The star of US drama Prison Break, Wentworth Miller, talks exclusively to Mail online about filming the show, his love of scrabble, the perils of dating and why David Beckham is a fan.
What is it about Prison Break which has made it such a huge hit?
It's a little bit of something for everyone - action, adventure and romance. It's a story about a family and how far one man is willing to go to save a loved one. Plus I think the idea of prison is universally compelling. I don't think anyone would want to be in my character's shoes but they'd certainly like to go along for the ride.
Does it help that the show is shot inside a real prison?
Joliet State Pen was a functioning prison for over 150 years until 2002. It's the most important character on the show. It lends the show an integrity that we couldn't replicate on a sound stage. It helps to remind you of the reality of prison life.
How much research did you do into prison life before filming began?
There's only so much you can do. It's like the difference between researching a car accident and being in a car accident. I'll never know what it's like to really be an inmate. Working at a facility like Joliet does ground you. We do use the facility and all it has to offer. They planned my character's escape via the real lay-out of the prison.
Have you met any former inmates?
We have many former inmates on set, playing extras. They've all come back which struck me as odd at first until I realised there was a sort of closure going on. People were returning to a place that had caused them a great deal of pain and suffering to achieve something positive by putting together a TV show.
Did they have any frightening stories for you about prison life?
Apparently when the inmates got bored or restless or wanted to antagonise the officers they would dance in and out of the cell doors as they were being automatically shut. Those doors won't stop for anyone and they would close on an inmate from time to time. I did talk to a CO who said he would walk up and down the corridor after lockdown and see a severed finger here or there from someone who wasn't quick enough.
How does the tattoo get put on you?
It's four transfers that are pieced together like a puzzle. There's alcohol to remove the mositure from the skin so the tattoo adheres, then there's the transfer which you spray with water to peel it off then there's a layer of sealant. It's not painful, just a little uncomfortable because the transfer is tacky. Putting it on takes four hours and getting it off takes 45 minutes of scrubbing.
Apparently David Beckham is interested in copying your tattoo. Would you advise it?
I've heard he's getting my tattoo. Isn't that wild? It never occurs to me that celebrities or sports people or actors are watching my show. I only think of my friends and family tuning in. I think his idea to join up his tattoos will work quite nicely, but I don't envy him having it done. That's a lot of work and a lot of pain for a tattoo that size.
Do people treat you differently when you've got the tattoo on?
I've taken it home once or twice. I noticed that I got a better space in the line in Starbucks when I had my tattoo. People associate tattoos with a certain edge. Then I open my mouth and something completely different comes out.
What was it like working with Holly Vallance?
I understand she's something of a pop star here. All I know is that she was able to turn on this incredibly sexy eastern European accent which I found very impressive. Accents are not one of my strengths so I really admire that. She's a very pretty girl.
What's her role in the show?
She is legally my wife in the show. She's someone who I worked out a deal with to get her a green card and she's going to help me access certain things on the outside. She's working as a stripper. We have a couple of phone calls and two or three face to face scenes which take place in the conjugal area of the prison. This is network TV so there's only so much you'll be able to see.
Has your acting success been mirrored in your love life.
Not really. I've managed to squeeze in a few dates here and there, but I'm a workaholic and that's where all of my time and energy goes. Everything else gets to come second. I love the idea of a wife and kids down the line but not right now.
Have you read all the internet fansites devoted to Wentworth Miller?
I did at first. If you're at a party and there are two people across the room talking about you, naturally you're curious as to what they are going to say, but there's chance that you might overhear something negative.
What negative things have you heard?
I've read unkind reviews of my performance on-line and really taken them to heart almost as if I was getting feedback from my acting coach. Then I reminded myself that this could be written by some eleven-year-old in his mum's basement who didn't get his juice box that morning and he's taking it out on me.
Have you received any interesting presents from your fans?
I've got a couple of scrabble sets. I'm a fan and I've mentioned that in several interviews and people have picked up on it. My highest score for one word has been somewhere in the seventies. They are travel sets so that I can use them on set which is very thoughtful. I've gotten a lot of fan mail from inmates. Apparently a signed headshot from a cast member on the show will get you a packet of smokes on the prison black market.
Do inmates approve of the show?
They do like it when they can watch it, but it's often banned inside prison. I don't think anyone would try to recreate what Michael's doing, I don't think realistically that they could. But still, they don't want to give anyone ideas.
It's a very physically demanding show - have there been any hair-raising moments?
No. We're a very safe set. We have a highly trained team of stuntmen and we rehearse action scenes endlessly. If anything seems too dangerous we have several stuntmen who are my height and my shape and they step in at the last minute. Don't get me wrong I walk away with my share of bruises and scrapes because it's such an action orientated show.
How do you feel when members of the public approach you in the street?
