Jack Bauer has at least one more day to save. Whether the eighth season of 24 turns out to be its last or there’s a ninth on the way, there’s still many more real time hours of adventure in store. Kiefer Sutherland previewed the rest of day eight with the Television Critics Association at their winter press tour.
Q: How long were you actually in New York shooting?
Kiefer Sutherland: I shot there for one week and then we shot, obviously, all our plates over another ten days or something like that.
Q: What kind of reaction did you get from New Yorkers while you were shooting there?
Kiefer Sutherland: You know what was really funny was that we were a really light unit and so there was one day that we were shooting and we've obviously got police on the corners and things like that, but I came running around the corner with a gun and it was a mix of our extras and people who'd always seem to break through the lines and walk down the street. I always found it amazing that if in Los Angeles if you're walking down the street with a gun people will stop their car and check it out. In New York I'd be running down the street with a gun and people would walk just right by like absolutely nothing else was going on. So that made me laugh a bit.
Q: Has the show ever directly referenced 9/11 at any point?
Kiefer Sutherland: No.
Q: Is there a reason for that?
Kiefer Sutherland: The original pilot, and I think the first ten episodes, were written before the terrible events of 9/11 and I think there's been a real effort to make sure that this show is a fantasy. It was created as a fantasy. It was created to facilitate this circumstance of a crisis within the context of twenty four hours and I think that we've really wanted to make sure that this was not our interpretation of what's really happening in the world. Although there are certain lines that blur very much with what's really happening in our reality it's still a television show and it is born of the fantasy of our writers.
Q: Is it challenging to be set in New York and not be shooting the whole thing there?
Kiefer Sutherland: For the actors, yeah, I think it is. I think last year when we actually got to go to Washington, D.C. to shoot it had a great impact for all of us and it's the same with me being able to go to New York and shoot some. It's something that we're certainly aware of and that there's a kind of energy that takes place in New York that you have to do everything that you can to kind of manifest.
Q: How would you say this season is different from the other ones?
Kiefer Sutherland: It's as combination of things. There are certain things that you've come to expect from 24. It's going to be moving at a very fast pace. Jack is going to have a sh*tty day. Things are going to happen and hopefully a few things that you're not expecting with regards to the genre of the thriller we're going to spin for you. So those things are something that I think we did in season one and they were things that you should expect all the way through every season of the show. What we can change up for you are cast members and the personal relationships. The dynamic of the relationship between Annie Walker and Jack Bauer is literally flipped a hundred and eighty degrees this year. The dynamic between Jack Bauer and Cherry Jones at some point during this season gets turned on it's head. So, again, all of the changes are going to be character to character changes and in some cases how those characters, even Jack Bauer, deals with things.
Q: Is he going to stay more positive like he's in a better place than we've seen him in a long time?
Kiefer Sutherland: He certainly starts from that point, yeah.
Q: Would you personally like to see an end point for the show, putting a bow on it and going out?
Kiefer Sutherland: I don't know. We've talked about making the films for quite a long time. I think that Howard and I are very aware at not wanting to hint at that. If we're going to do it we better do it soon because Jack is getting older by the minute. So those things are all to be taken into consideration. If I just had my dream, yeah, that would be fantastic to just have a definitive end and have it be something that was really jolting and surprising and not in a place where you think it would be. That's ultimately what got us our audience. They've been unbelievably loyal and the death of my wife in the first season, a lot of fans were really angry about that. They did applaud us for that and they certainly didn't see it coming and it had a dramatic impact on them which is our job. If we were going to have a definitive end I would like it to be something that was great, something that had some weight.
Q: I know New York had been on the table for a few years. Even though you're not shooting the whole show there what did it take to get that to be the location for this season?
Kiefer Sutherland: I'd never actually heard that New York was on the table. That's a good question for Howard. I think really because Washington worked so well for us, I think that we loved the way that it looked and I think that it was really nice to visually get out of Los Angeles and try something different. The fact is that this is a national issue. So from a writer's perspective I would imagine that to lock yourself in that the only terrorist situation that'd ever taken place in the United States happened in Los Angeles got a little old.
Q: Why do you shoot so much of the show in Los Angeles?
Kiefer Sutherland: I think it's a combination of economics. We're shooting the equivalent of twelve films a year in a ten and a half month period. We have a very well oiled machine here and to uproot it and try to move it to New York would be very difficult. So we got away with really using plates and the technology right now, we can shoot a scene in downtown Los Angeles, take downtown Los Angeles and put you on the corner of West 4th and 7th Avenue and literally you will not know. It's very funny in casting, trying to find every out of work New York actor that has transplanted themselves to Los Angeles and use them as extras. We tried to do all of those things. Obviously there's an economic component to it.
Q: Meaning to find New York looking people?
Kiefer Sutherland: Well, I don't know if there's a specific look but there's a specific sound and a walk and all of those things.
Q: Have you ever thought that the definitive ending could be Jack dying?
Kiefer Sutherland: We've certainly talked about it.
