very beginning.

“The pilot script was written by me, it was all done by me, but then when the show was picked up we were given the green light to go ahead and do the first thirteen episode we needed to be on the air so quickly, from the point that we were picked up, that I realised that the only way that this was going to work is if we did this as a team. And that method became hugely successful that it's being emulated around Hollywood quite a bit.

“We are now on season two but it's probably important to talk about the fact that this show isn't being written in seasons but in volumes. Volume one was called Genesis, and it just happened to be twenty three episodes long, volume two is only eleven episodes long and then volume three begins, so there will be two volumes in the second season. So I have large bench marks of where I want to go but on a show like this you need to be able to keep it organic, you need to let the story tell you where it wants to go, the example of Jack Coleman is a classic example, in episode seventeen of the first season, which you have not seen yet, it's an extraordinary episode because it's primarily about him who could have known that we would have devoted an entire episode to a character who only had eight lines of dialogue in the pilot and it's a testament to the show to be organic and decide where it's going as it's going.”

The ensemble cast originally consisted of ten core cast members all displaying a range of powers including flight, time travel, ability to regenerate and the hearing of other people’s thoughts. But as season one progressed two other characters D.L Hawkins, husband of Niki Sanders, and Noah Bennet, Claire’s father, have been added to the full time cast list.

Kring’s intention from the off was to make these characters everyday, normal people who are fighting to provide for their children, trying to save a marriage, coping with growing up or dealing with the loss of a family member who discover that they are extraordinary. “Initially, in the pilot, all of them were developed as a character first and then the power or in some ways they met at the same time I decide I want to do a story about a single mother, and I want to do a story about a character who's stretched really thin trying desperately to make ends meat and doesn't have the skills to that. Then from that came the idea well wouldn't it be great if she had an alter ego who could do the things she couldn't so that was sort of the example of that or I had a politician a very public figure, compared to all the other characters who were very anonymous. So we have an extremely public figure and what would be the power that would be the hardest to keep quiet? And it's the ability to fly; you can't fly without being seen. So I came at it from that direction.

“A great example of a character that has developed the most is the character we refer to as HRG 'Horn Rimmed Glasses' he is Claire Bennett’s father and he works within the company. He literally had eight lines of dialogue in the pilot but has grown to be so popular with the writers and on set, and eventually with the audience, he became the huge main character and he carried with him the central relationship of the show this father daughter relationship.”

And it’s this unexpected development or Mr Bennet’s character that has provided the show with its core, and very ambiguous, relationship between Mr Bennet and his cheerleading, self regenerating daughter Claire.

“I sort of see him as always having her best interests at hand, and eventually you discover that, the great thing about that character and Jack Coleman, the actors name, we talked a lot about how to play that character and I told him that I thought it was very important that he played a hardened, almost psychopathic, killer with the same passion and intensity that he plays the loving and doting father so you are always off balance with that character, I think that's what's made him fun to watch, as you never really knew where you stood.

“But again that relationship, because we did not successfully have in the first season a real love interest relationship, in many ways the father daughter relationship, between Claire and her father, took the place of that, in fulfilling the need for drama, but it had all the great hallmarks of a love story. It has the unrequited, the star crossed who come together is fulfilled all the needs of a great romance in the form of a father daughter relationship.”

Throughout the first series we see a group of everyday people coming to terms with their powers many of them struggling to understand what is happening to them and try to hide their uniqueness from the world in a bid to be like everyone else. But one character Hiro Nakamura embraces his difference and is the one character who doesn’t see his power as an affliction.

“That character was designed for that purpose alone the initial script, the first draft of the script, he was not in it, and when we read the script, thought about it and analysed it, it was so filled with characters who were anxiety ridden about what is happening to them I felt I really needed one character to be a contrast and treat it as the greatest thing that ever happened to him. As a result his popularity of the character really soared because of that he was able to start from a very different place.

The success of the show, which was NBC’s highest drama premier in five years as well as securing a spin-off series Heroes: Origins, has made the cast which includes Jack Coleman (Mr Bennet), Hayden Panettiere (Claire), Masi Oka (Hiro) and Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli) household names.

“My part in the casting process is huge I'm very, very keen on the idea that casting is a huge part of any shows success so I spend a lot of time and energy trying to find these characters. Fortunately the pilot was a very well respected script when it came out and people were interested in it, so we had the pick of people. I was very interested in having primarily unknowns just because I felt that in theme of the show, the idea of normal people who discover they are extraordinary, rather than saying that's the guy who was on Jerry Seinfeld's show.

“I can't say which is my favourite character because I have to deal with these actors every day and the actor and the character become melded in your mind when you work with them all day long. the truth is we have, to give you an example, I was planning on killing off a lot more characters along the way and the fact the we haven't is a tribute to the way the characters landed for the audience and for the actors themselves, it a very talented and delightful cast, they all get along and we all have fun and I have really enjoyed everybody.

“In terms of superpowers in my job the ability to be in two places at the same time, so I suppose Nikki gets the closest to that but I can do without the psychopathic rage.”

As well as a now very famous cast the show has also picked up a handful of accolades including eight Emmy nominations, a People’s Choice Award for Best Television Programme and earlier this year the Television Critics Association gave the show the outstanding Programme of the Year Award.

“You always dream of a show that captures the audience's imagination this way nothing can really prepare you for it when it does it's been a fairly overwhelming year in that way.

“The good news is it doesn't in any way help me do my job, in a way, the reaction is only kind of anecdotal in my life I still get up everyday and go to the same office and tackle the same problems every single day so it's success or not has very little to do with my daily life. But truly I was amazed by how, as I said you always dream of it and hope for it, but it's a very different thing when it happens.”

Heroes Season One Part1 DVD is out now.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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