Emily Deschanel & Hart Hanson

Emmanuel Itier: Can you guys talk a little bit first about the fans’ reaction to the finale?

Hart Hanson: The first response came on the Internet.  I always get in trouble when I talk about this stuff, because the second response was the ratings, which were very good and went up on the half-hour, so that’s the real response.  I check to see what fans think, and I would say the first blizzard of response was negative.  Then there was a lashback of positive response, then I left and let them argue it out.

Emily Deschanel:  Honestly, I just hear about these things; I hear from Hart about the reaction.  I think it was somewhat anticipated, on a certain level.  I don’t know what the percentage is of how many people hated it, how many people loved it.  We knew that some people would be upset because it’s a very different episode, and we also were talking about them getting together and it wasn’t in the real world, but at the same time, our hands are tied because we’re getting them together in the real world, and it’s a tricky thing because we wanted to give the audience something.  You see the characters together, as a couple, and that gives people an idea of how they would be, even though it’s not really them and it’s in a different world, and it’s from one of their brains or both of their brains, so it’s something.  It’s giving a taste, and I guess we knew because we’re not giving them a whole meal but giving them a taste.

HH:  Yeah, here’s a taste of what it would look like for these two to be together.  It looked kind of nice. I was thinking this is a good spin-off.  It’d be fun.

ED:  My grandma was like, “I didn’t know they were changing the show, and now you own a performance place.”  I said, “No, this is the end.”  She was confused by the end scene, where there’s another world and that we don’t own a performance place.

HH:  We are always delighted that there’s a response.  Any response is better than no response, and there was a good response.

ED:  The strength of the response, rather than the direction, positive or negative, is important.  They’re obviously passionate about it, whether they respond positively or negatively. I guess that’s what really matters.

HH:  It’s great that you guys have built an audience that cares so deeply about you.

ED:  Well, you built that audience too, huh?

EI: How much was that placebo effect that you guys were trying to put in? You guys have been talking about this; you’ve wanted it for this long.  Here you have it, and now we can move on.

HH:  A bit.  I think the first idea was to make something for our stone fans, who loved the show and have been with it a lot.  I’ve been told that research says, and it seems anecdotal to be true, we have a very faithful audience.  They follow us all over the place, and a good Internet presence.  All those things indicate there’s a strong opinionated audience, so my initial idea was to say “thank you” to them. It was full of inside references; it was full of insights, I hope, and we’re gonna carry some of the things we discovered in that alternate world into the real world.  It was kind of a bridge thing.  So I guess part of it was let’s see what it looks like, to have Brennan and Booth be in love, be a really strong couple.  One of the debates was, “Do we have their marriage in trouble, in the alternate reality?” and we said, “No that’s a bad idea. Let’s see what they look like as a solid married couple, what everyone wants them to be.” And this is what it would look like, so just a glimpse of that.

ED: And you get to see all the other characters that we love, or I love — I don’t know how you guys feel — but some of the squints, some of the grad students and different characters that come in and out of the show, and I think that’s fun for the audience.  There are so many different things going on in the episode besides just getting together, but that seems to be the thing that people are really opinionated about.

EI:  Are you surprised?

ED: I shouldn’t be surprised at all, but people say they want to see them together. At the panel today, it almost seemed like more people wanted us not to get together, and I also think that people want us to be together but not.  It’s almost like people enjoy being angry that we’re not together.  I feel like they want us to get together but they don’t really want us to give it to them.

HH:  Emily said a brilliant thing.  Will Keck, who was our moderator, asked our audience to clap if Brennan and Booth should get together, and there was big clapping.  And then clap if you think they shouldn’t together, and it sounded like a little bit more clapping to us.  It was pretty close.  Emily said, “I think some people voted twice.”  We are all like that.

ED:  You can be conflicted about it. I think everyone is.  This is a way of kind of doing something without it being final.  That’s the kind of dance we have to do.

EI:  Have you made up your mind of where it’s going to go, or are you still confused about what to do with it? Do you have a clear vision of whether they’re going to be together or not?

HH:  I do know.  I’m not going to tell you.  I do know if and when it happens, where it might happen in the season. We’re picked up for two, but I’ve said this many times.  I’m not weasling. A series is a very organic thing.  It finds its own.  I’ve found that, with Bones, you kind of let the series point in the right direction — the whole company.  We have a very good company of actors, producers, writers, directors…  It has its own force to it, and for me just to say “Here’s what we’re gonna do” is not a good idea.  But I know. It’s penciled in.

