Jail Bait

Image credit: PRISON BREAK: R. Sebree

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Prison Break

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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.