I feel in that moment that I'm a diplomat for the show. They usually have totally positive stuff to say. But there is some awkwardness because on the one hand they know your face as well as they know their neighbours' face, but they also realise when you are standing in front of them that you have nothing in common. We're not used to walking up to total strangers and launching into conversations. So in that awkward moment it's up to me to step into the breach, extend my hand and smooth things out.
What's been the proudest moment of your life so far?
Professionally speaking the proudest moment was when I booked the Human Stain. I knew it had Nicole Kidman, Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise on board and the director Robert Benton was an academy award winner for Kramer vs Kramer. When I got a place at the table with this array of talent, that was a proud moment. Slightly scary too, but Robert Benton is the sort of director who made you feel that you're worth it whoever you are.
Have all those years you spent breaking into acting made you a better person now that you've hit the big time?
They certainly made me more grateful for the things I'm now able to achieve and the doors that will open up to me. I have had mental conversations with myself saying "Wouldn't this be better if I was 23 rather than 33".
But the fact is I probably wouldn't have booked the part in Prison Break if I'd been 23, I wouldn't have had the experience of those 33 years to put into the role.
I've learned endurance, patience and gratitude in those years. I've been an overnight success ten years in the making. I really have an appreciation for how lucky I am.
If Prison Break hadn't come along, would you still have been trying for parts in another ten years time?
It's a frightening question. Every actor thinks to themselves, what if I wake up and I'm 45 and I'm still waiting tables, still waiting for that part and it never comes. I think I'd probably still be at it because acting isn't something I can walk way from. I might be doing community theatre and waiting tables during the day. I'd still be at it in some way, shape or form.
What was the worst part-time job you've ever had to do?
I had a brief experience in the food industry. I was a bus boy in a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, scraping re-fried beans off people's plates. It teaches you a bit of humility and the importance of a good deodorant.
Do you still keep up with your friends from your time as a student at Princeton?
College was where I made the most profound and lasting friendships. There's no other time in life when you get to spend that kind of quality time with people. Those are the friends that I hope to have forever. I'm indebted to that time beause it exposed me to certain things that influenced my work as an actor.
What are your college pals doing now and what do they make of your job?
They're all lawyers and doctors raising children and leading more traditional lives than I am. They all want to hear how Sarah Michelle Gellar was to film with [in his appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer].
What's been the legacy of attending such a prestigious university as Princeton?
I'd been to places, seen things, developed a taste for music and art that inspires my work. You can base an entire character on one painting or one piece of music.
You were born in Chipping Norton in England. How does it feel to come back to your home country?
I've been back to Chipping Norton a number of times with my family before now. It's like a picture postcard. My parents are both American but they lived here for a couple of years. They returned to the States when I was about one so I don't have any real memories of it, but I do have my dual citizenship.
Did your father give you any tips on the English?
My father gave me a warning me before I came to London a few years back to shoot a mini-series. He said be careful of the English, they have this charming, manipulative rhetorical tool that they use to win conversations by ending sentences with a question. When I came over I went out for a drink with my co-stars David Thewlis and Anna Friel. I repeated my Dad's advice to them. Anna Friel said, "We don't do that.....do we?"
AMBITION burns deep in Wentworth Miller, who has great plans for the future, once he's sprung his errant brother from a certain Chicago jail.
If the star system was to follow a central cosmic plan, then Wentworth Miller would now be known as the next potentially cursed bloke to don the Superman suit and cape.
But the planets didn't quite align, despite much speculation the UK-born and US-raised actor would play Clark Kent's alter ego in the upcoming movie.
Instead, his name has been marked in Hollywood's galaxy as Michael Scofield, the sibling who will go to any lengths to save his brother Lincoln from death row in one of 2006's standout series, Prison Break.
The show has scored well with audiences everywhere.
Miller, who first made an impression in the film The Human Stain is not your typical commercial TV star: Scofield is moody, brainy, brave, stakes his dramatic claim on one hell of a serious set-piece facial expression and is a man determined to break the law by breaking his brother out of jail.
It's given Miller a taste for success - one measured by his own standards - after years of auditioning for bit roles but never quite cracking it. Now he wants to be a Hollywood player.
"This is an incredibly brutal profession," says Miller, his almost hooded eyes roving over a room full of people.
"Don't get me wrong, we're not working in a coal mine, but to be rejected day in and day out does take its toll, and if you're someone like myself, who I don't think fits into a pre-established mould, it can become even more difficult.
"If you're a young Tom Cruise, Hollywood knows what to do with you because Tom Cruise has worked so well. They're desperate for a young Tom Cruise. But if you don't fit into a particular mould, you have to actually go out and establish that type first.
"It's my greatest hope that in 10 to 15 years there's some casting director in Los Angeles who says, 'I need a young Wentworth Miller'."
A grand ambition. But Miller, 33, expresses his goal with sincerity and his tone is without swagger.
When production went into hiatus over our summer, he rejected film roles to maintain the integrity of his character. It was a decision attached to ambition.
"Ideally I want to do something that inspires me, but in the end I decided not do anything over the break because Prison Break is a means to an end," he says.
