BONES: Emily Deschanel Teases ‘The Shot in the Dark,’ The New Squintern, Directing, Booth and Brennan’s Relationship, and More

After watching this Monday’s episode of BONES, “The Shot in the Dark,” I gave you guys a few teases about the hour. But in order to not ruin everything, I didn’t want to say too much. Thankfully, BONES star Emily Deschanel (Brennan) was able to say quite a bit more about what’s going on in her big episode when she participated in a conference call with reporters this afternoon…

“Booth and Brennan have a fight, and Brennan believes Booth is criticizing her parenting style and runs out and ends up at the lab to finish working on this case,” Deschanel teased. “And that’s when she gets shot…I think it’s quite fitting, of course, Brennan is dealing with her own issues, being a mother herself, and at the core of that is missing her own mother. I think when you’ve lost a parent, you want to be able to call them up on the phone ask them [questions]…just trying to be a good mother and not have that resource of her mother…It’s quite fitting this issue that she’s dealing with, in a way, causes her to see her mother again. And hopefully ease that pain she’s dealing with because she doesn’t have a mother around.”

And the scenes with Brennan and her mother also serve as an explanation for some of the behavior Brennan has exhibited over the past eight seasons of the series…and change her going forward.

“I think after watching the episode, viewers will have a better idea of why Brennan behaves in the way that she does: hyper-rational and has cut off her emotions in many ways,” noted Deschanel. “Even though over the last few years she’s opened up after knowing Booth. As the season goes on, it’s kind of a subtle change, it’s not like…people are discussing it right after or something. I think it will be addressed in more later episodes this season. I think it’s a subtle change. I think Brennan feels the way she behaved — it’s shined a light on her behavior and maybe encourages her to change a little bit…Her interactions reveal things from her past and also it affects Brennan now.”

Of course, Deschanel hasn’t had this insight as she’s played this character for the past eight seasons. I was curious how it felt to get a big helping of information on a character whose skin she’s lived in for so long, and she admitted what ended up playing out wasn’t too far from what she had been picturing all along.

“It’s an interesting thing to do a series for this long and to play a character that things are revealed eight years in,” she laughed. “I felt it was line with things I had in mind and didn’t contradict anything I had kind of imagined for her past when I was playing the character. I like to build a past for the character and decide why she behaves the way she does and what her experiences are and things that remind her of things from her childhood, etc. This doesn’t contradict anything, but it’s certainly new information to me. I really enjoyed doing the episode because it shed light on Brennan and her past, and the interaction with her mother — what other kind of episode can you have an interaction with somebody who’s dead? And that’s always been a huge missing piece for Brennan…her mother being gone. And being able to talk to her mother about how she disappeared before she died and all of that. Brooke Langton, who played my mother in this episode, did such a great job and I really enjoyed working with her. She’s just very inventive as an actor and very giving. It was really a good experience working together. So it felt right to have her play my mother and I enjoyed that.”

Also a factor in the hour? Brennan’s father, Max.

“He gives a wonderful performance in the scenes together,” Deschanel said of Ryan O’Neal (Max). “It’s an emotional episode for his character, he does a beautiful job, and there’s a communication between my mother and my father through my character.”

A few other teases about what’s to come:

• Cam’s romance won’t stay secret for long: “Cam’s romance is revealed…and Brennan and Cam interact about that,” Deschanel said.
• As BONES creator Hart Hanson teased, the marriage issue hasn’t been dropped between Booth and Brennan.”I think we are moving towards some kind of answers to that,” Deschanel noted. “We do discuss it in an episode we are about to shoot next week. There’s not necessarily a resolution, but it is discussed again…I look forward to — if it happens, and I imagine at some point it will, I look forward to seeing what Brennan’s proposal to Booth is like. But I can’t say definitively it’s happening yet.”
• Her directing debut may have gotten pushed, but Deschanel still wants to give it a go one of these days. “I would hope so,” she said about possibly an episode of BONES. “I would have to wait until my son was big enough…right now, I take him with me every day and I see him in my breaks…I definitely want to, but I made a choice in life and got pregnant and had a child and I want to put my child first. It’s a goal for me and I hope to do that, so possibly next season, maybe after Henry’s two. Or if we have a tenth season, maybe then. Or both.”
• “Oliver Wells, played by Brian Klugman, and he is a very interesting intern,” Deschanel said of the newest squintern. (He’s set to debut later this month.) “Oliver Wells comes in, he’s an out-of-the-box thinker, he has multiple degrees, he challenges Brennan like nobody has challenged her before: he challenges her to think outside-the-box. He’s a really fun character and super smart. Brennan questions whether he’s smarter than she is, which is new and different as well. Most of the interns, they’re all so different, but they all defer to Brennan and respect her. Not that [Oliver] doesn’t respect me, but they defer to Brennan and give me that authority. He challenges everything. He doesn’t need this job…he almost has a forensic anthropology degree, but not quite…he knows about so many disciplines, and just questions everything.  And that’s a refreshing character to have in the lab and Brian does a great job playing it; he’s fun to have on set. So, it’s very fun to see Brennan challenged in that way. you see it very rarely, but especially with interns. I think it’s going to be a really exciting episode to see…Because of this new intern, Brennan almost opens her mind to the idea of time travel!”
• Booth may have lost his father, but his mother may not be out of his life for too much longer: “I believe at some point, [Booth’s] mother is going to show up,” Deschanel said.
• Update: When talking about upcoming episodes, Deschanel mentioned that “a couple [of episodes] will be moved to next season.” Sources confirm “a few” hours of season 8 — which was set to be 26 episodes — will indeed be held for the upcoming ninth season. (And hey, considering how great some of the bonus hours were this season, that could perhaps give them some interesting creative freedom again!)

BONES airs Mondays at 8 PM on Fox.

Related:

BONES: 8 Things to Know About ‘The Shot in the Dark’
BONES: Michaela Conlin Previews ‘The Doll in the Derby’
BONES Writer Michael Peterson on Bringing Neurofibromatosis Awareness Mainstream in ‘The Doll in the Derby’

Follow @GiveMeMyRemote and @marisaroffman on Twitter for the latest TV news. Connect with other TV fans on GIVE ME MY REMOTE’s official Facebook page.

And to be the first to see our exclusive videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/givememyremotetv