Jerry Bruckheimer (Getty Images)

Emmanuel Itier: Jerry, you seemed to have mastered this procedural format where it’s sort of stand-alone cases every week, and here’s another twist on that.  Why is that the sort of story you’re comfortable with on television?

Jerry Bruckheimer: It’s stuff I like to watch. I love mysteries, and I think the public loves them too.  If you look at the New York Times Best Sellers List, you’ll see the majority of the bestsellers are some form of mystery.  Even before the dying novels, people are enamored with crime and solving crimes, so I think we all want somebody out there that’s solving crimes for us, because I’m sure a lot of us have been touched by it in their lives and want somebody to come in and be the white knight to clean it up.

EI: It seems that Mr. Slater is a fairly recent addition to the cast.  Can you talk about why he was brought in later and not at the beginning?

JB: I don’t think he was available at the beginning.  We couldn’t find him.  He was in Russia somewhere.  But no, it just…we made a change.  It happens in all forms of entertainment — you make changes.  He’s a fantastic addition to the cast.  We love him.  He’s done an amazing job and brings such verisimilitude to the project, and he’s a wonderful actor.  That’s why he’s here with us.

EI: Does bringing in Christian Slater make this somehow more of the Christian Slater show in the development process going forward, or is it still an ensemble, as it was originally?

JB: It’s an ensemble, but when you have a strong actor like Christian, you’re certainly going to give him a lot of work and make him work hard for his money.  But he’s great to have as part of the cast. We’re all thrilled, including the cast members.  It always works.  It makes everybody else better when you have great actors.

Christian Slater (Getty Images)

EI: Christian, I wonder if you could talk about your last TV experience and whether that sort of whet your appetite for a lot more television work…

Christian Slater: I think it did.  I had a great time doing that show for as many episodes as we got to do.  I enjoyed it.  It was certainly challenging and difficult, so I guess I wasn’t really looking to do another TV show immediately. I think the impression that might have gone out there is that I didn’t want to do it again ever and that was it, and I tried it and I’m done and never again, which was not the truth at all. I really loved the experience, and Jerry plays hockey, and I think in the locker room, my agent also plays on maybe a different team, but they ended up talking about it.  Jerry said he was looking for an actor for a new show that he was doing, and my agent put it together.  So this all sort of came together in the locker room.

EI: Since you guys just finished this and we haven’t had a chance to see it, could one of you tell us how it’s different from something like from Cold Case?

Mark Friedman: First of all, the focus is on amateur detectives, so these are not cops at all.  These are people who have regular jobs, and you’ll see them in those jobs, even in the opening moments of the pilot, because we really want to establish that these are things that anyone can do to help solve these John and Jane Doe cases.  So that’s one difference.  I think also it really has the whodunit and “who is it?” elements that are both parts of the show.  They’re always going to try to find out this person’s name, and that’s really about letting the family know what happened to them, if there’s someone out there they’re waiting to hear from them and they don’t know where they are.  But then, once they’ve done that, it’s about getting justice and solving the mystery, and that’s why this show has these amateurs and it also has a police component with our Detective Russell here.  Then Alex bridges those two worlds because he used to be a detective, so he has one foot in both worlds.

Lukas Reiter (Getty Images)

Lukas Reiter: It really has a unique relatability, I think, in that you can relate to both the victim and the person solving the crime in a different way because you feel, as a viewer, that you could have been either.

EI: How much of their personal life will we see past them solving the crimes?  Will we get to know them intimately?

MF: “Intimately” is an interesting word.  We will get to know them, and I think it’s important for us to have a satisfying mystery every week. We want to catch a bad guy.  We want to have closure on the case.  But for all these people, if you’re an amateur detective and you’re doing this, you have a full-time job and you do this on your own time, there has to be something in your life — something that drives you, maybe something you lack, that doing these cases gives you a little bit of meaning or satisfaction. It’s important, then, that we see who they really are.  So this is not a show where we won’t learn about their families — we will learn those things. Also, the decision you make when you do a show is always at the beginning: are we going to go home with the characters?  That’s always a fundamental question.  In this show, they live out of Lindsey Drake’s home, so we’re making that statement, even in the pilot, that this is going to come at it a little different way.

