"Once every few years, a show comes along that is ground-breaking, that is thought-provoking, compelling, that has a great story, but also makes you feel and care about these characters." "So I think Prison Break is one of those shows that audiences are eager to see, are gonna, you know, get something out of it." "It's the thinking man's TV show." "The idea for Prison Break came from a woman I was working with, Francette Kelley." "A guy puts himself into prison to start a prison break, which I thought was intriguing." "I also thought it was probably the most stupid thing a person could do." "I got involved with Prison Break cos Gail Berman at Fox called and said:" ""I have a script." "You have to read this." "I want you to do it."" "And I was like, "OK." Rarely do I get calls for TV shows." "And I picked it up, I started to read it, and I could not put it down." "I had to answer myself two questions to go forward with this story line." "The first is there could be no other way this guy could do this." "The stakes had to be so high, with no other recourse." "That's where the condemned brother came from." "(Brett) I said, "I love it, but I don't know where it'll go."" "She goes, "I gotta sit you down with Paul Scheuring, who has the next five seasons mapped out already."" "The second thing was the protagonist had to be convincing." "That's where the idea came from that he had access to the blueprint." "And so, fulfilling those two mandates then, at that point, we started filling out the story line, and populated this prison with a lot of interesting characters." "The material is what really got me to say, "I want to do this show."" "I mean, the characters, the relationships between the characters." "There was heart." "When you read the pilot, you cared about what was gonna happen to these characters." "So it was the script that sucked me in, and knowing that Paul really had a vision." "cos, a lot of pilots you shoot, they don't get picked up." "It is a lot of hard work." "And because Paul had it all mapped out and thought out, it just totally made sense for me to do it." " Tell me what's going through your head." " We've been over this." "My approach was I wasn't shooting a TV show, cos I've never done a TV show." "I didn't know how to do a TV show, I just knew how to tell a story." "For me, it was really about, "I'm making a film here." "I'm telling a story."" ""I'm not worrying if it's TV, if it's film." My approach was to make it cinematic." "Even though I'm making it for the small screen, I'll shoot it wide-screen," "I'm gonna hire my crew from my feature films " "Dante Spinotti, who's my cinematographer." "My approach was, "I'm making a compelling story."" ""I'm not thinking about whether it's for television, whether it's for film."" ""I'm gonna tell a great story."" "I had the complete support of Paul, who wanted to cast this in the right way." "Even somebody who had a tiny part, it was very important." "It wasn't just about Wentworth and Dominic, their characters." "It was very important to cast correctly each character, because who knows where the characters were gonna go, how they would develop, and how much a part of the series they were gonna become?" "We had to find somebody who could be a leading man, who we believed could go into a prison and carry himself off so he wouldn't get killed." "When I was about to do Superman, an actor, Wentworth Miller, came in and auditioned for me, and did a brilliant, brilliant job." "I mean, it was amazing." "And I never forgot him." "And I told Gail and everybody over at Fox," "I said, "There's an actor that I auditioned for Superman." "We have to see him."" "So we brought him in." "He got the job." "Wentworth came in four or five days before we were gonna shoot, and he was just manna from heaven cos he was Scofield times one and a half." "And he's brought so much to the role, by his own integrity, his own mystery, his presence." "I play Michael Scofield." "I'm the younger of two brothers." "I'm a structural engineer." "My older brother is in prison on death row, framed for the murder of the vice president's brother." "In my attempts to free him, I have exhausted every legal angle and possibility, to no avail." "So, um, I've decided to take matters into my own hands." "I rob a bank and get myself thrown into the same prison where he's being held, and launch this very complicated escape that takes us through the first season of the show." " You've seen the blueprints." " Better than that." "I've got 'em on me." "It's interesting - my perspective on who the character of Michael Scofield is has changed." "At first, when I had no real inkling of where the story and the character was gonna go," "I thought that he was an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances, that Michael was the good brother and Lincoln was the bad boy." "But as we've gone on, it's become pretty clear to me that Michael has just as many, if not more issues, than the brother he's trying to save." "Because an ordinary person would never attempt what he's attempting to do." "And what's been a lot of fun is to take Michael from where you first meet him, where he's aloof, a bit shut down, cold, playing his cards very close to his chest, to the point halfway into the season, around episode 12, 13," "where Lincoln actually gets sent to the chair, where all of that