Source: TV Guide.com
Date: May 30, 2007
Think you know your best friends? Well, if your best friend is named Will Traveler, you probably don’t. In this hot new series (which airs both the pilot and the second episode tonight on ABC at 9 pm/ET), two college pals find out that their friend may have framed them for a terrorist act. Matthew Bomer, a one-time buzzed-about candidate to play Superman in last year’s Superman Returns, stars as Jay, who is on the run from the law. TVGuide.com managed to catch up with him to find out about his current gig and his Tru Calling past.
TVGuide.com: I really like the show, but I’ve got to warn you that I also liked Day Break and The Nine.
Matthew Bomer: [Laughs] Well, you know, it’s all about timing. Hopefully.
TVGuide.com: Does the enforcement date of a late-season entry concern you at all?
Bomer: You know, I think it’s a really smart move by ABC. I think it would have been easy to get lost in the shuffle if it had come out in the beginning of the season, so I actually think it’s a good thing.
TVGuide.com: At the end of the season and with summer coming, there’s so much junk on right now. Might as well give people something fresh and different to choose.
Bomer: Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for.
TVGuide.com: In a way, it’s pretty good territory here, approaching the whole terrorism thing, four and a half years after 9/11.
Bomer: It’s definitely a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream. Any show’s biggest strength is always its writing. It’s certainly unique territory that TV’s entering into. I think the writing backs it up in an intelligent, interesting way, and it’s still sensitive to a host of particular situations.
TVGuide.com: Plus, the casting is pretty damn good, right?
Bomer: [Laughs] I learned a lot from watching my fellow cast members, for sure.
TVGuide.com: The guy who plays Traveler (Aaron Stanford)… he’s in the press kit a lot. Does that mean we’re going to be seeing him, or purely in flashbacks?
Bomer: I’ll say that you will be seeing him….
TVGuide.com: How many episodes do you guys have in the can?
Bomer: Eight.
TVGuide.com: And you’re all done with it for the time being?
Bomer: That’s the first season. [Another] strength of the show is that it’s a serialized show that really answers all the questions it raises. So by the end of the first season, you know the answer to every question raised in the pilot. And further questions are raised for the second season. At the same time, missing an episode doesn’t [prevent] you from enjoying the next week — you can enjoy it on an individual basis as well as the whole mythology.
TVGuide.com: Getting back to that casting thing… while you may be obvious as the blue-eyed, dark-haired guy who all the girls are going to tune in for, the guy who plays the sidekick is an atypical but accurate choice, being the post-college goofball type.
Bomer: Yeah. Logan [Marshall-Green] is fantastic. I think he’s the perfect person for the role. We were working together 60 to 80 hours a week sometimes and it just never got old, we had a blast. Working with him makes me a lot better.
TVGuide.com: Do you wish that the premise allowed you more scenes with Steven Culp [as the FBI agent in charge of the manhunt]?
Bomer: Yeah, I didn’t get to work with Steven enough this season. I know that would change in the future, but he’s fantastic. I love Steven. He’s a great guy, too. Viola [Davis], Anthony Ruivivar and Bill [Mayo]… whenever I can get a chance to work with them or be on set when they’re shooting, I just take notes.
TVGuide.com: Yeah, I’ve only seen the first episode…. I watched it in three segments and I always stopped at the cliff-hangers. The last one I stopped at was when the van gets knocked over and we see the porter. And I’m like, “What the hell?”
Bomer: [Laughs] Yeah, he comes back, you’ll get more of him. He’s great. He was actually one of my favorite characters in the whole mythology of the show.
TVGuide.com: I’ve got to ask: In one of the early scenes — I think it was in a college flashback when you first meet — you were in a red shirt. Was that a subtle nod to your onetime Superman Returns candidacy?
Bomer: [Laughs] You know, if it was, I wasn’t responsible for it. That might have been something David Nutter had up his sleeve.
TVGuide.com: Does that whole thing seem like it was an eternity ago?
Bomer: That was a long time ago. You know, I saw the movie, I thought the guy they cast was the best thing in the movie. Granted, it was a different director when I was up for it, so it was going to be a different movie.
TVGuide.com: Who was it when you were up for it?
Bomer: Brett Ratner. It ended up being Bryan Singer.
TVGuide.com: Was this group pretty different when you were looking at it?
Bomer: Yeah, I think J.J. Abrams had written it when I was going to do it. It was a great script, but very different. It wasn’t like picking up after Superman II. It was its own beast.
TVGuide.com: One last question. We here at TVGuide.com still get lots of people asking about Tru Calling.
Bomer: People come up and say things to me more about it now than when I was on the show. I think that when shows come out on DVD it gives them a whole second life. We were dealt a tricky time slot on that show — Thursday nights at 8. Fortunately, it stuck for at least a season. It was a good concept and was still finding its feet; there’s something about that concept that people just really like.
TVGuide.com: It was almost before its time, because nowadays someone’s always talking to the dead….
Bomer: It was before Ghost Whisperer, Medium… exactly.