They call Fox's Fringe a mystery thriller, but it's actually a crime show: John Noble steals every scene he's in.
No, seriously. Noble plays kooky scientist Walter Bishop, who seems to have some past connection to the weird phenomena that pop up week to week, but he's more likely to ramble on about gum or fruit cocktails. The Australian-born Noble is also known as King Denethor in the Lord of the Rings films, and he was kinda wacky in that, too.
Fox hosted a conference call with Noble on Nov. 13 to discuss upcoming episodes of the hit series, which airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Noble got excited about each question, addressed each reporter by name and relished his answers like a relative at a family reunion. The following Q&A features edited excerpts of that conference.
What great Walter moments are coming up on Fringe?
Noble: I guess there are always two things. There are the sort of bleak and dark moments that you see sometimes, and there are also the comedic moments. We've just finished up the final episode that will be going on in December, and there are a lot of Walter moments in there, just him being inappropriate, really. The next episode [airing Nov. 18], we see Walter from a different angle, very vulnerable. He goes back into the asylum again, and we see the very, very fearful man return for a while. Although he does have some wonderful moments early in the episode, when he goes back inside he turns back into this incredibly fearful, stuttering fellow that we saw when we first met him. It's a very interesting journey that we see Walter go through. He also solves these extraordinary things, either because he had done them in the past or because he simply has the intellect to think now. We're getting more episodes where Walter hasn't done that experiment sometimes, but he has the mind to be able to see a way through it.
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That's coming up right away. What do you see down the road?
Noble: A deepening of the relationship with the son [Peter, played by Joshua Jackson], of course. As we go through this season and the next seasons after that, you'll see the ensemble of actors interact a lot more than maybe we've seen at present. The relationships with the Olivia character [Anna Torv] will become more like relationships do when people know each other for a while and start to have an investment and care for each other. We certainly will see that in the first episode coming back next year where we all bond together to support Olivia, and she for us. My sense is that Walter starts to feel almost paternal towards her, but, obviously, you can't go into that pattern. Just on occasions, I can see that Olivia wants to ask Walter something, but then she'll back away. We've seen a couple times that that's happened. Somewhere down the track, I think that there will be a coming together of those two. I don't know this for a fact, but I just feel it's inevitable, and I think it's something that Walter and Olivia will need to do.
Walter seems so random. Do you approach him with some sort of logic about where his comments come from or just go with it?
Noble: As an actor, I always have to find a reason. I can't just sort of say something out of the blue, so I always find some sort of neural pathway in there, some image that it's tapped. It's like, we'll see, we'll smell something, we'll hear a sound that'll take us into a memory. He continually has these little memory jogs, but instead of keeping them to himself, he talks about them. "I had a fruit cocktail once in Atlantic City." That'll just come out, because it's a memory, so he's quite inappropriate at times.
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Walter (John Noble) returns to St. Claire's Hospital in the episode "The Equation," airing Nov. 18. (Craig Blankenhorn for Fox)
How do you balance the cuddly fun guy we love with the scary stuff we find out he's done?
Noble: Yeah, it's the dark side of stuff, isn't it? I guess it exists in all of us. With Walter, because of who he is and how he is and how bright he is and how disturbed he is, it sort of surfaces a bit more often and a bit more radically than it does for most of us. I don't find it that hard to find. Sometimes those reactions just come out, to be honest with you, out of the character's frustration or out of his greater purpose, out of his madness. It's certainly interesting to play. It shocks the people I'm playing with at times. You see these shocked reactions from the other actors.
Is it fun though or a lot of preparation?
Noble: Well, it's as much fun as it looks like. It's an absolutely hoot playing. It's obviously got serious aspects to it, but I treat it as a hoot to play the thing. Preparation, well, that's probably the hardest bit, getting the timing right and doing the preparation on the scientific work.
-Fred Topel