EI: Mr. Friedman, most shows that are dramas have the characters doing what they’re doing because they have to; it’s their job.  Is there a difficulty or a benefit in doing a show where that’s not the case?

MF: I think there is a difficulty and a benefit. I think it’s a challenge, but then if you can nail it, the show is even better.  But yes, because we feel that, with each of these cases, we need to tie in what it is — it has to be passion that they have.  It has to be that commitment because they are doing it on their own time.  Some people call these people who do the Doe cases “Doe nuts” because there are people who just come home from work and they go right down to their basement and they spend all night doing this, much to the chagrin of their family or friends.  But you have to. Actually, that’s what appeals to me about the show. It will resonate on an emotional level.  There will be a puzzle that will be satisfying when we solve it, but it’s only because we care about these people and they care that the show exists.

Jonathan Littman (Getty Images)

EI: Are there a lot of these people in the real world?

Jonathan Littman:  There are a lot of groups around the country that get together and work either loosely with each other or just people on their own who, for whatever reason, get very interested in and very passionate about trying to help solve these cases that really become discarded because the police don’t know who they are so they can’t investigate anything. It’s quite a phenomena how many people are willing to give up their spare time to do this as opposed to going and playing a round of golf.

EI: Have any of the producers hooked up with some of these people to get some inside information on  how it all works?

LR: We’re always researching what are authentic stories and ways to tell them that feel extremely credible.  We’re not working with any specific individuals who are providing us with material or telling us about real circumstances, but in some of our backgrounds…I am a former homicide prosecutor, so we have a bit of that on our writing staff and in the way we approach the show.  But we’re always doing the research just to try to keep the stories feeling as authentic as possible.

MF: Also, there’s kind of an elasticity to these groups a little bit. They’re a little bit a amorphous. They’re united on the Internet, so conceivably, any one of you out here could be someone who does this kind of work, but I think that’s what’s great for the audience for the show, is that people will feel connected to these people in what they do because you yourself could do this kind of investigating on your own, and that’s how often these cases are solved, which is people who break them based on their own determination.

EI: Christian, are you a fan of mysteries?  Do you read mysteries?

CS: I love mysteries. I started, about a year ago, reading my kids three chapters of Nancy Drew every night, and they’re so into it.  The idea of cliff-hangers and keeping them engaged…their enthusiasm has really gotten me very excited about it.

Heather Stephens (Getty Images)

EI: Jerry, tell us a little bit about the hockey thing.  Do you play hockey every week all year long?

JB: When I’m in town, I try to.

EI: How rare is this for you to do business in a hockey locker room?  Did you pitch him? Did he come up and pitch you?

JB: No, we were changing.  We were sitting next to each other and he said, “I understand you’re casting your show, The Forgotten. Have you ever thought of Christian Slater?”  And I said, ”Christian Slater is a terrific actor.  Would he actually do television?”  And he said, “Let me talk to him.”  And that’s how it started.

EI: Even when you were doing big movies, your name wasn’t as prevalent as now because now the first thing we see is ”Jerry Bruckheimer presents…” and that shows up in about eight or nine shows now.  So is your life different now? Are you getting pitched in more places by more people, more odd ways than you used to be?

JB: Fortunately, we have actors who do our shows, so I’m kind of faceless. It’s about the same; it’s not any different.

EI:  Can you talk with your last series? You had basically two roles. Do you find, going ahead with this series, that you think it’s going to be easier since you can concentrate on one character, or was it easier to have two different characters to play because it gave you such a range?

CS: That was something that was obviously intriguing about that particular show, which got me interested in it initially. I loved doing it.  I think if it had actually gone on, I might have been like, “Okay, I’m getting a little schizophrenic here right now.”  But I do love My Own Worst Enemy, which is a nice experience to have had. But with this one, playing somebody who doesn’t have a microchip in his head separating the two characters…

MF: Not yet.