falls apart, and the fear and the anxiety and the terror and anger that have been simmering below the surface this whole time, that he's kept suppressed, finally start to bust through, the cracks start to show." "And the last nine episodes of the first season are about Michael trying to hold everything together, where, really, inside, he's kind of coming apart at the seams." "I have some similarities with Michael Scofield." "He's not me, I would never do what he's attempting to do " "I certainly would never secrete pills in my arm, and then slice it open to get at them." "But I think we do share certain qualities, like a respect for discipline and detail, and a certain perfectionist attitude toward artwork." "That's certainly how I approach my work on set." "It's how Michael approaches the execution of his plan." "So Michael is various facets of me taken to an illogical extreme." " I didn't kill that man, Michael." " The evidence says you did." "I don't care what the evidence says." "I didn't kill him." "I swear to you, Michael." "With Dominic, for Lincoln, that was equally as difficult to find, because Lincoln was the sacred cow here, right, which is... he has to be worth saving, otherwise this entire narrative, nobody cares," "because the guy is just a big galoot, right?" "So there had to be kind of a duality in the character - he had to have a heart of gold, but at the same time, he had to be the shot caller in the prison, he had to be the badass." "We had to convey both." "Dominic Purcell came in and stole that part." "I mean, we had some fantastic actors coming in for Lincoln Burrows." "And he came in and just personified Lincoln Burrows." "His performance in the audition, he was that guy." "Lincoln's a damaged, brooding soul." "Before he got into prison, his life was destructive and out of control." "A lot of wine, women and song kind of life he existed in, and delved into, you know, drugs and what have you." "Eventually, he, um, got really deep and went to kill someone, really." "He was set up." "The mob had threatened to kill his son if he didn't do this hit." "So it wasn't like he went out there blatantly wanting to kill someone." "I ain't killing no one." "I must've missed giving you a choice." "He's changed in that he has come to terms with execution, and that's made him very introspective and made him want to achieve inner peace." "He was doing that, and then Michael busted in and threw that whole thing out the window." "As an actor, I had to deal with the sense of hope and also that part of it of resignation to death." "It was a two thing that I was trying to play." "At some point in the series, as an actor, and as Lincoln, he had to believe that he was gonna get out of the execution." "The thing about Lincoln is that he's redeemable." "There's hope for him." "He's not a totally lost cause, kind of thing." " Yes." " What?" "You mean "yes" yes?" "Yes." "Yes!" "Fernando Sucre." "He's a very passionate guy." "A guy who flies off the handle." "He's just..." "No control." "He's not the sharpest tool in the shed." "But he's one of those guys you just learn to love." "I've always thought of him as one of those guys who fell through the cracks, wasn't raised well, hung out with the wrong crowd." "But he's not a mean guy, he's not a murderer." "He just needed to survive in the streets." "Actually, this is all I need." "You know what?" "One of the things I loved about playing this character was he's not the typical thug the way..." "the stereotype of Latinos in prison." "He isn't a drug dealer or whatnot." "This is a guy who fell through the cracks." "So I was very motivated to play something different, bring something to the table, to a role that has been played many times, but I just wanted to bring something different, to make him a little bit more endearing." "Basically, that was my motivation." "Just to really bring something else, and just have layers for this guy that we'll see even more in upcoming episodes." " Why'd you hire him?" " Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." "I'm Gianni Abruzzi." "Johnny Abruzzi or Gianni." "He's sort of not a typical Italian mobster." "He's a mobster, but he's more a general mobster." "He represents all the mobs in the world - you know, from the antique mobs all the way up to today, he is, uh... even if he has an Italian name, he's really based upon the mob's structure," "the family structure, and more Shakespearean, uh..." "He's more a Shakespearean avenger than a real mobster." "Paul Scheuring wanted, in the beginning, to get away from the:" "(hoarse voice) "Hey, my friends." "I'm Italian, I love pasta and pizza." "Let's come together."" ""What you doing?" "I'm gonna kill you, man."" ""Hey!" "You come back to me." "I kill you as a friend."" "To get away from the whole mobster syndrome." "Just to use my own accent, being European, and be more of a Shakespearean character than somebody from Al Capone's Chicago, and not try to copy anything else, just try to call in the mobster guy." "And he could be anybody from anywhere in the world, really." "Now we got a hell of a lot to talk about, don't we?" "I play c-Note." "Basically, at the beginning, he's the go-to guy." "He's the one that picked up the PUGNAC." "And he's one of those guys, if you need anything, go to him." "He'll get it for you for $100." "Hence the name c-Note." "In