As you know, Matt Olmstead and Nick Santora collaborated on the 2005-2009 FOX series Prison Break and now their working together again on another fugitive-themed show called Breakout Kings.  At the Television Critics Association last week they talked about their “love [for] law-breaking.”  On teaming up with Santora for a second time, Olmstead said, “So we just wanted to kind of have fun on the show and keep on working together. So that was the main attraction for me.”  He continued, “What was attractive was not only the momentum of storytelling that you get when you have a fugitive on the run — as opposed to a dead body where there’s a little bit more time to find that person because that dead body is not going anywhere — it was also about the theme that helped kind of unlock the show for us when we’d start to first talk about it, which was everybody is running from something. And so it really kind of unlocked the characters in that we then went in and made sure that all of the characters had that thing that they were running from and towards.”

Refresher: Breakout Kings follows an unconventional partnership between the U.S. Marshals’ office and a group of convicts as they work to catch fugitives on the run.  Laz Alonzo (Avatar) and Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire) are the veteran U.S. Marshals; their special task force is comprised of Jimmi Simpson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Malcolm Goodwin (American Gangster) and Serinda Swan (Smallville); Brooke Nevin (The 4400) is a civilian who assists the group.

Expect the villains to be terribly awful criminals.  Santora says, “It’s integral. You have to have really bad, bad guys, or there’s just no stakes from the beginning of the episode. At the same time, each week it can’t be the Son of Sam who is breaking out of prison. It would get repetitive. So it’s a challenge, and we have been so fortunate this year. The actors were just telling Matt and I how great the guest actors are that we’ve had this season on the show.”  Just last week I reported on two of the show’s guest actors: Lost’s Mark Pellegrino and Prison Break vet Robert Knepper.  Knepper will be reprising Break‘s T-Bag for a four-episode arc.  The producers were asked if we can expect other Break alum to come on as surprise guests and Santora replied, “You never say never, but we don’t want it to become a reunion show where we are constantly bringing guys back from Prison Break. And I think we can say safely of all of the bad guys on Prison Break, how are you going to top T-Bag? T-Bag is T-Bag.”  Very true.

Santora continued to distance the show from Break: “We definitely couldn’t do all of the humor we did on Prison Break that we do on Breakout Kings – couldn’t even come close. The tone of the show is kind a 48 Hoursmeets an Out of Sight in the sense that there were stakes. We are chasing really bad guys that hurt really good people, but you are going to laugh at times while it’s going on, and you are going to feel for our six heroes and what they are going through in that case and how that case reflects on them, their lives, and their relationships.”  Unlike Break the majority of episodes will be closed-ended, so don’t expect to be treated to those insane cliffhangers once a week.  Olmstead said, “It’s a bit of a balance in that you get to know [the characters] as they are investigating the case. The conceit of the show is such that there’s a finite amount of time that you have to catch this fugitive. So it’s not like they punch out and they go home and have dinner with the wife and kids and address their background in that matter. It’s on the fly and through their craft.”  In the end, Breakout Kings is “a completely different show,” said Santora.  “It’s really not about people breaking out of prison – it’s about what happens after people break out.”

And then others involved with the show chimed in.  Actress Brooke Nevin: “I think for all of us, the success of Prison Break and the really interestingly drawn out characters in that show I’m sure was a factor in all of us wanting to work with Matt and Nick because they did such great work.”  Actress Serinda Swan: “They’ve really written some amazing back stories to our characters. So we are able to not only be the con, but we definitely have some really sympathetic qualities that we’ll explore throughout the season. And what’s great is we are not one-dimensional. You kind of see little, tiny bits of us being revealed as it goes. You really get to sort of see the duality between the two, which is the real person, and also their crime. And sometimes their crime isn’t necessarily what they are actually in jail for. So that’s even more interesting because you get to see what they’ve actually been doing. We are real people in difficult situations, and sometimes those difficult situations are what put us into jail just because we made the wrong decision.”  Actor Malcolm Goodwin: “After we catch a criminal, a fugitive and we have to go back [to prison]. And if that information ever got out amongst the other prisoners, that could be it for each and every one of us. But I think what we are trying to get home to is so big and so important to us that it’s worth that sacrifice.”  Actor Jimmi Simpson: “I think what’s great about the show is that it’s somewhat of a procedural, but it’s also really character-based. So it provides a platform for each one of these characters in this cop show to develop their personalities.”

Prison Break was such a suspenseful, brilliantly casted and performed show.  If there’s anything you should glean from all these choice quotes it’s that Team Olmstead & Santora knows what their doing and they’ve got yet another thrilling, provocative series waiting in the wings for us.  Breakout Kings premieres Sunday March 13 at 10PM on A&E.

[Via IGN; LATimesBlog]