Five�s Prison Break combines a barmy (some may even say far-fetched) storyline with some well crafted characters and a generous sprinkling of ingenious plot twists.
Sarah Wayne Callies plays the female lead - feisty prison doctor Sara Tancredi.
Wentworth Miller (the international heart-throb) plays prison inmate Michael Scofield. Is it a chore having to play his love interest?
Is it a chore? Yeah, he�s a horrible, megalomaniacal, terrible person who�s just enormously disfigured � but somehow I soldier through! He�s actually seventy. It�s amazing what they do with the trick of light!
No. He�s wonderful. Really good fun.
There was a hint of flirtation with his screen brother Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) in one of the episodes. Any chance of a love-triangle storyline in the future?
Oh my god! Really? Oh I hope not. I think that would be so cheap! I mean, I look forward to exploring the relationship between Lincoln and Sara, but hopefully as sort of a sibling. I almost see us at some point sitting down and venting about Michael and how he�s driving each one of them crazy. But, no, I don�t think either one of us intended to put that in there!
Your character is pretty complicated. Were you aware of the drug addiction element of her past when you read the first script?
No I wasn�t. When I first got the role I showed up on set for the pilot and handed Paul Scheuring (Producer) a sort of a little biography I�d written up for her � not as a prescriptive thing, but just to give him a sense of what I was thinking and in it I suggested that maybe she was an alcoholic. I�ve always been keen not to make Sara some kind of angel who just works in a prison out of the goodness of her heart.
So Paul took it and read it then never said another word about it. Then I got the script for episode 16 and thought �well, that�s not quite alcoholism � that�s a little darker!� That was the heroin and morphine storyline which I found out probably about a week before we shot it. That made for some very quick research.
Does it make it easier or more difficult for an actor to find out about your character�s personality as the season progresses?
In an ideal world as an actor you know your past and you don�t know your future, so there�s never a problem not knowing where your character�s going because I don�t know where I�m going. But when you don�t know where you�ve come from it�s different. There were some scenes I would have played differently had I had that information, but there�s no time in TV.
Season one was set very much within the confines of the prison. Season two the guys have escaped and are on the run. Which did you prefer filming?
They felt like different shows so it was almost impossible to compare. The nice thing about filming season one was that there was sort of that sense of going to the office every day. You know, you�d get in the car, go to the prison every day and it was a chance to see everybody. There are so many guys that work on the show who I�ve never had scenes with, but in season one I�d run into them on set. For season two we�re so far flung in Dallas that I�d go six months without seeing some of these guys.
One of the show�s strengths is the complexity of the bad-guys. There�s Bellick (crooked prison guard), Mahone (crooked US marshal), Kellerman (crooked secret service agent) and T-Bag (one-armed convicted murderer and pervert). Which of these would you least like to be stuck in a cell with?
Bellick � he moans. Absolutely. Wade Williams who plays him is a lovely guy. I�d happily be stuck in a prison cell with Wade. He�s a charming person with incredible musical ability, and a great sense of humour but Bellick would drive me crazy!
T-Bag�s a great villain. Really nasty but somehow charming. You haven�t had any scenes with him yet.
I know. Rob Knepper and I big fans of each other�s work and we�ve been joking since early on that if we ever do have the chance to work with each other it�s because one of us is going to die! So we�re both very much looking forward to it and sort of forestalling it at the same time. He does fantastic work.
In both seasons we lose a few characters along the way. Who do you miss the most?
I miss Westmoreland. I think Muse Watson did a beautiful job. And I think he brought a really lovely sense of balance, he had so much gravitas. He was older and he had that sort of old cowboy thing, and he�s just a lovely fella. I miss having him round the set.
There�s a riot scene in season one and a torture scene in season two which both looked pretty harrowing. Do you enjoy the more physical scenes?
Those were very long days. I really enjoy stunt work and that sort of action world. But when we did the riot scene unfortunately we hired an actor who was enormous and very unaware of his own strength. I know I seem ferocious, and huge and fierce, but he did flop me around kind of like a rag doll!
And with the torture scene we actually ended up sending a stunt-woman to the hospital bleeding from the head in a rehearsal so that was a little scary.
Can you tell us anything about season three?
If you hear anything, call me. Honestly! I think the writers have been on a break, which they desperately, desperately deserve. I literally don�t think we have five lines of dialogue yet. For me it�s not an immediate concern because I have a few things of my own to take care of (Sarah�s expecting her first child this summer).
So you�re just as curious as the fans then.
All of us are. I know they�ve picked up the third season but they also haven�t picked up any of the actors� contracts, so for all we know� they could replace us all with Jude Law and Sienna Miller!
How would you like to see season three pan out?
I think it needs to be all about reckoning. There�s this enormous pile of collateral damage, and all of our lives have run a course. We�ve turned out as people we thought we�d never become. I think it�s now time to deal with the consequences of that.
Prison Break is currently mid-way through its second season on Five. The DVD of season 2 hits the shops Monday 21 May.
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