David Boreanaz

The cast and crew of NBC’s Kidnapped talk about the new serial drama.

September 19, 2006 - Kidnapped is NBC’s new serial drama that will take the audience through a single kidnapping for an entire season. The show stars Jeremy Sisto as a man who specializes in recovering kidnap victims. Delroy Lindo plays the FBI agent about to retire who gets drawn into this "one last case," and also has a history with Sisto’s character. Timothy Hutton and Delroy Lindo play the parents of the boy who is taken, and Mykelti Williamson is the bodyguard who loses the boy.

Kidnapped was created by Jason Smilovic, a thirty-one-year-old writer and producer who already has some impressive credits under his belt. He wrote the Bruce Willis thriller Lucky Number Sleven, as well as producing the critically acclaimed series Karen Sisco. He brought Kidnapped to NBC after being inspired by the Akira Kurosawa movie High and Low - which chronicles the abduction of a wealthy businessman’s son.

Smilovic is joined by Michael Dinner, his co-producer and director on Karen Sisco, as well as David Greenwalt, probably best known for his work as producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and co-creator of the spin-off Angel. It’s an impressive team, and a fairly ambitious concept for a show. It’s not the kind of show that will lend itself to casual viewing, but NBC is betting that it works well enough to hook people from the start and keep them hooked. IGN was present at the Television Critics Association panel where the cast and crew were on hand to answer questions about what to expect from the new show.

Smilovic was quick to explain how he plans on approaching a show that will tell one story over an entire season of television. "What we mean to do with the show is to tell a story over the period of 22 episodes," he said. "In each episode we’re telling a mystery that will resolve itself within that episode and then chip away at the larger mystery. Now, the larger mystery is slowly revealing itself. And every time the audience thinks that they know what the show is, thinks that they understand the mystery or the motivation or the mechanism, we change it up."

As with any serialized drama, the worry is that it will be difficult to attract new viewers. This is especially true with several successful series returning this season, leaving viewers’ attention stretched thin. Smilovic says that "the episodes themselves have to have a complete arc. The episodes have to exist as stand-alone episodes. You’re watching a mini-movie. And then, that episode upon being resolved then feeds into the larger story."

Another worry with serialized drama is that the series will end before the story is told - and the audience is left disappointed. Some critics feel this is a major drawback to jumping on to a new serial, citing shows such as Threshold and NBC’s own Surface as recent examples of serials that met an untimely end. Asked if they had a guarantee that they would get a full season, Michael Dinner said "Hopefully good work brings the guarantees. That’s all we can worry about at this point is — look, we think we created an interesting pilot, and we have to keep bettering that week after week. And, you know, our job is really to be concerned about just telling great stories. And if we tell those stories, if we do a good job, then we’ll be on for the full season." In other words, there’s no guarantee.

As it’s planned now, the kidnapping of the first season will be resolved by the end of the 22 episodes. If there is a second season, it will be a new kidnapping and a new family. Smilovic clarified this, "Jeremy and Delroy and Carmen [Ejogo, who plays Sisto’s associate] are going to be our cast that transitions into the second season as well." This means that Delany and Hutton are only involved for one year. Delany says that "If I really like the show, it’s going to be a liability. I’ll be sorry to leave it, but that’s the way it is. And I get to live in New York for a year, so I can’t beat that." Hutton, says "For me, I didn’t think about it really that way. I just wanted to be a part of it. Yes, I knew it was going to be for a year. I live in New York. It’s a dream job working with all these people. So, yeah, I guess what Dana says is true. When we’re not on it anymore and it’s going on, it would be nice to come back. Maybe we can come back in some form."

Delroy Lindo had played a similar character in the Mel Gibson film Ransom. In that movie he was also an FBI agent who specialized in kidnappings. When asked about how this factored into taking the role, Lindo replied "I didn’t want to do Ransom, or Ransom Redux. And in speaking with Jason and the producers, they assured me that that would not be the case and that, frankly, is partially what compelled me to do it, that it would not be that, and it would very quickly not be Ransom."

At the center of the show will be the kidnap victim himself, Leopold Cain, played by (relative) newcomer Will Denton. Denton has an interesting take on Leopold explaining that he sees Leopold "as a fiercely intelligent kid. And I think he’s almost like a chess player, in that he’s looking five moves ahead at all times. He’s an observer. He analyzes everything around him. And I think he uses that to his advantage."

Greenwalt, who is known more for his fantasy projects such as Buffy, Angel and the more recent Miracles and Jake 2.0, was asked whether he is finding it easier to make transitions from genre material to straight drama. "Absolutely," he said. "And people cross over from movies to television and back and forth now, with more fluidity. And I’m the lucky man sitting up here on the podium, because I came very late to the party and these people did this amazing pilot. I was about to get on an airplane to go on vacation, I saw the pilot. I said, ’if they will have me, I will do this.’ To me, fantasy versus a more real kind of style, none of that matters to me. What matters is good."

Sisto, who plays the no nonsense, and somewhat enigmatic specialist known only as "Knapp," was asked about playing such a tough guy. "His toughness or his anger comes from a passionate sort of feeling about a certain situation. It’s not just tough to be tough. There are certain characters like that, and I don’t think I’d be very good at that. But if a toughness comes from a certain passion and declaration to be a certain way, then that’s a little easier as an actor, I think." As director of the pilot, Dinner had a lot to say about the style of the show - which as a producer he will also have a hand in maintaining. He explains that much of what was established in the pilot will grow throughout the series. "The pilot is extremely dense," he said. "There’s a lot of insinuation. A glance may mean something. Someone looking out a window may mean something. The doorman, is he responsible for it? So a lot of the pilot is insinuation, and very complicated. It’s a big set-up. And as we go along, I think as you spend time with these characters, some things will become more clear and some things are going to get murkier. And I think that’s part of the reason that I’m hoping the viewers will keep coming back."

Smilovic acknowledges that shows like Kidnapped wouldn’t be possible were it not for predecessors like Lost and 24. Television has opened up to serialized drama, and while some shows have fallen by the wayside, there are still many that are enjoying great success. When asked if he thought this success opened the door for shows like Kidnapped, he said "I think that it absolutely opened the door to bring in more serialized pilots, more serialized shows. I think it’s an excellent way to tell stories. You get to really explore characters. You get to really explore storylines, plotlines. You get to live and invest in one story for a season. I think that there’s an amazing amount of latitude afforded in that kind of storytelling. And I don’t think it’s going away any time soon."