ED:  Hart is very good at adapting, but he can take different elements that we have to change for each episode. Let’s say an actor’s not available or a location’s not available. He just writes it and edits it and goes with the flow.

HH:  That’s my job.

ED:  I know. I’m just so impressed with it.  There’s no grumbling.  He just does it. It’s true.

EI: After so many years, do you guys get surprised when you’re writing or creating the shows?  What surprises you most?

ED: That’s a good question.  I’ve been surprised several times.  I always get excited by reading the episodes.  I like to read the next episode as soon as I can. I get so excited to see what’s gonna happen because I feel I’m on a show that I’m always surprised by what’s gonna happen and how my character behaves, yet it always makes sense for the character.  I remember being surprised in the circus episode last year, how Brennan gets so carried away by the performance, and I just love that element, but I would never predict that for her — loving to perform for everyone and the attention of the crowd. Brennan is not someone who gets carried away often, so to experience that was a wonderful surprise for me, and I loved playing it.

HH:  Well that’s a good example. I was in the editing room and it was supposed to be Brennan and Booth joining the circus to come in and wave to the crowd, and Emily made me laugh so hard, I farted.  Somehow, you had decided when she was doing her grand gestures to the audience and telling Booth that he should work harder to make the audience like him. She was a little bit clumsy.  There was a little stumble in there.  The actors surprise me constantly.

EI: Can you tell us a little bit about the role that Kathy Reichs plays in shaping the writing and science content with her background?  And Emily, how much has she helped you shape the character?

HH:  Kathy reads every script.  She is a very busy novelist and a national forensic anthropologist, so we don’t always get notes from her, but on well over half the scripts, I’ll get notes from her or talk to her on the phone.  It’s important to her, and I think it’s crucial to our series that the science be way more accurate than not accurate.  Kathy was concerned not to besmirch any forensic show but that we be much more accurate than the other forensic shows.

ED:  Not to be named.

HH:  Even the big huge ones that kill us in the ratings. We might have cheated more if we didn’t have Kathy looking over our shoulders.  She keeps us honest in that way.  She’s also a character; she’s kind of a force.  I enjoy talking to her. I don’t know how much you’ve spoken to her in the last couple seasons.

ED:  Most of the time I’ve spent with her was from the beginning because she was there for the pilot, so I got to pick her brain and talk to her about herself and her life and forensic anthropology and different things, and that’s where I got most of it from. I think it’s confusing for a lot of people because my character is named after the character in her book, but really we have the rights to her and her life, so my character is supposed to be her but very loosely based because my character also writes novels and is a forensic anthropologist.  But from the beginning, we have said this character is loosely based on Kathy but it’s not exactly Kathy.  It’s something we’ve all created.  Kathy and Hart and me — all of us working together. We have forensic consultants on the show, always there, and being scientifically accurate on the show is very important to us, and sometimes we make things look fancier than they are.  Sometimes we can press time. We try to keep everything else as accurate as possible.

HH:  Yes, we press time. We don’t flat-out lie.

ED:  But that’s basically how much she’s involved right now.  It’s hard because sometimes she’s in Montreal working as a forensic anthropologist; sometimes North Carolina.  She writes a book a year, and that takes a while.

HH:  We’re trying to get her to write a script, and she always comes up with ideas like “I think we should go to the pyramids,” or “I want to write the crossover with House.” It’s like, “Oh Kathy, that’s not going to happen this year.” She writes novels; she can do whatever she wants.  ”Well why can’t we? We should go to the moon!”

EI: Emily, where do you wish to go?

ED:  There are so many different places that we’ve talked about…

HH:  We came very close this year.  The final — there was Monte Carlo, Spain, Madrid, and Buenos Aires. We were very close to going to those.

ED:  I’m not complaining about any of those places, let me tell you.

HH:  The economy has changed.  There is no money to go around.

ED:  Some things happened after last time we went to Europe.  We’ve never been to DC. That’s what’s amazing to me.  They’ve sent other people to do… Is this a secret?  Am I supposed to say this?

HH: No. I didn’t know you knew this.

ED: Am I supposed to pretend we never went there?  People have gone to take a second unit photography for the backgrounds and stuff.  There has even been a double of me walking around DC.  My family friend who lives there was like, “You’ve come to DC and you didn’t call.”  I’ve actually not been to DC since I was a small child, and I’ve actually been meaning to go because I’d love to go to the Smithsonian and just do that, but my time off has just been so crazy.  But anyways, we’ve made it to London.