Wanna see my car?
JOEL: Hi, I am Joel Surnow. I am the executive producer of 24. And with me is...
MARY LYNN: I am Reese Witherspoon. I play the part of Chloe O’Brian. I mean Mary Lynn Rajskub.
J: One of the things we really like about Badge, who plays Chase, is that he’s got a real believability in the action. He’s a natural in terms of just making you believe he can be a kind of a tough, special ops guy. Kind of guy that he is. A lot of the young, good-looking actors don’t have that sense of authenticity.
ML: He’s from the streets.
J: He’s from the streets of Beverly Hills. His mother was Anita Morris who was on Broadway. And his father was a famous Broadway actor.
ML: Is that true?
J: Yeah.
ML: He makes me think he’s just a hoodlum.
J: Yeah.
ML: We don’t talk very much.
J: He said he’d like to keep it that way.
J: Wanna see my car?
ML: What kind of car do you got? [Jack punches Nina in the face] Oh no!
J: You do a good job on our show, too, we’ll have one of the actors beat the crap out of you too. Look at these two.
ML: I wanna get hit by Kim.
J: Beat up by Kim? See, they’re looking for the virus, Mary Lynn. That was, that was the storyline this year.
ML: Oh! Yes. I can’t keep it straight.
J: She keeps wondering when Larry Sanders is going to come onto the scene. Where’s Gary?
ML: Well, this show is pretty funny, though.
J: Look at that, is there sexual tension or what?
J: Get me pizza, pepperoni -- Nina, what do you want?
ML: Finally!
J: Mary Lynn just woke up. Split screen. See that? Split screen?
ML: Innovative. Nobody else does that.
J: Right. Never.
ML: Do you have on your tv at home where you could little box -
J: No, I don’t have that. You could watch “According to Jim” while watching our show, you mean? Ok. There you are. Ok, watch this - we did like 30 takes just to get that one little thing right. That represents like 6 hours of work.
ML: That’s the thing, nobody understands me, you know.
ML: I’ve never done a dramatic role before. I usually do comedy. So this was really exciting. Cause she’s kind of wacky. But then being super-serious. I was hired because of my knowledge of computers and technology. I’m very mathematically-minded. That’s why I got into acting. And I’m a very uptight person. And I think I’m right most of the time. And most of the time, I am. So that bled over into The O’Brian. I call her The O’Brian. And I also wear short socks. Just like Chloe does. And I’m Irish. In real life.
J: Is it a step up to play an Irish woman?
ML: Yes.
J: Oh, Mary Lynn and I are both from Detroit. Just a little known fact. It had nothing to do with why she got hired.
ML: But this actually was unlike anything I’d done because I tend to mumble, and I’m not technical at all. I was just kidding a moment ago. And so this is really fun and challenging.
J: Actually the way Mary Lynn got hired is -- Mike Loceff and I, who write a lot of the episodes, saw her in "Punch Drunk Love" and fell in love with her and the character she played and thought, “Boy, if would be interesting to bring that kind of intense energy into CTU.” It could be funny and at the same time it could really be edgy because, you know, she’s so confrontational, and so in people’s face that it’ll inflame our characters more while they’re in a pressure cooker, and that’s exactly what happened. And what’s wonderful about this episode is, now, all of a sudden, everyone who is annoyed at her, has to like woo her to do this heroic thing.
J: Can I talk about another actress for one second? Is that ok? Can we get off you for a second?
ML: Please.
J: I don’t know if anybody else is doing commentary on Sarah Clarke this season, but she absolutely knocked me out this entire run that she did this season. Her look was great, her level of intensity was amazing. And when you think back to the kind of nice, office girl she was in the first season to where she is now. It’s amazing, and she made them both incredibly believable. And it’s a hard show to act sometimes, because, you say so little and yet have to convey so much just with looks and movement. And that’s what she did. And we were thrilled.
J: That's Albert Hall who was in "Apocalypse Now". You ever see that? You ever see any movie before 1995? Or is like the last movie you saw - What was that? Legally Blond 2.