"I do hope it leads to other projects, but it's also an end in and of itself, and I want to have just as much energy going into the second season as I do going into the first, and that will, I think, buy a couple of months of rest and relaxation."
Prison Break, like Lost and Desperate Housewives, is a show shaping its times.
Unlike the CSIs, Law And Orders, Without A Trace and their ilk, it's very much character driven, with stories playing out over 22 episodes and not wrapped up each week.
It had yet to be greenlighted by US broadcaster Fox when Lost unexpectedly debuted to huge audiences, and creator Paul Scheuring says its success had a major part in getting his series to air.
The problem was that he didn't have the two most important factors needed in Prison Break: lead actors to play Scofield and his death row brother Lincoln.
The series premise - breaking Lincoln out before he is executed for a crime he didn't commit, which was actually orchestrated by the vice president, no less - means it must have a definite end date to maintain credibility.
Scheuring says he had plotted 44 episodes, two seasons, but still had the two major vacancies less than a week before production began.
"For two months we were auditioning every young actor in Hollywood aged 25 to 35," he says. "They all came in, and they all had this affected kind of 'actor guy mysterious thing'.
"Needless to say it was frustrating. We are shooting on December 1. And we were thinking, 'It's November 26 and we don't have any actors. How can we make a show?' "Wentworth came in about five days before we shot. He was 150 per cent of the character, so it was this manna from heaven. Now we just needed Lincoln."
Two days later the Australian-raised actor Dominic Purcell jagged the role, despite a bouffant hairdo from his most recent role on US soap North Shore.
"We roughed him up and cut his hair and all that," Sheuring says.
"The first day of production he came out and he had this buzz cut, and we thought, 'Wait a minute'. We put him and Wentworth together. They did look like brothers. So there was a fortunate string of events there, which was kind of like the constellations aligning."
Miller's Scofield has won a few female hearts, even with his elaborate tattoo detailing the prison's plan in code. But he says the fact the series is filmed in an old Chicago prison keeps his feet and ego on the ground.
He notes that TV has done what film could not for his profile.
"The Human Stain failed to make me a name because it did not do well commercially," Miller says.
"And unfortunately the feature film business is very much about are you or are you not a name? Does your name mean something in Thailand and New Zealand? And mine did not after Human Stain.
"The wonderful thing about Prison Break is that it's being seen all around the world and I think it will go a long way towards establishing me as a commodity, for better or for worse."
My great grandmother picked it out of a Jane Austen novel - Captain Wentworth in Persuasion.
You were born in Britain. Have you been back?
Yes, I was in an all-male a capella group when I was studying at Princeton and we'd tour Europe. We'd take the QE2 over from New York and spend some time in England. I spent nine months filming Dinotopia in Britain. It rained the most since records began when I was here but London's a lovely city besides that.
Is Prison Break fun to make?
Yes. It's an ambitious show - it has got stunts and special effects, like the tattoo, in every show and hundreds of extras. We shoot it at a defunct prison outside Chicago - and in courtyards where civil war prisoners were executed and in cell blocks where John Wayne Gacy, one of America's first serial killers, was held.
It's quite atmospheric then?
Ha ha. Yes, it's rich in that dark kind of history. We spent five days a week there for ten months making the first series.
Does spending so long in a location like that drive you a bit crazy?
No, because I know I get to leave at the end of the day, which makes all the difference.
The series is celebrated for being ludicrously far-fetched. How does it sustain itself?
There are a couple of near escapes but, over all, my character Michael has one continuous plan you follow throughout the season. We have a number of cliffhangers in each episode which keeps the audience coming back but, even though the action is fantastic and we demand suspension of disbelief, we also have characters you can invest in and care about over the long term.
What are they going to do for series two? Send him back to jail?
If the brothers get out, the series will become more like The Fugitive, with us trying to elude the authorities and solve the conspiracy that put my brother behind bars in the first place.
Do you like prison shows in general?
I just finished watching the fifth and final series of Oz, which was really well done. Prison has a universal fascination. It's a real-life horror story because, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could find themselves behind bars.
Have you ever seen Prisoner Cell Block H?
No, but I've heard of it. It's a 1970s thing, right?
They were in a prison called Wentworth Detention Centre. That's a spooky coincidence.
Ha ha ha. It is. I've never seen it but I'm curious. Women behind bars seems tasty enough.
If you faced similar circumstances, would you bust a sibling out of jail?
Not a chance. I'd get a few petitions lined up, make a few phone calls, get the best legal defence possible but I'd draw the line at actually going to jail on their behalf myself.
Your family have a legal background. Did they expect you to take that career path?
No, but there was an expectation I'd get into the best college possible. After that, I could have done as I wanted.
So why did you go into acting?
It is something I've enjoyed since I was a little boy. I abandoned those dreams at college because it didn't seem to be a realistic way of earning a living. I spent a couple of years working behind the scenes at a production company and realised I still had this nagging question I needed to answer - one that would always haunt me unless I gave it a try.
