Franklin & Bash: The New Season Premieres Tonight; The Guys Talk!

The new season of TNT’s Franklin & Bash premieres tonight, and joining series leads Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer for Season 3 is another icon of the 1990’s… Heather Locklear of Melrose Place fame. Sparks immediately fly between the two and Locklear’s character, Rachel, who is brought in by Stanton to essentially be their new boss.

When we spoke with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer for a telephone press conference a few weeks ago, though, the true relationship is revealed to be much different. “She’s a sweetheart,” Gosselaar enthused. “She came on set, she’s always prepared, and she fit right in with the family. She has a great sense of humor and doesn’t take herself too seriously. She was a perfect fit for all of us on the set and the characters. I think she had a good time. We had a good time with her,” he said.

Rachel, however, causes trouble for the guys — including splitting up their office space. “That goes on for quite a bit,” Mark-Paul said. “I don’t know, depending on how we air the shows, how long that wall stays up, but it stays up for at least three episodes or so. A little longer than the boys would have liked, but it’s definitely a tactic used by Rachel to try to split them up and really just to show that she has the power to do it more than anything else.”

“The guys don’t like the wall as much as Mark-Paul and I didn’t like having the wall there,” Breckin added. “We definitely tried to get it down as quick as possible.”

Another location for the show is changing for the guys as they are relocating to Stanton’s old house at the beach in Malibu. “I guess what that does for the show is it just gives it a different light where, you know, we were in Silver Lake and now we’re in Malibu, so of course we’re going to have different characters coming in,” Mark-Paul said, himself a veteran of shows that sometimes might take a Malibu respite. “One of the characters that actually comes in towards the end of the season is Rob Lowe. He’s our neighbor and there’s a little storyline with him that’s sort of a runner that starts in the middle of the season and then ends at the finale,” he revealed, adding that among other things, we’ll get to see Breckin without his shirt. Meyer admitted he personally liked the Silver Lake feel, but “it might have been a little too dark.”

“This kind of lightens it up and, you know, the guys get to go surfing, and the beautiful people, and it’s Malibu, who doesn’t love Malibu?” Meyer said.

The new season of Franklin & Bash premieres with two back to back episodes tonight at 9PM (ET) on TNT.