prison, he wears a mask of this tough, conniving hustler, but I think we get to realise what type of person he really is when he gets on the phone with his wife." "A more sympathetic, more sensitive type of man, but he got himself caught up in a situation where he made a lot of bad decisions." "He's trying to correct them, but he's doing it the wrong way." "He has his eyes on the prize, and the prize is just getting out." "So whatever he has to do in order to get out, he's gonna do that." "But what motivates my character to get out of prison is my daughter and my wife." "My character knows that he has made difficult decisions that have put him in prison, but he's trying to get to the point where he can take care of his family again." "So his family is really motivating him to get out, you know, of prison, and getting back to square one." "I don't know how that's gonna work out." "cos we're working now, and I'm thinking, "OK, if he gets out of prison, first thing..."" "His wife doesn't know that he's in prison now, but first thing, we get a knock on the door, wife opens it up and people are standing there, like, "Where's your husband?"" "You know." "The fit is about the hit the shan, as we say." "We'll see what's gonna happen." " Name and bank number." " Scofield, Michael. 94941." " You a religious man?" " Never thought about it." "Good, cos the Ten commandments don't mean piss in here." "We got two only." "The first commandment is, you got nothin' comin'." " What's the second commandment?" " See commandment number one." "Bellick, he is, uh..." "correctional Officer Bellick." "He's in charge of taking care of prisoners, making sure they do whatever the rules ask them to do." "Takes them to lunch, you know, in a line, he takes them out into the yard in a line, he makes sure that they don't have any contraband on them, or they're not, you know, using drugs or making alcohol in their cells." "He makes sure that all of their illicit and illegal substances come through him, because he makes all the money of off 'em." " First of the month's coming up, John." " Yeah." "So?" "I haven't got my monthly." "He's one of the only people that has access to everyone." "So he has access to the prisoners and the warden and the doctor, and visitors when they come in." "So he plays everybody for what he needs them for." "I think he has a lot of ambition." "He wants to have the warders job, he's trying to get that." "I think he's a bit expedient in the sense that he will try to make things happen for him, depending on the situation." "If he needs something from the convict, and he's got something the convict wants, he'll, I'm sure, trade one for the other." "If the convict wants something from him, he'll say, "What have you got for me?"" ""Do you have any information for me?"" "He's an expert at playing people off of each other for his own end, his own satisfaction." "I think he's like anybody who has a big ego." "I think they have really low self-esteem." "I think, you know, that bravado covers up a pretty wimpy, sad guy." "You probably heard stories about me." "They're not all true." "T-Bag is one of the rulers in the prison." "When you walk into Joliet prison, first day, it looked so much like a castle." "So it totally fed me, like, "Yeah, yeah, this guy owns a part of this castle."" "He's one of the feudal lords, you know?" "And he protects himself, he protects his family, he protects - early on in the production - one guy who holds my pocket." "Anybody who messes with him messes with me." "Everybody knows who T-Bag is, and you don't mess with him." "... trapped like a pig I'm gonna slaughter." "I have always tried to play him in a real charming way." "The lascivious stuff, the dastardly stuff - that all sort of takes care of itself." "He's an animalistic, pure, gutsy, instinctual kind of guy, who will do anything to, uh... to get ahead." "He's an equal-opportunity abuser." "He goes after every race and creed." "When people talk about him in sexual terms," "I don't even think of male, female, child, whatever." "To me, it's just like, "It's meat, and I want it." "If I'm hungry, I go for it." "If not, I don't."" "It's like a lion." "A lot of the psychological gestures that I put into it, with the hair and the tongue thing, is all just cock of the walk rooster, or reptilian." "A lot of animal images that I tried to mess around with." "And, on top of that, to play with the language, the great words that the writers give me, and then the bonus of it being Southern, is I can play with lilting, and sliding up, snakelike, to you and then... get you." "Or, I can go right for your jugular - b-b-b-b-b-b-bam - staccatolike, really fast." "There's external things with playing the character, and a lot of internal things, like back story - trying to figure out how he was as a child." "There's one episode where Bellick says to me, "I read your psych report, Teddy."" ""Your daddy did his sister years ago, and out popped Teddy."" "And that was a huge key, a huge door opening for me, of what kind of childhood this guy had to what made him become the way he is today." "The two of you will never make it." "Oh, fish, it's not just two." "It's very important that all the camaraderie between the characters, between the actors, is great, and that there's chemistry between these guys." "That's something I can't create." "That either