You went to 500 auditions and only got 15 jobs out if it. What kept you motivated?
You have to believe in your heart of hearts that there's a script out there with your name on it and, if you keep pounding the pavement, something will turn up. You have to try not to take it personally, even though they're not rejecting your work, they're rejecting you - at least that's what it feels like. I considered giving up but I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else. Acting was something I needed like air. It wasn't something I could walk away from.
What were you in when you were little?
I was part of a dinosaur play in kindergarten. Everyone had to make their own costume with the help of their parents and most kids showed up with a paper bag over their heads. My father spent two weeks crafting this huge papier mâché Tyrannosaurus rex headpiece which was about half my body weight. When I tottered out on stage in front of all the parents and they burst into applause, I thought, 'There's something here'.
What was your first professional job?
It was a guest star role on Buffy The Vampire Slayer back in 1997. It was one of my favourite shows, so to find myself on a back lot doing stunt work with Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz was a treat.
How easy was it to get the Prison Break job?
I hadn't worked for a year when I had my Prison Break audition and it was the easiest audition I've ever had. I got the script on Friday, went to the audition on Monday and got the part on Tuesday. I was shooting the pilot a week later. I didn't have time to be nervous - it happened so quickly.
The programme has raised your profile. Are you enjoying that?
I am. A lot of people come up to me on the street and express their appreciation for the show. Prison Break has opened doors for me with feature film projects, although I won't be undertaking any in the season hiatus because, after ten months behind bars, I need to take a break.
What's the weirdest thing a fan has done to meet you?
I'm not sure if it's a function of the character I play or the quality of fans the show has but they seem to be a respectful, well-behaved group. I was going to a chat show in New York when the car was surrounded by fans who wouldn't let us out until we gave autographs. I'm enjoying it, though.
You were in Mariah Carey's We Belong Together video. How was that?
It was a blast and advantageous for me. I got more attention from that video than anything else I'd done. Brett Ratner, who directed the pilot episode of Prison Break, also directed that video so I went from one project to the next.
Is Mariah as mad as everyone says?
Mariah's lovely. She took care of me on set and made sure that I felt at home and was enjoying myself.
You've got a mixed race background. Has that caused you problems being cast?
I couldn't say for sure because I'm never in the room when they're discussing my audition tape. I imagine it has complicated things but I'll never know to what extent.
Vin Diesel wouldn't discuss his ethnicity in interviews. What do you make of that?
That's entirely his own business. I certainly understand why because this is a business about definitions and labels and often those can be incredibly limiting role-wise. I've been pretty fortunate, though.
4/8/2006
The following article appeared in the March 2006 issue of The Works Magazine
Last fall, Wentworth Miller ’95 landed on the cover of TV Guide twice, thanks to his breakout role on a new hit Fox network drama, Prison Break. Miller plays Michael Scofield, who commits a crime to get into prison where his brother sits on death row, falsely accused of murder. Scofield then tries to break them both out of prison. Absurd? Sure! But Miller makes his brooding character sympathetic enough to draw 9 million viewers to the tube each week.
That skill wasn’t always there. After acting in high school theater in Brooklyn and the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Miller played German courier Count Von Strack in a Theatre Intime production of Amadeus his freshman year. But he felt outclassed by his peers. “I was god-awful,” Miller says. “Suddenly, a pursuit that had been dear to me felt like a foreign language. I got psyched out.” He quit acting and sang baritone with the Tigertones as a creative outlet.
Miller plays an engineer on Prison Break, but he struggled with science at Princeton (including “Physics for Poets”) and took a year off after sophomore year to work things out. He spent that time in Scottsdale, Ariz., with his uncle, working at a bookstore and as an office assistant. Absorbing the tedium of a minimum-wage job and a world that was “difficult and indifferent,” he returned to Princeton with renewed vigor and graduated with an English degree.
After school, he went to Hollywood and got a job “with a desk and a regular paycheck,” reading scripts and picking up coffee for the bosses at NBC’s made-for-TV movie division. But he soon realized, he says, that “I unconsciously went to Los Angeles to act. I knew if I didn’t try, there would always be that ‘what if.’”
In 1998, Miller got his first break with a guest spot on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But he didn’t nab his first lead role until he was chosen for the ABC miniseries Dinotopia in 2002, followed by a starring role in the film The Human Stain, in which he played a man who was black but looked white. In reality, Miller is a blend of Arab, European, and African-American. “There aren’t many roles written specifically with my background,” he says. “It’s something I’ve had to be fairly sensitive to as I make my way in this business.”
Now with a regular role and a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a TV drama, Miller plans to stick with acting, though he hopes to delve into writing and directing as well. “One of the most gratifying things about being on a TV show is that people are inviting you into their homes every week,” he says. “They’ve made time for you in their busy lives and schedules. That’s the highest compliment.”
