[Photo: © 2010 FOX Broadcasting Co.]

Here’s the entire conversation with Hart Hanson. (I did take out the “hello” and “thank you” parts at the end and beginning of each person’s questions.)

Hart teases us about meeting Booth’s grandfather and gives us a lot of information about why certain people were cast for certain parts. Well, you’ll see, it’s just a fantastic interview:

Q: I have to wonder: Booth’s brother; is that a card you’ve been wanting to play for a while?

H. Hanson: Yes. We were originally going to have Booth’s brother appear in the ill-fated Season 3…ill-fated because of the writer’s strike. We were looking forward to bringing Booth’s family more into Bones in Season 3 toward the end of the season. But, that was one of the decisions we made when we came back for such a short period of time is to let that play out better in Season 4. So yes, we’re excited about it.

Q: Now, is Jared’s primary function to shed light on Booth’s murky background and it’s just a glorious side effect that it might push Bones and Booth together finally?

H. Hanson: Yes, those two and there’s a spark between Brennan and little brother Booth, as is the way things go on Bones. Since she, in her own mind can’t have the older Booth, maybe this younger one is a good…copy. It turns out not to be true, but it gives us some fun with them, but, mostly to shed some light on Booth who was a guarded character for all his… You don’t actually find out much about him. So, it’s another way into that and it’ll be some fun.

Q: I did an interview with Michaela a few days ago. I love her. I thought I’d ask you since you’ve been writing for her, working with her for several years now, what was it that made her stand out for you when you all were casting the part? Does she still have the capacity to impress you and surprise you as an actress today?

H. Hanson: Yes. The answer to part two is that I think– Well, the first thing that appealed to me and the rest of us when we were casting was her– She’s a very experienced actress. So, she has great chops, and she’s obviously extremely beautiful. But, she’s also funny. She has a lot of range. We were looking initially for that best friend who could be a sympathetic ear and she has that in spades, that really warm side to her.

We have found out that she is funnier than we thought as well. Not only has she still got what we were looking for in the first place, but now that we’ve sort of, for the time being at least, split her from Hodgins, she gets to be a little bit more of the free spirit Bohemian that we were after in the first place and she’s just even better at it.

It’s funny you ask that because in the last three or four episodes, in post, we’ve just been saying, “Wow, look at Michaela. Look at Michaela go.” I think she’s really come into her own in the fourth season.

Q: What motivated you to give her…at this time? Is it kind of like thinly veiled male fantasy on your part?

H. Hanson: It could be that, couldn’t it? It was like you get to watch Michaela kiss another really beautiful woman. That’s not the worse thing in the world. But, I don’t think that’s why we did it. We did it to… You want to jolt a series every once in a while and remind people that anything can happen. We wanted to go back… A series of events happened where she broke up with Hodgins. We met her ex-husband. She’s the offspring of a rock star. We just wanted to give a little jolt to the Michaela character, to the Angela character to reset, just reset that anything can go anywhere.

It worked quite well. The actress who was playing her ex-girlfriend, perhaps girlfriend again is Nichole Hiltz and she’s very funny and very warm. Also, if we do this right, and you’ll let us know, it’s not played very prurient. It’s pretty matter of fact. This is who she is. This is who she was for a while and who she could be again. It’s just tossing that salad a little bit.

Q: Could you talk a little bit about what the revolving Zack replacements have done for you guys in the writer’s room this year and sort of being able to do that and how long you think you can play out that gambit?

H. Hanson: Great question. It has been really fun for us, notwithstanding everybody’s deep affection for Eric Millegan and Zack. What it has done for us is we’ve been able to invent a series of characters that make more stuff happen at the lab. It kind of gives “B” stories to the “B” story, to get some character and humor out of the lab. We found this group of people; we found actors that have just been delightful. It’s been amazing for me how good these people have been at coming in and integrating and being on kind of a revolving door.

Initially, I thought, “Oh, we’ll look at four to six people and then pick someone who is great and have them come in.” We have a couple of more ideas now that we’d like to pursue with these grad students. It’s no longer a case, at least in my mind, of finding someone to replace Zack, but, as you say, figuring out how long we can do this and how long it serves the show.

Frankly, our biggest problem now is that some of these people are very good and we could lose them if we don’t book them as recurring characters. And so, it’s a little scary. They’re very good and people are going to see them and snap them up for pilots and things.

But, I think we’ll do this for a while. I can’t say right now how long it will go on, but I think we’d like to do it for a while.

Q: Is there a danger to it becoming sort of a Murphy Brown secretary kind of thing where even the writers become tired of it after a while?

H. Hanson: Oh, yes, absolutely and I think what we would do is… I mean Murphy Brown did it every single week and it was kind of a gag that they pursued. We’re actually not interested in having an infinite number.

For example, a couple of times, some very interesting casting ideas have come to me as to whom we might have come in as an intern and no character suggests itself. They each have to be different. It just can’t be someone with a quirk each week. I think that would become very tiresome. But as long as we’re interested in looking at each one of these people as characters, then it will work for us and hopefully not become a gag that will annoy people.