exists or it doesn't exist." "There's no doubt about it." "chemistry is not something that I am creating." "It's your choice of casting." "And when you cast a show correctly, and you stay true to who those characters are and you hire the best actors, you're just hoping for chemistry, cos if there's chemistry, the show works," "in the way that Prison Break works, on this level." "Prison Break is very much an ensemble show." "I don't think we have anyone who I would classify as a lead, or as a supporting actor." "Everyone brings something very integral and critical to the table." "Yeah, everyone has their strengths, you know what I mean?" "Everyone has their things that they're, like, really good at, and, even when days come along and we feel a little insecure, or feel a little bit weak, or feel like we're not pulling our weight," "we all help each other out, so we help each other get there." "It's a beautiful thing." "It's great being part of a great acting talent like this." "You know you're in safe hands." "It's shown in the performances this year." "I've always said that you play with the best and your game becomes better." "It raises to that level." "Working with these guys just makes me bring my A game." "Every time you come into set, you see Robert Knepper, you see Wentworth, you see Dominic, you see Rockmond." "All these guys, they bring their A game, and you have to bring yours as well, otherwise you'll stay behind." "Everyone brings something crucial." "Sucre brings a little bit of comedy, and T-Bag brings a seductive kind of menace, and Michael's there to move the plot along, and Lincoln is the brooding hunk." "We have such a great cast." "It's one of the strengths of the show." "I just wake up going, "Hey." "Oh, man, I have a scene with T-Bag."" ""Oh, man, I have a scene with Sucre." "Oh, man, I have a scene with Westmoreland."" "It's one of those things where you get excited about it." "It's not just, "I gotta go to work today." It's like, "Man, I have some things that I can do."" "(Wentworth) Fantastic character actors, all of whom have resumes as long as my arm." "It's been a great learning experience for me, personally, to be able to stand across from one of these individuals in a scene, and watch them do what they do." "It's been invaluable in that respect." "This cast is a blessing in that, um... you know, I'm working with actors that are kind of brilliant." "I had a teacher who always told me, "Steal from the best, and make it your own."" "That's what I'm doing." "Joliet, with its history - it was built in 1858 by the inmates from the local quarry - we fell in love with it immediately." "We're very lucky to be shooting at an actual prison." "It was shut down in 2002, but we have the run of the place." "Joliet has a 150-year history that's very rich and dark." "A lot of men lived and died there." "It's the most important character on the show, I'd have to say." "There's always something going on in the background." "The steam room, the warders office, the towers, there's always something going on." "Working in the prison adds a lot of authenticity to the show." "In that way it's very filmic in its look, and it helps the actors." "You don't feel you're on a sound stage, cos you're not." "It brings the atmosphere to you." "Joliet's a very depressing kind of place, it's actually a shithole." "I don't like it at all, which serves the character well." "It serves all of us well." "We didn't sleep in Chicago and shuttle every morning to Joliet." "We stayed in Joliet, in that town." "It's very helpful for the actors to be in an environment that is true to life." "That has been one of the things that has not been the most uplifting." "There's a lot of bad energy within the prison walls." "You cannot help but to notice it and give it its respect." "There has been a lot of evil things there, so that whole pit stinks." "Being in that town and being in a prison community, it's amazing, because it makes you feel like you're really living it." "It's a lot of atmosphere when you walk around all alone sometimes in the tiers." "You can feel the tears." "No wonder they're called tiers." "It's pretty spooky." "It is like the walls are crying sometimes." "You don't see ghosts, but any building that has had 150 years of tormenting souls... you can feel it." "As soon as I walk out of my trailer and I walk through that gate, and you see that massive gate welcoming you to your home, you know you're in it, and you don't have to do any acting whatsoever." "It is a little bit creepy." "I've never had any supernatural experiences myself, but you feel like there is something in the air, something kind of oppressive." "It does remind you, day in and day out, of what the stakes are," "Because some of our plot elements are so far-fetched and fantastic, it's critical that we have something like the prison to root us in a kind of reality." "It just provides a degree of authenticity and integrity that are essential to the show." "I'm glad to break out soon, because I feel like I've been in prison for nine months. (laughs)" "I'm really looking forward to that, and I'm not gonna miss Joliet." "It's like high school." "You can't wait to leave, then you look back and go, "God, I miss it."" "I don't know." "I'll tell you when I get out." "You wanna know what the 90 grand was for?" "You." "The writers on the