Wentworth Miller admits he was a little weirded out at first filming his Fox Monday hit "Prison Break" on location inside Joliet State Penitentiary, but he has come to appreciate the eerie beauty of the place.
"Joliet does have some starkly picturesque moments, with the sky and the yellow walls and the green of the prison yard," Miller says. "But then you suddenly remember, if you were really an inmate, you'd only be outside looking at that sky for an hour a day. The other 23 you'd be behind bars."
The young actor, who recently scored a Golden Globe nomination as best actor in a TV drama for his work as resourceful inmate Michael Scofield, started doing plays in kindergarten and high school but put acting aside as a self-indulgent hobby once he reached Princeton.
"It was time to figure out a pragmatic, sensible approach to life," he recalls. "All my friends were gearing up for med school or law school or Wall Street, and I knew none of those choices would work for me. I thought, well, I love entertainment, maybe I could do something on the other side of the camera."
After earning a degree in English, Miller moved to Los Angeles, where he got a job in a production company. Eventually, however, he worked up the courage to start acting classes and go on auditions. In 1998, he landed a guest appearance on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
"I had never even been on a set before," he says, "and suddenly I'm doing fight sequences with David Boreanaz on a back lot at 3 a.m. I spent the entire week we were filming expecting a knock on my trailer telling me I had been fired. I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't; I just do it more confidently."
Born: June 2, 1972, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England; grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Education: English degree from Princeton University.
Family ties: Father is a lawyer-turned-educator; mother works in special education; two younger sisters.
Class act: In the film "The Human Stain," Miller played Anthony Hopkins' character as a younger man, so Hopkins integrated some of Miller's mannerisms into his own performance.
4/5/2006
The following interview appears in the April 10, 2006 issue of TV Guide Magazine
The following article appeared in the March 24, 2006 issue of Entertainment Weekly Magazine
From the Joliet Correctional Center set of ''Prison Break'': Jeff Jensen talks to Wentworth Miller about upcoming episodes, how he's similar to his character, and more
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you feel about the three-month hiatus?
WENTWORTH MILLER: I hope the fans don't hold it against us. I talked to some fans who were upset that we got pulled when we did; I think they were quite on the edge of their seats. I only hope we got the hook in deep enough.... All of these [scheduling] decisions are being made by people I've never met and probably never will. I was told this was some kind of experiment — that Fox wanted to set up a kind of schedule that's akin to what you might find on cable, where 24 was on for six months, then we were on for six months... I think there was an outcry. And I think when fans heard we might be off until May... they went to town for it. My mom is a big fan of the show. She misses seeing me on TV every week. I thought it might be cool if we released the first 13 episodes on DVD before we aired, but again, my decisions are mute.
You sound like a real marketing guru.
Well, I did work behind the scenes for six years. I picked up bits and pieces when I wasn't walking someone's dog or working Xerox machines.
Do you find playing Michael has affected your life? Do you suddenly start thinking real deliberately and intricately about how you're going to clean your apartment or something?
No, I don't. I don't have to. Because the character and I already had a lot in common to begin with. I'm not Michael Scofield, but I haven't plucked him out of thin air... I've exaggerated [him] for the show.
What do you have in common with Michael?
His sense of discipline and organization. Those are things that have served me well on the road to forging some kind of career for myself. My scripts are in a neat stack at home.
The prison has a real oppressive vibe. What's it like to work here? How has your regard for this setting evolved?
If you find a stone with a sharp edge, and you rub it a great deal, eventually that stone will become smooth. After working here for eight months, it's simply a place I go to work. The initial feeling of mystery and sadness when I came to Joliet has worn off pretty significantly. I do have a little fantasy where in the last episode of the season we break out of our cells, slip down into the prison's sewer systems, we're climbing up through all these grates, and we pop up out a hatch — and we're face to face with [Lost's] Matthew Fox. It would be nice to get out of here.... I had a friend who came to visit me who is versed in certain New Age spiritual matters. She said, ''It's like someone burned toast in the room — the smell remains. So many terrible things happened in this place it's left a residue, and what you don't realize is that you're all taking this home with you.'' She said we should all be massaged at the end of the day. I'm all for that!
How has your attitude and approach to your character evolved?
It has changed. There is an episode coming up... a flashback episode where you see all the characters in their lives before meeting up behind bars. It was a pivotal episode in terms of how I perceive my character, because up until that point, I had always assumed there was ''Pre-Prison Michael'' and ''Prison Michael,'' and the division between the two, or at least the catalyst for Prison Michael, was Lincoln being incarcerated — suddenly Michael assumed this stone-cold, poker-face persona to help him navigate these very dangerous corners. But when I read the flashback episode, I realized that that persona is something my character developed early on, when his parents were no longer on the scene. It was just Michael and his brother, and his brother was all he had, but his brother was also dysfunctional. So [because] Michael had to protect himself from the person that also happens to be the most important presence in his life, he started developing that kind of distance. There's a beautiful kind of irony to my character's story: The very persona that Lincoln forced Michael to develop at an early age is exactly what's going to save Lincoln's ass here and now.