CS: Yeah, not yet — who knows where it’s going to go?  But playing this guy who’s very human and has really had some phenomenally different experiences to go through, and he’s trying to cope with it in the best way he knows how and, because he hasn’t been able to gain any closure in his own life, now he fills that void within himself by giving the closure to the lives of other people.

Michelle Borth (Getty Images)

EI: For the producers, this is quite sad subject matter. When you get to the end of the day, somebody gets their name back, but the person obviously doesn’t come back to life.  How do you balance keeping this so it’s not too depressing, because it’s such a sad thing?

JL: It’s pretty much the same on any crime drama.  Somebody is going to be dead. The goal at the end here is to not only bring justice but to bring closure to a family that does not know the whereabouts of someone who is missing or someone who has crossed paths with a criminal, and I think the real goal is actually fairly uplifting at the end, when you’ll see the whole thing together, because there is that sense of closure and peace brought to a family, and someone is going to jail.

LR: I agree.  There’s a real opportunity for the group to be giving meaning to the lives of people who are nameless.  By telling their story, it really validates their existence.

EI: Could each of the actors tell us about their character’s professions and personal lives?

Rochelle Aytes: My character’s name is Detective Grace Russell from Chicago.  Not too sure what my backstory will be yet, but she’s a tough, passionate detective who I believe used to work with Alex Donovan, and my main goal, obviously, with everyone else, is to bring closure to these Jane Does, but I also want to give Alex something to do before he spirals downhill because of his personal backstory. I think she has a lot of compassion towards him and also toward these people who are passed away.

Michelle Borth: I play Candace Butler, and she’s an intelligent, confident, headstrong young woman who is an office drone by day and sells insurance.  She’s a bit of a mystery. I think we’ll learn, as the show progresses, as to what her motivation is for volunteering for this network, but she’s very passionate about it and she’s very dedicated to what she does, and the relationships that form through the show may or may not be developed.  We’ll see, but we’ll learn more about her as it progresses.  She’s the one that’s a bit of a unique mystery as to why she’s doing it.

Anthony Carrigan: I play Tyler Davies.  He’s a bit reluctant to join the group because he has to come in and do it for community service due to his excellent graffiti skills in the greater Chicago area. [Laughs] But he’s brought on to utilize his talents for sculpture and try and take the corpse that they have and then recreate what the person looked like.  So I think he’s very reluctant to begin with, but he might start enjoying it as the season progresses.

Bob Stephenson: I play Walter Bailey.  I’m a telephone repairman who pretty much is the pinnacle of the group. [Laughs]

RA: Definitely.

BS: Not No. 2 on the call sheet, but probably should be No. 1.

CS: No. 1 in our hearts, right?

BS: No. 20 on…pretty much the lineman of the group. Not that he’s too stupid to know, but he just wants to dive right in headfirst.  Loves to question people.

JB: Conspiracy theorist.

BS: Has a crush on Sipowicz. [Laughs] A big comic book geek.  And yeah, he’s the man that gets the job done.  That’s Walter Bailey, pretty much.

Heather Stephens: I play Lindsey Drake.  I’m a high school science teacher who joined The Forgotten Network for many reasons — the prominent being as a form of penance for a crime that my husband committed that I feel really traumatized and victimized by, and I think one of the things that I can bring to the group is that I was a victim from this crime that he committed.  There’s a lot of empathy there for the other victims that are involved that we talk to, and also Lindsey — her doggedness, her resilience, and her determination and focused qualities can add to the group as well. I think we’re all drawn to this because all of these people.  They’re really just human beings with vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and they make mistakes and they have humor just like any one of us would, and I think that’s why people would really be drawn to it. That’s why I was drawn to it, reading this script and watching it.

RA: We don’t have fancy gadgets and we don’t have telescopes and forensic files…

HS: Yeah, we don’t have the knowledge.

MB: It’s bringing it back to old school, like an Encyclopedia Brown way — Murder, She Wrote…  I see questions following the details, solving the puzzle. It’s going to be fun for an audience to do with us while we’re doing it.