There are a lot of people watching the show. I don’t mean just audience, but we’ll start to hear from the network, studio, writers, directors, the other actors when that feels old and hopefully we’ll be before the curve. But right now, it still feels like something that everyone is into and interested by.

Q: Let me put you on the spot quickly. If you had to guess, where [in the weekly schedule] do you think you guys [will be] airing, come January?

H. Hanson: Oh, I am not withholding any opinion from you at all. I will tell you I have no idea. I don’t know what their plans are. I know anything is possible. I think not Friday. I’m pretty confident we won’t be on Friday, but I don’t know what they’re going to do with Idol. I don’t know what they’re going to do with Dollhouse. Your guess is as good as mine. For a while, I thought Mondays; they’d put us on Mondays. For a while I thought, “Oh, my God, maybe they’ll,” which I would love, “pair us with House on one of the nights that Idol isn’t on.” But, I don’t even know, I don’t think anyone does – well, they do at the network – when Idol is coming on. That, of course, will change everything.

Q: Let’s go back to the interns actually. I see that Clark is coming back for an episode. Is there any chance that Michael Badalucco will come back? He personally was my favorite intern of the group.

H. Hanson: Wasn’t he great? Yes, we’d like to have him back again. He is on the list of people we would like to have back. He’s really fun. Every once in a while, the feeling you get from the network, although they’re pretty good at not jamming it down your throat, is that they want youth. Then every once in a while you get someone like Michael or Stephen Fry that just turns everyone on their heads.

Yes, we’d like to have him back. It’s a great character to have, the ultimate “Dad.” He’s the middle-aged man who actually does know everything. It could be my own bias there as a middle-aged man. But yes, we’d love to have him back.

Q: Speaking of Zack, I mean it seems like you definitely left the door open for him to return. I’m just wondering; what are your plans for Eric for the rest of the season?

H. Hanson: Well, I don’t want to say too much about it. We’re not done with Zack. Zack is a fun character. We left a big hanging chad with Sweets, that Sweets knows that Zack didn’t do what he is thought to have done. He has a problem, an ethical problem on how to deal with that and we will deal with that. That’s an ideal episode in which to have Millegan come back again; Eric Millegan come back and play Zack again.

I think it’s okay for me to say that I’m looking into Stephen Fry’s availability because I think he would be the ideal person to help Sweets figure out how to deal with that.

But, Zack is still in our minds. His name is hanging up there on the boards in the writer’s room as to what cases he would be useful in, that he could organically fit into. Also, it’s funny how things come up. You realize when Zack wasn’t there every day that he and Hodgins are pretty good friends. They were a pretty good friendship, an Odd Couple friendship on TV that you miss. So, there are those things that mitigate toward him coming back.

Q: My question dips into your crew and the crafts people that put the show together. There’s such amazing hard work and I really notice it, the look of the show. I was curious to know if you were ever tempted to see if Caleb Deschanel was ever available to be a DP on one of your shows or even direct.

H. Hanson: Well, he has directed one show and he was booked for another… First of all, thank you so much for asking about our crew. The show looks great. The show really looks wonderful and we are not one of the highest budgets on television and we look as good as anything else. I mean the difference in budget between us and, say, Fringe – it’s dramatic. It’s because of the crew that we’ve amassed in the last three years. They’re amazing. I’m constantly astounded by the vigor and creativity of our crew.

We have a lot of elements too and I hope it’s sort of seamless to the audience. But, there are a lot of elements in the show that have to be perfect. Just scheduling our show, because of the dead bodies. The dead bodies have to be made. That’s a real skill. And so, they’re not available towards the beginning of the shoot. They’re available more toward the end. We are constantly in shackles as to when we can shoot. We don’t have a lot of flexibility.

The crew does an amazing job and I think people don’t realize how amazing they are because it just looks like good TV, but it is amazing. So, thank you for asking that.

We did have Caleb direct a show. It was “The Glowing Bones” episode back in first season. He got bumped during the strike and we are looking to get everybody who was bumped during the strike back on the show again. It was a lot of fun to have him around, and it was really a lot of fun for our DP Gordon Lonsdale. He was so happy to have Caleb Deschanel there and he was so pleased that Caleb respected his work.

Q: I was curious to know who does the prosthetics. What shop do you use? I mean who does all the prosthetic body work?

H. Hanson: The bodies are done by the Yaghers, Chris and Kevin Yagher, who have been with us right from the beginning. I think we got them because Barry Josephson knew them from feature film world. They are amazing. They’re also the sweetest, most innocent looking guys. They look like nice college boys and they bring us the more horrific things. Their bodies are amazing.

Really, last year; I told the story last year that – I wasn’t kidding. We had a severed head that they made that looked just like the actress. To be funny, I leaned over to pretend I was going to kiss the severed head just to be a funny guy – not that funny – and it made me barf a little bit. It just was so… They’re very, very good.

Continue Reading, Part 2

Read My Conversation With Hart Hanson