Michael is always in total control. Will we ever see him get ruffled?
Absolutely. That [flashback] episode and the one following it, it's like someone threw a hammer in a mirror and Michael starts to splinter. The plan goes south, his brother is two steps from the electric chair, and now the cracks start to show. Michael's humanity that he's been burying all along — his fear, his anxiety, his anger — all that starts to seep through.
It is extremely cold today here on the set — and you're shooting outside, in the yard. How do you survive a day like this?
It all comes back to gratitude. I'm happy to have a show. I'm happy to have a place to go every morning. I'm incredibly fortunate to be working with material that inspires me. And I'm also working with a fantastic cast and crew. If you want to know what gets me through the day and it's freezing and your lips are refusing to do what want them to do, all you can hope for a take is that you get the words out in the right order.
It seems like you and the cast are a pretty tight. Thick as thieves, you might say.
We all genuinely like each other. No one throws tantrums. There are no divas. We do not tolerate divas, as a matter of fact.
What happens when someone pulls some diva behavior?
We take 'em down! We're like a fraternity: If someone gets a little uppity, or their nose is out of joint, we joke with them, until we slap them upside the head.
How have you dealt with your newfound celebrity?
I try to stay as far away from the excessive parts of the business as possible. I don't go out to the bars and clubs. I'm not trolling the fansites. The attraction is there; two people at a bar, talking about you — you wanna know what they're saying. Then again, they may not know who you are, and they may not even like you. I remember going on one site, reading something about my performance and it wasn't flattering. I took it to heart — like it was my acting coach who had given me some criticism — until I realized, This could be some 11-year-old in his mom's basement who didn't get his juice box that morning and he's taking the abuse out on me.
Will you be spending your summer vacation working on a film?
As we approached the hiatus, I thought, Now is the time for me to get into a feature, maybe something small, something that winds up at Sundance — a nice contrast to Prison Break. But while I hope Prison Break is a means to an end, it's also an ends to itself. So I decided not to do anything in my hiatus. We shot 22 episodes. It's strenuous. It's important to take a couple months off to recharge the batteries so I can go into the second season and be just as kick-ass.
How much do you know about life after breakout?
I know the general outline where things are going to go, where Michael and Lincoln will find themselves
in the second season. But I don't know the day-to-day mechanics.
I'm hearing rumors of a prison break-in somewhere down the road?
I have heard about the brothers perhaps winding up back in prison after a season on the run. If they can keep coming up with the ideas, I'm all for it. I personally think this show will burn bright, and fast. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. We're not a Friends or a CSI that can be strung out forever. There's a certain story we set out to tell, and one day, we'll reach the end of it.
Will you be able to get rid of the tattoo next season?
I wish. It seems that it's coming with us... Michael has included on his tattoo various things that reference what we might do once we're on the outside. So we might not see it as much, but it will certainly be there. It's become difficult. It's four- or five-hour process, each and every time. The writers have hard-on for it. I know it's a great special effect. But it takes work. My idea is that as soon as the brothers break out, they stop off at a clinic somewhere south of the border for a little bit of laser tattoo removal and take care of that puppy once and for all.
The following article appeared in the March 19, 2006 edition of the Washington Post TV Week Magazine
The following article appeared in the March 13, 2006 issue of TV Guide Magazine
The following article appeared in the March 6, 2006 issue of TV Guide Magazine
JOLIET, Ill. — The thing you notice most is the eerie quiet. The empty jail cells with doors half open as if convicts might have just left. The barbed wire curled up at the top edge of the high fencing.
On a sunny, wintry afternoon, a breeze blows through the prison yard of Joliet Correctional Center, once home to some of the country's most notorious criminals, including serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who briefly occupied a cell before his execution in 1994.
The castle-like prison, made by convict labor in 1858 and housing inmates until 2002, now has the title role in Prison Break, Fox's breakout fall hit that returns for a spring run Monday. Starring newcomer Wentworth Miller as Michael Scofield, it's a ticking-clock drama about a structural engineer who gets himself thrown in jail, with prison blueprints tattooed on him. He plans to bust out his brother, who is about to be executed for a murder he didn't commit.
"This place is sort of like where you didn't want to end up," says actress Robin Tunney, who plays a lawyer trying to stop the execution. "My big joke is they deem it uninhabitable — so let's get a bunch of actors in here."
In the first 13 episodes aired through November, Scofield was preparing the escape. Each week, viewers saw him crawling through the vent system or walking on secret catwalks as he created and tested his seemingly foolproof getaway. Then, in the last episode, he came across a crucial corroded pipe, only to discover that a janitor had replaced it with a new one, thwarting the whole plan and leading viewers to wait and wonder what's next.
