Quick Quotes from Joshua Jackson of Fringe

Joshua Jackson talked with reporters (a whole bunch of us!) this morning to help launch the new season of Fringe, which starts this Thursday.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from today’s chat:

In regard to reports of The Observer by a reporter:

JJ: The show is increasing the paranoia of everyone in America.

On working with the cow:

JJ: The cow’s a diva, she’s not very giving

On Peter’s alternate universe backstory:

JJ: They gave me a heads up a few months before so I didn’t read it and think I was fired. What I love, beyond the ain’t it cool factor, now the audience knows something crucial about Peter that he doesn’t know himself.

On how the backstory will play out: (just his thoughts, he doesn’t know more than what’s he’s seen in 8 scripts)

JJ: This is a lot of the guilt that Walter carries around with him, that he babysnatched Peter as a young boy. Eventually that has to come to a head. The entire first season was about the father and son reconnecting through the craziness of the circumstances and they’ve become a family, a dysfunctional family, but a family. But when he finds out this horrible thing happened to him as a child, it’s going to blow up and it gives me something to move toward

On Peter’s background in this universe:

JJ: We delve right into that early in the season — we kept hinting at it but it’s difficult to put their outside lives into the show because each episode has a central focus. Now that we’ve brought Peter in, this season we’ve gone a lot deeper into showing and not just talking about this prior life that he had. It’s the thing that drew me into the character from the very beginning, he has a very black past that in a way, he’s running from and wants to run back to. It’s simpler being an arms dealer than dealing with his father and confronting all these things from his childhood.

On working with Leonard Nimoy:

JJ: I’m going to lodge a formal complaint, Leonard’s been up here twice and though I’ve met him,  I’ve yet to be able to do a scene with him, we need a Peter and William Bell scene tout de suite.

And my favorite quote of the day:

JJ: What defies my imagination is that there is something out there that defies my imagination.

Relaxed, funny and charming — happy to have spent a bit of my morning with Joshua Jackson.

FRINGE: Joshua Jackson returns as Peter Bishop in the Season Two premiere of FRINGE airing Thursday, Sept. 17 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Justin Stephens/FOX