Fox’s “Fringe” is getting a musical treatment in a “Glee”-themed week of programming on the network on April 29th. In an episode entitled, “Overture”, the cast of “Fringe” will be taking part in song and dance, but of course, this wouldn’t be very “Fringe”-like if it didn’t involve Walter!
The musical numbers are a figment of Walter Bishop’s (John Noble) imagination and cover popular songs. Would it surprise you that several of the cast members have musical training? Jasika Nicole who plays Agent Astrid Farnsworth has a musical theater background, Blair Brown who plays Massive Dynamic’s Nina Sharp can sing and has a song in this episode, and Lance Reddick who plays FBI supervisor Phillip Broyles was originally a musician before taking up acting.
Nicole talks about this musical episode:
“None of us ever thought that it was really going to happen. It was just a joke. We were like, ‘Oh, yeah, Fringe should be a musical.’ Dancing and singing and goofing off and stuff. And then John says, ‘So, you know, there’s going to be a musical episode,’ and I was like, ‘Ha, ha, John,’ and he was like, ‘No, really, have you read the script?'”
“When I first read that, I thought, ‘How are they going to pull this off? This is really weird.’ And it makes complete sense within the story. It’s essentially Walter kind of manifesting his idea. He’s trying to get his mind off of, you know, what’s going on because he’s just waiting to see what’s going to go on with Peter. And essentially he’s kind of created this little world in his head. And so everything is super-symbolic so all the characters embody the qualities that he notices about them the most, which is really neat. And it happens in the 1940s. Everybody’s in 1940s dress, but they still have cell phones and stuff. So it’s just his brain, because he’s telling a story to someone. Sort of like a bedtime story to help ease his anxiety. So we get to sing in it.”
[Above left to right: Blair Brown, Lance Reddick, Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, John Noble, Kirk Acevedo, and Jasika Nicole]
Reddick elaborates on how song and dance is tied into the plot of this musical episode:
“Oh, it’s gonna be a blast. It’s basically Walter telling a bedtime story to Olivia’s niece and so it has these extreme versions of [the cast].”
Broyles will be singing while playing his own piano accompaniment. Astrid sings a song from “A Chorus Line”. Olivia (Anna Torv) shows off a sexy side as well as having been serenaded to by a most unlikely person – Nina Sharp!
Reddick’s musical history runs long:
“I went to music school, college. … I came to acting very late. … I think Walter and Astrid more have numbers. I just, like, have a few lines that I sing. For me, what was more fun was actually being able to play completely to the character.”
Since this “Fringe” has a reputation for the strange, a musical episode should fit into their repertoire quite nicely. Reddicks adds:
“Random and odd is what this show is, so it’s cool.”
All new episodes of “Fringe” return on April 1st on Fox, Thursdays at 9/8pm C.
[Source] SciFiWire, TVSpoilers