On Sunday, FX airs a Prison Break marathon (noon to 7 ET/PT) to get viewers caught up. On Monday at 8 ET/PT, Fox airs the first of the remaining nine new episodes of Season 1. Prison Break drew an average of 8.6 million viewers for the initial run, with the finale pulling in 12.2 million. Its biggest competition on Monday will be from NBC's new game show, Deal or No Deal, which hit a series high of 15.4 million viewers last week.
The key to the overall story is its strong, enigmatic leading man: British-born Princeton grad Miller, 33, who snagged a Golden Globe nomination and has appeared on numerous magazine hottie lists. "It's like winning the lottery," he says, a sly grin on his face.
Sitting on a stone wall in the prison yard filming one of the new episodes, he's quiet at first, but opens up to be funny and friendly. After Princeton, Miller jokes, he didn't envision himself "behind bars."
He, like all the actors, is happy to be riding a newfound wave of fame and fortune. All get recognized when they're out in public — and they like it. All say the best episodes have yet to air. And they all say shooting at the prison has made a big difference in the feel of the show.
"We're sitting here on this stone and you think, maybe a convict or two sat here, maybe someone got shanked here, maybe someone cried here, maybe someone prayed for redemption and forgiveness here," Miller says. "It's a place rich in history. I think it's the most important character on the show."
As the sun drops lower in the sky, Miller is called for another shoot. This time, he and his gang are walking out of one of the buildings when a guard stops them because he has found some blood.
Steps away from the scene, Sarah Wayne Callies glances at Miller and the rest of the guys. Her days could be numbered if the show moves away from fictitious Fox River Penitentiary, because she plays the prison doc who has fallen for Scofield.
Prison Break has been "one of the best years of work I've ever had," she says. Even though she's one of the few women in a cast that sometimes is 100-guys deep in blue convict uniforms, she says it's not creepy. "They don't make you feel like you're in a frat basement."
For the guys in the cast, there are few roles more fun than a bad guy. "What actor in my age group doesn't want to play a tough guy in prison?" asks Dominic Purcell, 36, who plays Lincoln Burrows, the brother awaiting execution.
"To be in a hit TV show and having people come up to me and giving me special treatment, it's awesome," says Amaury Nolasco, who plays Scofield's cellmate, Sucre. "I can go and order the lobster now without looking at the price."
"I don't know what I did right," says Lane Garrison, who plays Tweener, a young convict. "We've all grown so close, even though our story lines are that we're at each other's throats. It's hard to get serious sometimes."
Standing in the shadows of the prison walls makes it easier to get back in character.
"My first day here, I walked through those gates and a change happened," Garrison says. "You see the walls and the razor wire, and you feel the history here. It's not a positive place."
He adds, "We do some stuff here in Gacy's cell, which is really scary."
Rockmond Dunbar may be the most creeped-out of anyone in the cast. The energy at the prison is "stagnant," says Dunbar, who plays inmate C-note.
"This is old-school Shawshank Redemption," he says, a reference to the Morgan Freeman prison movie set in the 1940s.
He doesn't even like to walk around in the cellblocks. "You're expecting something to come around the corner and grab you. I don't go into the cells. I just don't want to get locked in there."
And he believes that it's haunted. "There were stories of neighbors who called, saying 'stop the prisoners from singing over there' — and the prison was closed!"
Unlike many of the other convict characters whose futures are up in the air as the break is underway, C-note is here to stay, Dunbar says. "I'm really excited because I'm the only black one, so they can't kill me off. I can't be first. So at least I make it to next season."
He raises an interesting point: Wouldn't there be more black convicts in a real-life group? "There's been a lot of concern about not having enough extras of African-American descent compared to the idea of a prison population," he says. "You'd think there would be more black men on the grounds."
The casting department has hired as extras some men who actually were convicts at Joliet. In one scene, Dunbar says, "we're going this way through the gates, and one of the guys said, 'No, I did that too many times. I ain't doing it again.' And no one made him go through the gates."
Wade Williams, as cruel prison guard Capt. Brad Bellick, would be someone to make him go through. "It's a lot more fun to play the bad guy," Williams says. "The good guy is always pining and asking, 'How am I going to get out of this?' The bad guy gets to do everything."
He says he doesn't even need to act; he's in the real place. "It's imposing, intimidating architecture."
Williams, like Dunbar, isn't worried about his character's future, even though he's based at the prison. "As far as Bellick is concerned, they're not getting out. Over my dead body," Williams says, laughing. "They're not going to break out. If they did, they're still not free. Just because they got over the wall or dug a tunnel or walked through the front door, they ain't free."
And that's the setup for the future. As the show again moves closer toward seeing the men make a run for it, the prison will begin to matter less, and the attention will turn to developing the characters outside the walls. Not only will that character development — including an important series of flashbacks in Episode 3 — help hook viewers into caring what happens beyond the prison walls, but it also will set up the show for its second season.
"In Season 2, the prison really starts to drop out of the story," says Paul Scheuring, the show's creator.
