Fringe is casting a sixtysomething actor in the role of William Bell, a former lab partner of Walter Bishop (John Noble). Exec producer Jeff Pinkner describes the Bill Gates–meets–Dick Cheney character, who’ll debut in the season finale, as “one of the richest men behind the largest, most powerful, most secretive corporation with defense department and international ties.” The groundwork for Bell’s arrival is laid in the April 21 episode, which finds Olivia (Anna Torv) learning more about the role Bishop played in Bell’s experimentation on her with the drug Cortexiphan when she was a girl.
“What she finds out about some of the frightening things Walter did does not sit very well with her,” Anna says about the episode, written and directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (“A Beautiful Mind” and “The Da Vinci Code”). “Olivia starts having these horrific dreams of people dying and when she wakes up, she realizes it’s been happening for real.” The climactic scene finds hordes of people on a Manhattan rooftop about to plunge to their deaths.
Anna says her real life is much more peaceful: She and her new husband (and former
Fringe love interest), Mark Valley, are sound sleepers who dream only “lovely” dreams. But her kid brother Dylan did some sleepwalking when he stayed with the couple in New York recently. Anna says, “He walked into the cupboard and sat down in a box and started bopping up and down like he was riding in a cab.” Dylan—lay off the Cortexiphan!!