ML: Yeah, I only watch Reese Witherspoon.
J: Mary Lynn, when you see other actresses onscreen, do you get really upset? That they’re taking up precious space?
J: Cool boots. Leather pants. Villain.
ML: Weird ponytail.
ML: How much ahead of time do you know what is going to happen?
J: This season? We wrote episode by episode. We’d have vague ideas of what the next three or four episodes would be, but we would write them --
ML: Nuts. Love it.
J: Yeah. This season was out of control. We did not ever get ahead at all this season. We were behind every episode. We would write episodes while we were prepping them, and sometimes even shooting them. I don’t know if it was cause of third season it was harder to come up with new material or if it was just the story that we told, but we had a tough time.
ML: Did you ever have a story and then you’re just like “Oh, I wish we could just get rid of this story”?
J: We do. We do get rid of stories. We’ll write entire scripts and then find out -- Actually, the next episode, there was an entire script written about Jack breaking down cause of the drug addiction. And we just threw it out completely. We decided we didn’t wanna go to his drug addiction anymore.
J: Now Mary Lynn, when you’re doing shows, and you’re only doing like a third of it, do you have a sense of what the whole story is, or are you really just focusing on your scenes and --
ML: Are you serious?
J: Look at that. They just wanna kiss. They just so wanna kiss!
J: Uh oh. There’s Chloe. I met a couple of heavy duty bread producers about a week ago, and they were saying they love the third season. It’s the Chloe season.
ML: Yes.
J: They just love -- They just felt like that was the dominant thing for them this season.
ML: Finally! The Chloe.
J: Chloe. Yeah.
ML: But then I just remembered how someone on the website said I had a potato face. That’s cool, you know, that’s cool.
[NINA: I invite you to try!]
J: I invite you to try. She’s polite.
ML: Would you like to try?
J: I invite you.
ML: The greatest.
[Alan is having a heart attack, he reaches for his pills, but while he's trying to pick one up from the bottle, they all fall on the floor.]
ML: It’s amazing. Their own fault. They can’t get into his mouth.
J: Oh God. It’s how I feel at lunch time around here. Just can’t get a jar of peanut butter open fast enough.
J: Does she deserve to go to jail - Julia?
ML: Does she deserve to go to jail?
J: Yeah, she does, doesn’t she?
ML: No.
J: Shut up. She didn’t help her husband.
ML: Women should not go to jail.
J: For killing her husband?
ML: No.
J: I, I think you’re right.
ML: Ever.
J: Ever.
ML: She didn’t really kill him.
J: Prisons are for men.
ML: [Sherry] is gonna go to jail.
J: Just when you thought you couldn’t make her any more devious. She’s killing a guy and telling his wife to lie.
ML: I mean, would the pills really have stopped him from dying?
J: Yeah, they were like Angina -- people who get Angina take pills. What are they? Nitrate? Something like that.
ML: Guaranteed to stop?
J: Yeah, they stop the heart problem.
ML: Well, she killed a man.
J: Well, it happens.
ML: She could go to a really nice jail.
J: Yeah, with a garden and stuff.
J: 1:54. Only five and a half more minutes for Chloe to save the world. Here we are. This is your world, man. Exciting. Look at that. How do you know how to do all this?
ML: I’m really, really smart. Kind of a genius. Yeah, Tony. People don’t give me enough credit, you know.
J: Ok. Whoa. Dude. Order this. Jack Bauer. You don’t mess with Jack Bauer, ok? You know what he’s doing? He believes in you. That’s why he’s doing this.
J: Yeah, kiss me. Hurry, liplock now. I don’t care what you say. I love you.
J: First time he’s smiled all season. Poor Nina. She’s gotta do something else now.
ML: Trying to get away. Must go. See you later.
J: Chase?
ML: Step-mom!
J: Yeah.
ML: Your new daughter. See you later.
J: Gotta go.
M: Oh man. What a burn!