Exclusive Interview: '24' EXECUTIVE PRODUCER HOWARD GORDON GIVES THE SCOOP ON SEASON EIGHT - PART 2

Unless you’re really unfamiliar with 24, it’s not much of a spoiler to say that, since Season Eight exists, Kiefer Sutherland’s long-suffering action hero has survived the effects of last season’s bio-weapon and is back fighting terrorism once again.

Executive Producer Howard Gordon, who has been with the series since its inception and has been 24’s showrunner for the past several seasons, gives us some clues about the new season of the Fox show, which airs Mondays at 9, and looks back at where it’s been.

iF MAGAZINE: When is Gregory Itzin as former U.S. President Charles Logan coming back this year?

HOWARD GORDON: Episode seventeen or eighteen.

iF: Would you prefer that Fox not have announced his return?

GORDON: Yeah, but you know, there are no more surprises. So it’s not even about "if," it’s sort of "how." Tony [Almeida, played by Carlos Bernard, apparently returning from the dead] was the biggest one, and that was the one you really wanted to save, and we just knew we had to take the high ground. We tried to cover names – honestly, you just can’t do it. We had spies digging through the trash and people who were busted on the set, so we just gave up on it.

iF: Is Jean Smart coming back?

GORDON: She’s not coming back, no.

iF: Is Jack’s girlfriend Audrey, played by Kim Raver, dead?

GORDON: Audrey is so not dead. She’s not even in a coma. In my opinion, she is at the very worst in a psychiatric facility, but she may also be married to a contractor in Virginia who has a child.

iF: Have you and Kim Raver discussed the possibility of her returning to 24?

GORDON: Before she took that job [as a series regular on GREY’S ANATOMY], we spoke. The timing and the story just didn’t work out, but yeah, I love Kim. That was a great relationship with [Jack]. But I’ve got to say, this year, the one I’m most excited about is the stuff with Kiefer and Annie [Wersching, who plays now former FBI Agent Renee Walker]. Honestly, she is mind-blowingly good. Last year was fine, last year I think she was terrific, but I think the part was limited. It was kind of almost more intellectual and cerebral than it was emotional, and this year, she’s just phenomenal. She’s certainly the female who would understand Jack most. Even Audrey didn’t understand what it was like to get her hands dirty and to have to make these decisions which chew up your soul – no female has ever understood Jack as well as Anne Wersching’s character.

iF: Do you ever bring in new writers who haven’t seen the show to get fresh perspective?

GORDON: Every time, and we’ve brought in some really, really good writers who are not familiar with the show, you can’t begin – you’ll spend you entire time telling them why that doesn’t work and it actually makes no sense. Inevitably, you’d find yourself saying, "No, we can’t do that, because we did it, you can’t do that because it doesn’t work for this reason," and it’s exhausting.

iF: Eight seasons in, is 24 like LOST, where new viewers are afraid to jump in because they’re afraid there’s too much to catch up on?

GORDON: Yes, although I wish that I could communicate this to those people who have never seen the show, that this is really a show that doesn’t require having seen [previous seasons]. I think it is different from LOST or even other serialized shows in that [the audience] really can get the value, the emotional location of Jack, and then of course the introduction of an entire new cast of characters really makes it accessible to people watching for the first time, and I think people who haven’t watched it feel that it’s too late to jump on.

iF: Do you feel the series is changing in how it handles certain sociopolitical elements? For instance, in Season Seven, you had these two poor Muslim immigrants who were framed by a Blackwater-like private military organization and Jack apologizing to them. Would we conceivably have seen something like that in the first couple of seasons?

GORDON: I think all of us as an audience weren’t even able to ask those questions in the first couple of seasons. And I don’t know that I necessarily agree with you. In other words, there were a couple of scenes where a Muslim family who owned a sporting goods store were victimized by some xenophobic rednecks. So we’ve kind of seen that theme explored – I think last year I was particularly proud of it and it was a particularly elegant way of doing it, but I think they were themes that we’ve introduced and brought up. But again, the world and our apprehension of the world and the complexity of terrorism has matured and grown and gotten a lot more complex than it was when we first started.

iF: Do you have a favorite scene or season from what we’ve seen so far over the first seven seasons?

GORDON: Honestly, there are two. My first one that I wrote, when Teri [Jack’s wife, played by Leslie Hope] realizes that the guy she’s with isn’t Alan York. I love that, because that’s when I wrote my first 24 script and felt, "Oh, I get this show," so I loved it for its newness, and then when Jack had to kill Chapelle, that still is very iconic for me.

iF: Do you find yourself at this point in the proceedings thinking, "Hmm, this might work for 24, that might work for 24," even when you don’t have a plot problem to solve?

GORDON: Yes. I think and I live and I dream and I breathe this show, which is a problem [laughs].

iF: What is going to tell you that it’s time to stop making 24?

GORDON: I think it would be after every concerted effort is made to come up with an idea [for another season] and then to come up empty-handed. There’s just a kind of stubbornness to me and the writing staff. Even if we’re not invited to ask what the next story would be, I think we’d try to figure one out.

iF: Do you know whether Jack will live or die at the end of the series?

GORDON: I have always flirted – and this is me – with the idea that seeing Jack’s last hours would be very dramatic, but it’s not something I think the audience or frankly I think I would be able to tolerate, so the answer is, I don’t think it’s a happy ending, but I think Jack lives. How he lives is the real question.

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