John Noble Fringe Interview

In an interview with Fringe Fanatic, John Noble discusses Fringe and his character of Walter Bishop. The full interview is here but below are a few choice Q&As.

How do you feel about the reception to Peter and Walter’s relationship?
Well, it’s become one of the most talked about aspects of the show, which is kind of pleasing in a way, that with all of the things going on with Fringe in a week that one of the things people have kind of hooked into almost at an emotional level is the relationship between the two Bishops. Certainly, people that stop me on the street and talk to me about it [Fringe] find that relationship very endearing, challenging, and thought-provoking. It’s been one of the little joys we’ve found in it, mind you I think J.J. Abrams always hoped that would happen.

What is your picture of Walter before he went into the asylum and do we see any of that informing Walter’s present tense.
In some ways he’s not so hard to relate to, he’s obviously incredibly bright. He’s in that point-one-percentile of people who have IQs of around 200. He was brilliant, but also myopic I think, his main focus in life would be his work and we still see that, there is absolute joy in Walter when he has something to do, a joy in experimentation, he’s thrilled at the time. I hope that is evident, because every time he gets to do an experiment he’s almost child like and overjoyed. Being that type of man, he’s not a particularly social animal and doesn’t have a high threshold for society – that’s true with a lot of high achievers, Jon, and it would probably be the case with him. I don’t think he was in evil man in any kind of way, but I think he likely stretched ethics for the sake of science, and chose to do science rather than considering the ethics of what he was doing. That’s also consistent with a lot of brilliant people, sadly.

Walter’s history with William Bell is another thing that is always there in Fringe. Do you expect we’ll be meeting up with William Bell in the near future?
There’s two very strong schools of thought about this. I think as long as William Bell remains this reclusive Howard Hughes type character we’ll always have that tantalizing thought. If we introduce him, it’s a bit like instant gratification. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll see some visage of him. There are all kinds of funny ideas about who he is, he’s Nina’s arm or some other crazy things. To directly answer your question, I think we will meet William Bell, but I hope it’s not too soon, or too graphically.