Brown plays Nina on Fringe, and lately, has been able to play a Nina alternate, though she reveals that her initial reaction to her alternate character wasn’t so exciting. “Initially, I was disappointed, because I thought ‘finally! My alternate!’ Who would she be? Would she be like a Mario Brother? Would she have a mustache? Would she be a drug addict? An addled, crazy bag woman? I kept thinking. And then it was like THE SAME? What? In your fourth season, you really want to do some fun stuff. But then of course, I understood why. The payoff was so great. But the temptation was to signal it during the scenes, like ‘I’m not who you think I am!’ But you can’t do that, because you will spoil the fun. I actually did one take where I had said ‘oh wait, we have to go back’ because I had given a little nudge,” she says, adding that ultimately, playing a Nina alternate has been “so fun.”
She does point out that even her friends had been looking for clues about a Nina alternate. “A friend of mine had e-mailed before we had the reveal, and she said ‘You were in that scene, and your hair was behind you ears, so I knew that it was [an alternate]!’ I thought ‘Whoa. You have to be so careful.’ I love that,” Brown says.
Brown is excited to learn that her character is “in cahoots” with Mr. Jones, who is played by Jared Harris. The two actors share a history that pre-dated Fringe. “Jared played my son in a play we did in New York several years ago, which is really funny, so we come with a history,” Brown explains. “I tortured him eight times a week in this play as a very mean mother, so he tortured me the other day [on Fringe],” she laughs. She notes that it’ll be interesting to see what alliances are happening. “What’s interesting is, who’s working for whom? I think there’s going to be a real surprise as to what that is all about. That’s a really good surprise that’s coming up,” she says.
Like John Noble, Brown is very pleased with the last eight episodes of Season 4 that are coming up, and she is glad that they will air without interruptions. “Other characters are coming in, and some storylines will be explained that we’ve had over some years, some not. And then there are some new elements. There’s a new element to me, there’s a new element to the Walter-Nina, there’s another Nina… there’s all kinds of curious little things coming along,” she teases. She is pleased with the scripts that she gets from the show’s producers and writers. “These guys never run out of story. They just never do. We’ve never had a script that had too little story. Ever,” she enthuses.
And what’s next for Blair Brown? She teases that she and John Noble were to have a scene together that would be shooting the day after WonderCon. “I’m going to be doing something to Walter, and he’s not happy about it. I can’t wait,” she says. “I’m doing something very specific, targeted, wounding to him as a human. It’s gonna be good. Finally, after four years I get to be mean to Walter! I’ve been so nice to him all these years!”
Don’t miss a new Fringe tonight! Here are some images:
