QUANTUM LEAP: Brandon Routh and Caitlin Bassett Preview Addison’s Reunion with Her Father

The Monday, March 6 episode of QUANTUM LEAP gets very personal for Addison (Caitlin Bassett), as Ben’s (Raymond Lee) latest leap takes the team to a naval battleship in 1989…where Addison’s father, Alexander Augustine (Brandon Routh), is stationed.

Routh was approached by executive producer Dean Georgaris to play Augustine, and was sold on the role after the duo had an hour-long conversation about the character.

“His passion for the show and for this episode won me over,” Routh acknowledges to Give Me My Remote in the video below. “And [I was] also was interested in the story itself. And then the aspect of being able to shoot on the USS Iowa; I’m from Iowa. I hadn’t been able [to see the ship] even though it’s a 30-minute drive down in Long Beach. It was cool. A lot of connections made sense.”

But, naturally, Ben didn’t leap to the ship because things were going well. “Stuff goes wrong,” Routh teases. “And you think it’s better, and then stuff goes wrong…and human ingenuity, with the help of technology, we make it better.”

“The stakes are high, often: somebody might die, somebody gets lost, things like that,” Bassett adds. “But this is the first time we’ve flirted with World War 3. So that’s obviously quite exciting. But then also to compound that…I don’t know which one personally was tougher—having this [reunion] with her father…or pending World War 3. And it was cool to try and like switch gears of like, ‘What’s the most important in this moment?'”

As the father and daughter reunite, it’s complicated by the fact that only Addison knows what’s happening—Alexander can’t see or hear Addison, who only appears to Ben as a hologram. But the 1989 version of Addison is not far from her father’s mind during the crisis.

“The beauty of it was that it was okay for me to play off of [Bassett’s] energy in the room,” Routh acknowledges. “It made it easier for me; I didn’t have to imagine what my daughter looked like, or who she was, older. Obviously, he did, but I didn’t. So I got that extra little information of her essence and her energy to add to my own creation of her as a [kid] at the time. So I kind of fused those together.”

“Obviously, it’s an interesting moment,” adds Bassett. “And I was the character that actually got to, you know, be understanding what was happening, at the very least. But Brandon was wonderful as a scene partner, as well.”

“But just truthfully…I just felt like I was talking to my dad,” she continues. “My dad was a Vietnam veteran. I served in Afghanistan. So that intergenerational opportunity to meet somebody where they were before you knew them and understood them—and now understand them as an adult, not as a child, was such an interesting opportunity. And it was so easy, because Brandon is so available as an actor. You just have to talk.”

As the duo acted opposite each other, “I watched him have to fight reacting to it, which made me cry,” Bassett recalls. “Because I was having a real conversation, even though I wasn’t. It was a really special moment as an actor and I’m really appreciative of Brandon for being there for me.”

Watch the video for more from Bassett and Routh…

QUANTUM LEAP, Mondays, 10/9c, NBC

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