As you know, Matt Olmstead and Nick Santora collaborated on the 2005-2009 FOX series Prison Break and now their working together again on another fugitive-themed show called Breakout Kings. At the Television Critics Association last week they talked about their “love [for] law-breaking.” On teaming up with Santora for a second time, Olmstead said, “So we just wanted to kind of have fun on the show and keep on working together. So that was the main attraction for me.” He continued, “What was attractive was not only the momentum of storytelling that you get when you have a fugitive on the run — as opposed to a dead body where there’s a little bit more time to find that person because that dead body is not going anywhere — it was also about the theme that helped kind of unlock the show for us when we’d start to first talk about it, which was everybody is running from something. And so it really kind of unlocked the characters in that we then went in and made sure that all of the characters had that thing that they were running from and towards.”
Refresher: Breakout Kings follows an unconventional partnership between the U.S. Marshals’ office and a group of convicts as they work to catch fugitives on the run. Laz Alonzo (Avatar) and Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire) are the veteran U.S. Marshals; their special task force is comprised of Jimmi Simpson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Malcolm Goodwin (American Gangster) and Serinda Swan (Smallville); Brooke Nevin (The 4400) is a civilian who assists the group.
Expect the villains to be terribly awful criminals. Santora says, “It’s integral. You have to have really bad, bad guys, or there’s just no stakes from the beginning of the episode. At the same time, each week it can’t be the Son of Sam who is breaking out of prison. It would get repetitive. So it’s a challenge, and we have been so fortunate this year. The actors were just telling Matt and I how great the guest actors are that we’ve had this season on the show.” Just last week I reported on two of the show’s guest actors: Lost’s Mark Pellegrino and Prison Break vet Robert Knepper. Knepper will be reprising Break‘s T-Bag for a four-episode arc. The producers were asked if we can expect other Break alum to come on as surprise guests and Santora replied, “You never say never, but we don’t want it to become a reunion show where we are constantly bringing guys back from Prison Break. And I think we can say safely of all of the bad guys on Prison Break, how are you going to top T-Bag? T-Bag is T-Bag.” Very true. Continue reading ‘Breakout Kings’ producers compare ‘Prison Break’ to their upcoming A&E series
