David Boreanaz

On the set of Bones, Temperance Brennan is coming face to face with her father. No, not the mysterious and possibly dangerous man we’ve seen on the show before, but rather Caleb Deschanel, the real life father to Emily Deschanel, the actress who plays Brennan. Caleb is not on set to guest star on his daughter’s series, but rather to direct the currently filming episode, "The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House".

Caleb is an extremely accomplished cinematographer, who has been nominated for five Oscars, thanks to his work on films such as The Black Stallion, The Right Stuff and The Passion of the Christ. As a director, he has helmed episodes of Twin Peaks, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, and more. This day he stands behind the monitors, watching a scene in which Brennan speaks with Cam (Tamara Taylor), Hodgins (T.J. Thyne) and Zack (Eric Millegan) about some very odd bones, which as the title says, are glowing. In the midst of this some personal issues about the relationship between Hodgins and Angela (Michaela Conlin) are brought to the forefront, while Booth (David Boreanaz) leaves to do some more investigation on the case.

During a break I was able to speak to Caleb, who described the experience of directing his daughter as, "Great. It’s fantastic. She challenges me at every turn, and we have a good interaction and dialogue. She’s very insightful about the script and how things are working or not working, so she has really good instincts. It’s fun to work with her. All the actors get along, so it’s a wonderful sort of family here."

The elder Deschanel explained that the producers of Bones first suggested he direct an episode a year ago, but that his commitment to other projects kept pushing it back, "until finally it became the second to last show of the season." When I asked him if he and his daughter discussed what kind of dynamic they’d like to have on set beforehand, he replied, "No, not really. She’ll give me advice and I’ll give her advice. She has advice because she knows all the other actors and all the other people. So it’s been really helpful and fun and she’s a wonderful actress. The way I know she’s a really wonderful actress is I forget it’s her when I see her working."

Caleb explained that when it comes to directing a TV show episode, "You have an idea on how the show has been done in the past, but you bring your own visual style to it and the way of covering things. From the years of shooting features and directing I have my own way that’s maybe a little different, but you’re still doing it in the context of something that’s been around for awhile. It’s just fun finding a way to use your own methodology to fit into the show the way it exists."

I was also able to speak to Emily, to find out her take on being directed by her own father, along with what’s going on in Temperance Brennan’s life, as Bones reaches the conclusion of its second season.

IGN TV: So what’s it like working with your dad?

Emily Deschanel: It’s weird! It’s really weird. The first day was really strange and odd and took a huge adjustment, because it’s hard to take him seriously sometimes. It’s weird, because he’s coming into my world too. He’s coming in and we have ways we do things, and he’s trying to do his thing. It was an adjustment the first day because he was still Dad to me. I’m attempting to separate our family relationship with our working relationship. But he’s pretty cool. He listens to things I say and critiques that I have; ways of working with actors. He’s very open to that, which I think is great.

It’s actually very much a learning experience because most directors come in and they do their thing, but I don’t know them beforehand. And with him, I kind of can understand what he’s trying to get out of a shot or a scene, and then try to help him translate that. It’s fun to watch him do that. I can watch the process of directing more with my father, because I kind of know how he thinks more then a random stranger who comes in to direct, or even directors that I know only as directors. So it’s very interesting to learn about directing in that way, because I can see him translate his thoughts into images on the screen.

IGN TV: What’s it like for your costars, knowing they’re being directed by your father?

Deschanel: They know my dad. He comes and visits whenever he’s in town. But yeah, Michaela was just staring at him, agape, because the first day I wasn’t working with them - I was finishing up the last episode. And she said she was just staring at him, because we look a lot alike, and she was just thinking, "It’s Emily, but it’s not!" I mean I’m really hard on my dad. I like to discuss with directors why they want me to do something and explain why I have done it in a different way, and with my dad I’m no different. I’m quicker to go, "Dad, that’s not how I want to do it!" [Laughs]. But I think people have laughed because we’re very much comfortable with each other, and definitely our father/daughter relationship comes out. We’re not like some people who turn that off and are completely professional in the work place. Not that we’re not getting our jobs done at all, but...

IGN TV: You’re not forgetting where you came from?

Deschanel: Yeah! We’re not forgetting that he’s my dad, and that we have a whole history of many years knowing each other. So it’s very interesting. It’s an anthropological study I guess. Brennan would be very interested in this!

IGN TV: What can you tell us about this episode?

Deschanel: Well, we discovered the bones of someone who I actually know. So it’s kind of hitting a little close to home for Brennan in this episode. The bones glow in the dark, and so that’s part of the investigation, is we figure out why the bones are glowing. And we’ve been introducing all these different characters on MySpace, and one of them will die. So it’s all about MySpace; there’s a lot of MySpace. And there’s a lot of food - We go to several different restaurants and there’s cooking and eating and that’s kind of the backdrop or theme of the episode.

