What follows is an excerpt from that interview.
The Hollywood Reporter: How surprised were you by the renewal?
Jeff Pinkner: We might be foolish but no, we were not surprised. [Laughs] Fox has been supportive throughout this process, from the beginning and certainly this season, wall-to-wall. They told us they were thrilled with the show creatively, the number wasn't exactly what they would’ve hoped for but they know the audience is deep and loyal and returns, and that's valuable to them. The critics have been so supportive and they were up front when they were moving us to Friday night that it wasn't one step closer to the door, it was actually a, "Hey, if the audience follows us to Friday night, we're in great shape." And the audience did. We started to hear word back and forth between Fox and Warner Bros. What would the show look like next year over the past couple of weeks? So when a literal call came in yesterday, we were thrilled, but not necessarily surprised.
THR: How did the cast react when they were told?
Pinkner: The cast, they were thrilled. Ecstatic.
J.H. Wyman: When you get to this point, so many people have been saying since we moved [from Tuesdays] to Thursdays -- the initial move -- "That's the end. That's it. They're done. It's over." Fox kept saying, "Well wait a minute, we're trying some stuff out here. We believe in this show." So every single step along the way, people have been killing the show before it was dead and I think that [the cast] became a little bit immune to those types of things and realized, "OK, we believe in what we're doing and we're going to just consistently do the best work we can and the chips will fall where they may." They're saying, "I would love to not have to give up these characters, but I'm living for today." They were very appreciative.
THR: Can you talk about the big DVR numbers that the show gets?
Wyman: Jeff and I both felt at the beginning, when we start to see what was happening on Thursday nights, we realized a lot of people want to watch Fringe, they just don’t want to watch on Thursday nights. We start to talk about conceptually what does Thursday night mean to the viewer. We landed sort of on, well, it's sort of a romantic comedy night. People are watching Bones and then they're going over to Grey's [Anatomy]. It's sort of a heavy pill to sit down and watch a science-fiction show in the middle of that. They were watching, they just told us when they wanted to watch it so we were confident that the fans would follow us to Friday. The DVRs now, we're in a weird evolution when it comes to how are we tracking shows and who's watching them and advertisers, I'm sure they're also asking, "How do we track this? How do we sell now? What does this look like?" I know for sure that the DVRs were definitely a part of the decision, they would have to be.
THR: Did you have to push for a full 22-episode order?
Pinkner: It's not really our job to push. It's our job to tell the best stories we can in the best fashion we can. Trust the marketplace, trust that the fans are there, trust that the studio and the network recognize that. This is such a hard moment in time to get people to commit to anything. We were saying to each other a couple days ago, when you go to a movie, you already know that there's an end. You might not like it, but you know when you leave the theater, you will have seen the end of the story.
So much TV these days doesn't make it to "the end," whatever the storytellers have in mind, or there is no end in place. It's hard to get people to commit and showing loyalty to an audience, which is obviously what Fox is doing here, really gains a lot of value for Fox. It's like, "Watch these shows we're putting on the air because we're going to stand behind as you do."
Wyman: They're saying, "Hey, we believe in this program and we want to be the purveyor of programs that are critically acclaimed and purveyor of programs that people are really responding to and really embracing," which sounds obvious but there's a lot of critically acclaimed shows that have gone by the wayside in the past. There's something to be said about that decision. It's gutsy.
THR: Now that the season is wrapping up, what can viewers be expecting leading up to the finale?
Wyman: Consistently, we've tried to have a new chapter begin at the end of the seasons. The first season was the Twin Towers and the second season was Olivia over there. This one will have the same effect that, sort of the beginning of a new understanding of the program.
For the full interview, just follow the link.