David Kronke Extract - October 2008

"Popular TV characters are defined by the signature choices that they make, knowing how a situation will arise in the procedure of the show, and knowing how he's going to react," Baker notes on the set of the series the day after CBS announced it had been picked up for the entire season.

He adds, "Jane's enjoying his own (screwed)-up-ness, which I find sort of refreshing. It's self-deprecating. It's like, `Hey, you know, I'm self-absorbed and indulgent and a bit childish."'

Baker - who had previously starred in the CBS shows "The Guardian" and "Smith" - was cast in the role a mere week before shooting began. "I'm excited about the potential for this character and how much fun it could be," he says. "I didn't immediately see it on the page. I thought it could be fun to do, and I had some ideas, but that doesn't normally blossom into a character you enjoy playing because often you'll hit walls and limitations."

The reason the Australian-born Baker didn't see his character's full potential is because series creator Bruno Heller (HBO's "Rome") made Jane vague enough so that his star could bring some of his own
personality to the role.

"I don't like to impose a character on the actor," Heller says. "I like to see what the actor does and run with that. The character of Patrick Jane is very much a creation of the scripts and Simon. I think it's
liberating for an actor not to be confined by a suit of armor of someone else's making."

Heller attributes his show's success to two elements: "It's a pretty simple idea - it's Sherlock Holmes with a twist. If you keep it simple that way, everything else falls into place. And Simon Baker, to see
what you'd seen him do before, but to see it in full flower, and to see him in Cary Grant mode, both as a dramatic actor and comedian, I don't think anyone had seen him do that before. He's very deft, very charming, and he has this darkness. He's childlike and manly at the same time. It's effortless, the way he does that."

One mannerism Baker brought to his character is a guttural expression of exasperation at the ludicrous events surrounding him. "They're never really written, but I chuck them in here and there. It's gotten to the point where (co-stars) Tim and Owain, whenever I do it, they we) themselves laughing. So it's getting really dangerous. "We'll have to start doing it in post-production," he surmises.

Co-star Tunney confesses that she's not used to playing a boss or tough character. "So often in television, the woman's role is there sort of to bring the emotion to the piece. And I like the idea of this not being like that; there's a real gender reversal. He's the brains, and I'm the brawn. I imagine she's the sort of person who would get a crush on a guy and beat up the bully for him."

One of the conceits of the program is that Jane, chastened by his days duping others as a psychic, insists that mentalism is mere chicanery, a notion that served as the jumping-off point for the series.
"The first thing that struck me and inspired me to do this show is the ubiquity of those palmists and fortune-tellers - they all have different shticks, but they're almost on every block of every major city," Heller explains. "There's this massive underground culture, and what they're doing, they're either charlatans or deluded. They're doing something false that nevertheless produces a good result; they're performing a cowboy kind of therapy.

"So there's this great moral ambiguity at the core of what they're doing," he continues. "There's also a huge amount of skill. They're talented people in that vein, very good at sizing people up quickly and finding their weak spot. "The difference between mentalists and psychics and cops and priests and psychoanalysts is that those people don't lie to you about what they're doing. These people are being dishonest on a fundamental level, yet performing a function that requires skills that say something profound about the way the mind works."

But Baker mischievously floats the notion that perhaps Patrick Jane isn't a fraud after all. "It seems most of the time (on the show), people are thinking that he really is psychic, and that's a nice conceit to have. I had someone stop me on the street recently and say, `I think he's psychic, but he's not telling people."'