show are incredibly clever." "It's one of our strengths." "We have a team of writers led by Paul Scheuring and Matt Olmstead, who are just extraordinarily sharp and creative." "Working with the writers has been fantastic." "It's a dream to work with Paul and the guys." "They really trust the actors, and writers out there can take a leaf from Paul and Matt, because we know what we're doing." "They allow us to add our own stuff to the words, we can change some stuff." "It doesn't have to be locked in - word, word." "When you get a writer who's like, "I'm giving you good stuff, now you make it yours", it's like, "Great." "Thank you for giving me some of the responsibility."" "I have to applaud the writers and the creative team, cos they have gone back and explored the antique drama in Shakespeare, the old legends, and sort of woven all that into the Prison Break of today." "Everyone has been very, very open and very, very, "Hey, give us some ideas", or:" ""Hey, dude, I don't know how to talk black, so you take this line and you make it, whatever it is that you need to do in order to make it grounded."" "They've been so open and so beautiful, so wonderful." "There's no ego." "I like to ad-lib once in a while, bring some flavour to the character, as he is Puerto Rican." "So they'll come up to me and say, "How would you say this in Spanish?"" "It's the only input I've got." "Believe me, they don't need anybody else." "These guys are phenomenal, they're doing an amazing job." "It's a rollercoaster." "Every time we have done a script, people say, "Did you know what was coming up?"" "I said, "No." I'm kinda like the audience." "I'm not sure what's gonna happen next." "You don't know what'll happen in the next episode." "A week from now, we don't know." "We get the script maybe tomorrow, and you're, "OK." "Oh, that's cool." "That's cool."" "Once the script comes out, we fight to see who gets it first, because they're coming up with stuff that you just are amazed by." "I finish every script and think, "The guys have boxed themselves into a corner, how could they get out of this situation?"" "The next script comes two weeks later, and there's something that makes sense, but something you'd never have thought of." "It's always two steps forward and one step back, which I think is critical to the whole Saturday-morning, serial-cartoon nature of the show, where every act and every episode is designed to be a cliffhanger to keep you coming back." "In that, they're very successful." "It all stems from the script." "The story is what makes it so great." "I have just helped bring that vision - which is Paul's vision - to the small screen." "I'm impressed with their structure, their intelligence, the way they can map out a whole story and make everything match, you know?" "It's just..." "It's been a joy working with them." "That'll be 300 bucks." "I think the reason Prison Break is successful is not just because we have a great cast and a great team of writers and a really great story and I think we tell it well, it's also because, in addition to the romance and the suspense," "the adventure, the bloodshed and drama, it's essentially a story about family, and, as such, it has a base element to it that everyone, no matter where they are or who they are, can relate to." "We have characters that you're willing to invest in long-term." "Prison Break is a show that is really showing the humanity in prison." "Yes, they're criminals, but they're people." "I'm really excited to be a part of it." "I'm grateful and happy that I was asked to direct the pilot, and, uh, executive produce the show." "It sounds cliched, but it's one of those things " "I can relate now when people say, "We have a family going on."" "We root for each other, we take care of each other." "And I'm very happy and blessed to be in this." "To be in a TV show, it's hard." "To be in a great TV show - that's like hitting the lotto." "I hit the lotto." "I just wanna say thank you to the people that have watched and supported the show." "It's an amazing feeling to be in something that people instantly let you know, on the streets, how they feel." "I just wanna say hello to my fans out there, and to my people back home in Sweden, if you buy this." "Ma and Dad back in Sweden." "Be well." "See you soon. ciao." "Season two is going to be a complete reinvention of Prison Break, in the sense that, we were locked in a box, and only had that much range of motion for our characters, and we were able to tell that dynamic of the story in season one," "now we have the entire country and the entire world to tell these stories." "So it's gonna be a hell of a ride, with just about anything you could imagine going on." "To all the Prison Break fans out there - if you love Prison Break, you loved the first season, you're gonna flip over the second season, so keep watching." "Thanks for all your support and thanks for watching." "It's hard now to see it continuing over a second season - what's gonna happen after we break out?" "Are we all gonna come back again and start anew?" "We don't know." "Maybe we'll all end up in prison in Mexico, then a prison maybe in Hawaii." "Maybe we'll do, like, a Prison Break thing, like a reality show." "The guys'll break out from any prison in the world." "Put us in a prison in Russia and we'll break out within a season, we promise."