Five Favourite Films with 24's Carlos Bernard

Did you imagine when 24 started that you’d still be talking about it and doing it 7 or 8 years later?

Carlos Bernard: No. First of all you read the scripts. The scripts may be fantastic, but it’s absolutely no guarantee that it’s going to be worth seeing once it’s been shot and put together. This show especially, when people were first looking at it, they really didn’t think it had a shot. They didn’t think it would even make it through one season, much less seven, which is crazy.

What do you think is the secret of the show’s success?

CB: In the first season, when we were working on it, we really didn’t know who was good and who was bad. A lot of the characters I played before 24 were darker characters, the antagonists, so I’m always attracted to darker characters. In the first season, I really played him the possibility of winding up either way, and I think that the show, and the style of the show, lends itself to be both; to allow both worlds to go on within the character, which is the way it is in life. We’re all light and dark, we all have the capacity for things we haven’t done, or maybe things we have done but keep secret.

So I definitely allowed for the possibility with him to go dark, but I think the way it’s evolved through the years, and then what finally took him over into where he is in Season 7, has worked out nicely. I don’t think you could have possibly planned all that from the beginning but certainly from the beginning I wanted to allow the space for him to possibly go there.

You’ve worked with some in incredible actors over the years, is it a tight ensemble on the show?

CB: It’s a strange show because so many people come and go, there are very few of us who have been there from the start. As far as the unit goes, it’s really the crew, our main directors, writers, myself and Keifer. And yeah, we’re very tight; it’s a very collaborative environment. The writers and creators have really allowed us to help shape the script as we go along if we feel the need on set, so in that sense there’s a real collaborative environment that was created by Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran off the bat and has continued through the years.

Does having those new faces in the cast help to keep things fresh?

CB: It does keep it fresh with new actors certainly, but definitely the characters as well. Different characters bounce off the old ones, and those dynamics aren’t the same as the dynamics between the main characters, so it makes things different. That definitely helps keep the show fresh.

So can you give us any sense of where Tony Almeida is going or where the show is going to go into Season 8?

CB: Yeah, Tony runs for President and loses at first but… He doesn’t take the loss very well! He doesn’t take any loss very well, actually. But he ends… well I can’t tell you any more, that’s as much as I can tell you without spoiling it.

Given the events of Season 7, he’s got the credentials to run for office!

CB: [Laughs] You’re right.

Do you see 24 continuing for another seven years?

CB: I don’t think so, no. I didn’t see 24 lasting through the first season so I’m not much of a prophet in that sense, but I don’t think so. Personally I think season 8 will be our last year. That’s my guess anyway. But I thought Season 1 would be the last year, so what do I know?