24 is about to blast back onto the scene with a twelve-episode mini-series ‘Live Another Day’. But - dammit, Chloe... - -where has Jack Bauer been and just how did it make it back to our screens? Editor John Mosby took executive producer David Fury into Impact’s feared interrogation room to get some answers…
IMPACT: We’ve been hearing about the ‘Live Another Day’ mini-series for some time, but after a four year break for 24, it’s now only a few days until it finally hits screens. At this point, is it a mixture of excitement and nerves?
David Fury: Honestly, I don’t think we’re nervous. I think we’re pretty confident in what we’ve got. The enthusiasm we’re hearing from everybody is just great. We’re hopeful people love it, and I’m confident they will.
We last saw Jack having saved America and the world once more but being disavowed by his own government and on the run. Now, four years later, he appears to be tearing up London, starting with a taxi in the trailer and going from there... so can you explain a little of how we got here and what we can expect?
DF: We’re playing on the idea of real-time and that he’s also been gone for four years. When we last left him he was a fugitive from the Americans and the Russians. He has been existing under the radar in and about Europe. He comes across some intelligence that indicates there’s a threat to the current US President James Heller (William Devane) who was Jack’s former boss at the Department of Defense. We last saw Heller’s daughter Audrey (Kim Raver)- who had been tortured - into a catatonic state. Over the seven years of the show’s time she has recovered and part of that was due to Martin Boudreau (Tate Donovan) who is currently the White House Chief of Staff. He helped nurse her back to health and they are now married. And, of course… they live happily ever after as all married people do...
The placing of the story in London is significant. This is the first time 24 has been situated and shot outside the US for such a time-frame. How important to bringing 24 back was placing it in our own fair capital city – then ransacking it?
DF: (laughs). It was almost always going to be London. It was never going to be Los Angeles – which is a bit of a shame because that’s where we’re based, but it’s grown more and more prohibitively expensive to shoot there. London was brought up early on and for a number of reasons. We left Jack at the end of the last season as he was fleeing custody and knowing Americans and Russians were after him… so he would definitely have left the country. In the back of our minds, if there’d been a 24 movie, then some of that would have taken place in Europe. So it was already in our mindset that Jack would be a man without a country, living outside the United States and under the radar. There were other cities we could have done – we discussed Prague – but we always wanted to have our stages in London if possible so it made sense to have the story there too.
Creatively that must be exciting, but pragmatically I imagine it must also be difficult to have part of the production process in the US, but the ‘action’ being literally thousand miles away to the east…
DF: That’s a problem. It IS very difficult to be doing a show so far away from our offices. That’s an unusual thing for the series. It’s been challenging in a lot of ways. Previously our sets have been, literally, just down stairs. With our offices, if our actors or crew needed to discuss scenes, we were right there. Now there’s distance and time-zone/difference situation… so we’re not there to watch the filming. It’s a very different experience for the writers and producers of the show…
But yeah, we’ve trashed enough of our cities, we had to branch out… once we’ve gone to all the major cities on Earth, we’ll have Jack go interplanetary, we’ll start destroying the Moon. But London’s the first stop… then Moscow, Paris, Hong Kong?
Is the entire mini-series set around London or will certain sections of the show be filmed elsewhere to give a global perspective?
DF: In the past the show has very rarely skipped to different continents and it often proved tricky – it’s hard to stay with our point-of-view character who is Jack. Every time we cut to ‘this is what is going on in… Nigeria’ people weren’t as interested. So, yeah, everything takes place in or around London… we don’t go to America, at least for the main part. We’re wherever Jack is and that’s where we stay. Actually, there WAS discussion early on... but I knew it wouldn’t work... about Heller still being in Washington DC while the main story was happening in London and we’d cut back and forth. It just seemed ridiculously unnecessary to do within twelve episodes. This is a very contained season… when we’re at our best it delivers wall-to-wall action and that’s how it’s working.
It really is an international cast as well. Personally, I can’t wait to see Stephen Fry as the Prime Minister. I think some people might prefer him over the real thing!
DF: I’ll be honest – the role was underwritten until Stephen was cast and then it became clear, once we knew he’d be doing it, that we had a ‘Really? Great!’ situation and started giving him and the character more to do. We try to populate the show with as many familiar faces and great actors as we can… and he’s a terrific actor and very funny. He usually sends up officious types, so for him to play the character more ‘straight-laced’ was a fun thing. We shot high… we tried to get a dream cast and we landed a lot of terrific people.
Another British actor Colin Salmon plays an American, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Of course, it’s quite funny that Colin was in the Bond movie ‘Die Another Day’ and now he’s in ‘Live Another Day’ , so he’s actually got his ‘Day’ fully covered (laughs). And we’ve got John Boyega before Star Wars did… he’s tremendous, but we’re not quite finished with him yet ourselves!
And viewers will be able to see TWO hours of 24 when it launches in the UK on May 6th (after a simulcast with America earlier in the day). Was that always the plan to launch with a bigger bite?
DF: Yeah… at least during my tenure, the series has always started with the broadcast of two back-to-back episodes on the same night. It’s not strictly a two-hour premiere as they’re individual episodes, but as the show is linear and real-time, it can be launched like that. But yeah, it’s episodes one and two of the season.
You can read more from David Fury about 24's return at THEREGOESTHEDAY...