"Some people get out," he says. "You might italicize some. You could also italicize some people won't be getting out — dead or otherwise. A lot of people ask about the show, saying once they get out, it's over. That's not true. Once they escape, that's the beginning of the drama. We're carefully constructing story lines for when they get out."
By necessity, Prison Break has to evolve and become a different show, Scheuring says.
"People make the joke that it will be called Prison Break: On the Lam, one of those colon things."
Scheuring says, "There will be emotional goodbyes. We're going to scatter these guys to the winds, like The Great Escape."
He wants to film all over the country to enhance the look of the show. And the cons who get out will come to stand for certain things — redemption, love, truth, exoneration. Remember the 1963-67 TV show The Fugitive?
"Once you've committed yourself to running, once you're across the Rubicon, you're on pins and needles," Scheuring says. "Basically, The Fugitive milked it for years, with a boring actor guy being chased by a one-armed man."
With Wentworth Miller's new look comes a different attitude.
"My head is like a beacon now," he said, rubbing the stubby locks needed for his role as desperate inmate Michael Scofield on Prison Break (returning 8 p.m. Monday on Fox).
"Now that I have done this show, I am much more cautious about obeying the many rules that we take for granted. When you drive down the highway, you see one of those signs that says if you hit a construction worker, it's like a $10,000 fine and 14 years in prison.
"It could happen so easily. (Prison) could happen to you."
For Prison Break, Miller shaved his head. He said that his lack of hair is a daily reminder that one misstep could mean life in prison.
On the series, he plays a man who gets himself sent to prison in order to spring his inmate brother, whom Michael believes was wrongly convicted. Michael's elaborate scheme to spring the brother has met many hurdles, and time is running out.
Prison Break has not had a new episode on the air for months. As the story resumes, it's the night before the brother's execution, and Michael's escape plan has failed. Now it's up to the would-be escapees to try and get back into their cells before they are discovered.
"The appeal of the show is that prison is a real-life story," Miller said.
In fact, while shooting scenes at an abandoned prison in Illinois, Miller said that a man on the crew who had once been an inmate there approached him.
"He said he did not do the crime, but took the fall for someone else," he said. "He told me working on the show was one of the most positive experiences he has had since 1984.
"It's amazing that we are working on a show that actually impacts someone's life in a positive way. It's not something I anticipated when I started this."
Until now, Miller's career has been filled with relatively minor roles. He played a young version of Anthony Hopkins' character in the racial drama The Human Stain. On TV, his resume is filled with small parts.
But with the unexpected success of Prison Break, Miller has emerged as a sex symbol, gracing many magazine covers.
Miller, a 33-year-old bachelor, was born in Oxfordshire, England, the son of a Rhodes scholar. He has only faint traces of a British accent.
He said that his work schedule is preventing him from meeting anyone to date.
"We shoot in Chicago, where it is really cold, and I walk around in a coat and hat as I go down the street," he said. "No one has really seen me yet."
If Miller is trying to be unassuming, it is not working. On this night, at a party for the Fox network, he is among the stars at whom many guests stare. He appears unaware that he is the network's newest sex symbol.
"An actor wants to be respected for his work. Everything else is second," he said. "If the whole hunk thing opens doors for me, gets me to a director I have not worked with before, then I am certainly willing to go along for that ride.
"You have to be comfortable with that kind of thing, to a degree. An actor walks into a casting agent's office, and he is automatically judged. Where do I fit in? What can I bring to this situation? What kind of label are they slapping on my forehead? It's the nature of the beast. You're always boxed in, and you cannot escape."
Wentworth Miller wraps production on this season of "Prison Break" at week's end, and then what's he going to do? "The show has opened up a number of doors for me. A couple of exciting scripts have come my way," says the handsome, Princeton-educated charmer, who went from unknown to the top of the hot lists last year thanks to the Fox suspense drama's success. However, he adds, "The show is a means to an end _ and it's also an end in itself. I've given my all to the first season, and I know if I want to give my all to the second season, I'd better take some time off."
With that in mind, the actor expects to finish production, fulfill some promotional commitments, and then "at the end of that I'm going to drive home from Chicago to Los Angeles. Driving cross country is a great way to clear your head."
Is he concerned about all the recognition he might have waiting for him out there? "At the motels and waffle houses I frequent, no," he responds with a laugh. A repeat airing of "Prison Break's" fall finale episode airs tonight to get viewers back on the edges of their seats in the unspooling saga of Miller's character, who's gotten himself into prison in order to break out his Death Row inmate brother (Dominic Purcell). New episodes begin airing March 20.
"Generally, we'll be taking a hard-right turn. You have not met everyone on the escape team. Not all of those involved will be making it outside," he says tantalizingly. Also coming up is a flashback episode that will "provide a chance for us to add some much-needed meat to the bones of these characters, and answer the question of why my character sacrificed everything to save his brother."
Next season, he adds, he and Purcell will be "trying to unravel the conspiracy that led to his getting arrested, while the show is following the various characters pursuing their common and different agendas."