BS: Did you read Encyclopedia Brown?

MB: I loved Encyclopedia Brown.

HS: Harriet the Spy — that was my inspiration.  I had the belt and the notebook, the flashlight, the jackknife — all of it.

EI:  Michelle, your last TV series gained quite a bit of publicity and notoriety.  What’s it like, as an actor, to see that storm of publicity erupt after you finish a project?

MB: That’s a show that I’m very proud of and I’m very glad that I did.  It was huge storm.  I think it was very explicit, and I learned trial by fire going through that and having to answer really difficult questions about the content of that.  I’m happy, though, to be on ABC and on this show in a much more mainstream way. I felt, when I did that show, I was very alone in doing the press for all of that, so it was very daunting. And this, it’s comforting to have a panel of people that I can just bounce things back and forth on, so it’s a different experience. But I’m glad I did it, and it was a great learning experience for me, dealing with that show.

EI: And in your day-to-day life at the supermarket…? [Laughs]

MB: I have a joke.  It’s probably inappropriate, but people think [laughs]… I do get a lot of, “Why do I know you?  Why do I think I know you?” and it hits them.  I go, “Oh, you probably didn’t recognize me because I have clothes on right now.”  It’s hard sometimes. Yeah, I know who I am, but yeah, it’s other people who are more uncomfortable than I am.  I did the show.  I’m very comfortable with it.  I’m very proud of it, but it’s more uncomfortable for others to look me in the eye when they’re talking about the show and how they felt about it.  It’s interesting.

EI: For the showrunners: since the characters — except Detective Russell — are not law enforcement, do they go to Detective Russell every time they need the legal ability to do something?  Do they find legal ways to get the information, or are they bending the law at times?

LR: There’s definitely an arrangement by which the police are working with our network to be providing them with these cases that they’re working on week-to-week, so there’s that inter-relationship to begin with, but then, as the primary objective for our group is to identify somebody, that’s really what their beginning approach to a case is.  And as they begin to develop clues that tend to suggest that they’re close to catching a criminal, they work with Detective Russell and the Chicago Police Department to bring them in, inform them, and get great support and backup from them to make sure they’re catching whoever’s responsible.

EI: For Mr. Bruckheimer and the producers, given the prevailance of modern technology and surveillance equipment today, is it easier or more difficult for people, do you think, to disappear and not be found if they don’t want to be found?

JB: I think if somebody is really good at it…there are a lot of people our country is chasing we can’t find.  So in some ways it’s easier, and in some ways it’s a lot harder. It all depends who the individual is and how clever he is, and where he can hide.  I think that’s another question.  There are a lot of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq we’re trying to find, and we can’t find them.

MF: I also want to add these are people who do want to be found.  These are people who have died, and their story hasn’t been told. This is not someone who is trying to disappear from the world.  These are people who, for whatever circumstances, no one has been able to identify, and one thing we’re going to do on the show — the voice of the victim will guide us through parts of the story because they have seen how it ends for them, but they want to see that everyone else knows what their journey was, and using that voice as a way to really identify with the victim.  So it’s a little bit of a distinction, I think.

EI: Danny Cannon, could you talk about the visual style that you’re looking at for the show? As well as for all the other showrunners, what your thought is on that, in terms of visually…?

Danny Cannon: I think what attracted me to the show was what Mark was just talking about when Mark and I first pitched this — it was basically that the voice of the victim was what was always going to start the show.  So the idea that this investigation would start backwards with the death and then retrace in the footsteps and tell the person’s story backwards was an interesting way to go.  Also, it had a spiritual content, which I found very good.  The idea that this voice from above is guiding us all the time, and the idea that these characters can set their souls free at the end… This soul can’t move on until the truth is told, and these are the only guys who can tell that truth, so they became like crusaders of truth, and that stirred so many images in me by the time we had finished pitching this thing, that I’ve really got a good idea of what I wanted to do with it — something a little more spiritual.