Marti Noxon

BROTHERS & SISTERS PRESENTATION

4:12 pm: The session is about to begin, even though exec producer Ken Olin and his wife, Patricia Wettig, are still stuck in traffic. They’ll join us when they arrive.

4:16 pm: The clip ends, the lights come up and the panelists (including stars Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffiths, Sally Field and Ron Rifkin) are all scrambling to take their seats. Geez, these kids seriously don’t have their acts together today. Hey, at least Olin and Wettig have arrived!

4:17 pm: A gutsy reporter comes right out and asks about the "troubled" label that’s been slapped on the show. First off, why all the reshooting? "There was a great response to the pilot, but creatively, we had to go in some different directions with the family," explains exec producer Marti Noxon. "We had an opportunity for the family to be shown having a little more fun. It’s the exact same story, just told from a different point of view." Fair enough.

4:19 pm: Calista looks like someone killed her cat.

4:21 pm: Sally Field, who replaced Betty Buckley as the show’s matriarch, says she jumped at the project primarily because of the all-star cast.

4:23 pm: Scoop! Ken Olin confirms that Dan Futterman’s role is being recast, too. (He’s apparently shooting a film in Pakistan.) Matthew Settle (Band of Brothers) will assume the role.

4:24 pm: "I think the character I’m playing now is so fundamentally different than Ally," Calista offers. "I definitely wanted to make a different choice. I think the show is very different. It’s a very real show. Ally was sort of fantastical, a different kind of reality."

4:26 pm: Referring to all of the Alias actors and producers working on Brothers & Sisters (in addition to Rifkin and Wettig, Balthazar Getty is also in the cast), Olin - an Alias producer himself - jokes that "Sally knows where Rambaldi is." Field, who clearly has never seen an episode of Alias in her life, let’s out a completely clueless, "What?" Funny stuff.

4:30 pm: Someone wonders why Tom Skerritt - who plays the show’s patriarch - is MIA. "I think he’s actually working right now," Olin says. "That’s the reason he’s not here."

4:31 pm: A reporter asks Field, Flockhart and Griffiths what it was like when they all met for the first time. The reporter then requests that they answer that question from a "female, girl perspective." Without missing a beat, Griffiths says, "Well, we made out." Even Calista giggles at that one.

4:34 pm: Calista is pouting again. I’m going to introduce her to Ray Liotta. I think they’d really hit it off.

4:35 pm: Rachel Griffiths blows her nose into an orange napkin on stage. That takes guts.

4:38 pm: Calista’s conservative character is "not Ann Coulter," Olin maintains. "She’s not insane." He’s getting a high-five for that one after the session.

4:42 pm: Rachel’s Aussie accent keeps going in and out. I should introduce her to Gillian Anderson. I think they’d really hit it off.

4:46 pm: Back to the Skerritt mystery: One of the few journalists who’s actually seen the pilot points out that in the version she saw, his character dies. "The pilot is different," Olin says. "The pilot is not what you’ll see in a couple months." Hmmm... he’s hiding something.

4:50 pm: A reporter informs the producers that ABC’s press notes for Brothers & Sisters clearly state that Skerritt’s character drowns in the first episode. "They are my bosses," Olin says sheepishly. "If that’s what it says, that’s what it says." The jig is up!

4:54 pm: Scoop! Patricia Wettig reveals that she won’t be returning to Prison Break this fall. "I don’t know how they’re going to deal with it," she says. "I had to make a choice. And it was kind of hard for me to choose against my husband and his good writing. So I’ll be on this one instead."

4:55 pm: Rachel whispers something to Calista that makes her grin from ear to ear. Maybe she told her the session was over.