IGN TV: In the scene you were just filming you ask "What’s a rave?" at the end. I didn’t see that line in the script. Was it something you threw in?

Deschanel: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we do that. We improvise different things here and there, and they can see in the editing room if it works or not. My dad seemed to like it at this moment; it made him laugh at first. But probably because we have very similar senses of humor. Who knows if anyone else shares it?

IGN TV: I thought it was funny!

Deschanel: Well, it came from the character. I think most humor should really come from the characters first. And I was thinking reading the scene that Cam mentions a rave, and I don’t think Brennan knows what a rave is.

IGN TV: Which makes me think maybe she should go to a rave.

Deschanel: Yeah! She has to investigate and go undercover at a rave!

IGN TV: Do you enjoy the episodes where Brennan gets to do a little undercover work, like when you went to Las Vegas?

Deschanel: Yeah. Those episodes are actually, a lot of times, the hardest ones to shoot, because they’re just demanding, on a lot of different levels. We had to be away and stay out of town for the Vegas episode, and there’s a lot of restrictions in shooting in the casino. And we could not tell people to not gamble in the casino. That was part of the stipulation of working in the casinos. So this woman came up while we were shooting and she was like, "Bones! Bones!", and wouldn’t stop. It was funny. But it can be more grueling, just physically, and in terms of the hours and all that when we go away and do things. But I certainly think those episodes are often the most fun. When I read them, I get so excited about going undercover.

IGN TV: Everyone is waiting for Booth and Brennan to hook up, but in the meantime, is it fun for you to be given these different love interests?

Deschanel: Well Booth said he wouldn’t date somebody that he works with, because it puts everyone at too much risk. So Brennan is a logical person, and if somebody tells me something like that, my character I mean, then she’ll take them at their word and then she thinks, "Well, I’m not going to date them, so I might as well be open to dating other people." I think underneath she’s probably hoping she makes him jealous and is probably confused by why she doesn’t want to go away with Sully. I think she doesn’t really understand her feelings, which is why she goes to therapy to try to figure it out. It’s confusing for her. She doesn’t understand emotions. They’re not something you can add together and it equals something, or there’s a right answer to. It’s a grey area, and it’s very frustrating for her. So I think she has all these emotions and she’s lived for a long time being able to suppress all of them and pretend that she doesn’t have these different feelings. But meeting Booth certainly has helped her realize her feelings. And I think when you have strong feelings for someone like that, the feelings kind of overwhelm you in a lot of ways.

IGN TV: It seems like there’s a lot more long-term plotlines sneaking into the show, whether it be the romantic tension between your characters, the stuff with your family, or the Grave Digger. Do you like that aspect of the show?

Deschanel: Yeah, I love that there’s always something weaving in and out, even if it’s not a big plotline. There’s always something that carries over from an episode before. You can always turn on our show and watch it for the first time and not have watched the last episode, and you can figure out what’s going on. But for the people who do watch regularly, there’s some nice things that weave in and out. It’s nice to have storylines that string together. After doing so many episodes, it’s only natural I think because the relationships are going to change and grow and it would be weird not to acknowledge that. And Bones is not a procedural show, per se. It’s very much about the characters involved. And I don’t think you can do a show like that, about characters, without continuing some stories from one episode to the next. Even just the relationships between the regular characters are going to be changing, and that’s going to inform how you say the lines. So if the writers take that and change the lines because of that, that’s what makes it interesting.

IGN TV: Yeah, to me the difference between Bones and a show like Law & Order is we have more of an idea of the interpersonal relationships of the characters.

Deschanel: Right. I love Law & Order; I love those shows, and there’s something nice about turning on a show and you don’t have to know what’s going on in a certain plotline. But I just think it’s different. There’s already Law & Order and CSI. We’re something different, that has crime-solving, but also this relationship stuff, which is a challenge to do in an hour; less really, when you consider commercials. So it’s a big challenge, but I think it’s great. I think we should always try to put as many elements into our episodes as possible. Having drama and humor playing against each other, the different character relationships, and solving the crime.

IGN TV: Going back to working with your dad, I’m curious how early on did you grasp what he did growing up?

Deschanel: My mom said he was a cameraman, so that made it easier to understand. I understood what a camera was, at however old I was. It must have been told to me early on. And I would go to the set with my dad, so that probably helped - Seeing the visual of him behind the camera looking through a lens, and then he’d bring me up to show me and look through the lens. It’s a tangible job. I think somebody who does financial planning or something is harder for a child, but you can see a camera and see the mechanics and it makes sense. I don’t remember it being a very hard grasp because I had the visual and the experience of watching him use the camera. It was like it was a toy. It was a big person toy.