The CBS freshman drama The Mentalist is the biggest break-out hit of the current TV season. Simon Baker plays Patrick Jane, an independent consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI), who has a remarkable track record for solving serious crimes by using his razor sharp skills of observation. Although he is greatly valued by his fellow agents, no-nonsense Senior Agent Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) alternates between reluctantly acknowledging Jane’s usefulness and blasting him for his theatrics, narcissism and dangerous lack of boundaries. Lisbon’s team includes agents Kimball Cho (Tim Kang), Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) and rookie member Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti), who all think Jane’s a loose cannon, but admire his charm and knack for clearing cases.

On a recent visit to the set of the new procedural, Aussie star Simon Baker, along with co-stars Robin Tunney, Tim Kang and Owain Yeoman, and creator/executive producer Bruno Heller, spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about why they think their show is such a hit.

MediaBlvd Magazine> Bruno, can you talk about the relationship between Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon?

Bruno Heller> The nub of it is that Jane is a rule-breaker, and Teresa is someone who is all about the rules, and has to be. So, there’s an underlying dramatic tension there that drives that side of their relationship. On the other hand, they respect and love each other.

MediaBlvd> Do you see more potential there?

Bruno> I think seeing it and reading it, as opposed to having it, is the fun bit.

MediaBlvd> Robin, how long can your character and Simon’s character continue their relationship the way it is?

Robin Tunney> As long as Bruno can continue writing it and we can continue acting it in a way that’s different, every time, and interesting for the audience to watch. If you work with somebody on a day-to-day basis, your arguments are probably fairly similar, over the five years that you’ve worked together, and depending on your mood or depending on how they strike you, you react differently.

MediaBlvd> Bruno, what does Simon bring to this role? Do you think it would ever have worked as well with some other actor?

Bruno> No, it wouldn’t work as well because it’s a combination of great Cary Grant-ish charm, but underlying it is real steel and menace. That’s what comes across. In those moments where he’s being light and charming, there’s still that dark side underneath, and that’s really, really difficult to do consistently, as an actor. It takes a lot of discipline, work and skill.

MediaBlvd> Simon, what do you think separates The Mentalist and The Guardian, and your experience on them?

Simon Baker> That character on The Guardian was a very repressed, depressed character. It started off actually less of a procedural show, and became more of a procedural show. We were trying to do more of a serialized story on The Guardian. The Mentalist has a very different type of character. He’s a guy that actually has zest and a lust for life. At the same time, he’s full of self-loathing, but he’s fearless and has a good sense of humor. It’s a procedural show that was set out to be a procedural show. When I first came on and we were doing the pilot, the main focus for me was to do a show that was going to be entertaining, first and foremost. When I was doing The Guardian, I wanted to act and move people, and move the world. I was young.

MediaBlvd> Simon, how much can you personally relate with your character in The Mentalist?

Simon> With every character I play, there are certain elements of my own personality in them. The proportions, the mix and the cast is always varied and different. In relation to the whole smile thing, I had a very, very dear friend that used to say to me, whenever I was down, “Let your smile be your umbrella.” I thought about that a lot, when I was playing around with the character.

MediaBlvd> Do you think that Patrick Jane is really psychic?

Simon> Within the show, we embrace the debate. It gives us lots of room to play around with. Do I think he’s ever going to admit that he is psychic?  I think he’d say that, if he needed to get someone to believe that, so that he could get to the truth of whatever something is. That’s what I like about the character. The only thing that we truly do know about this guy is that his wife and child were killed, and that’s a painful thing. We are playing with deception. He’s a deceptive character. He uses those tools to get what he needs to get to the truth, as opposed to always using the truth to get to the truth. Although, he might use the truth to get to the truth, if the truth is going to get him the truth.

MediaBlvd> Bruno, it’s so good to see Simon Baker smile. Do you have a smile quota for him?

Bruno> I was interested in seeing him smile. That’s one of those simple values that people turn their TV on for. They want to see people smile. They want to see people be happy. And, that’s the beauty of the character, as Simon has created it. He’s a dark character whose heroism is not in muscles or action, but in being positive in his life, despite what he does and the tragedy that he’s faced with. He’s positive. So, simply on that level, he’s a good role model.

Owain Yeoman> Certainly, we also found, in ourselves and in talking to the real police consultants, the strange, morbid laughs that come out of terrible situations. I hear my granny’s voice saying, “You have to laugh, or else you’ll cry,” and there’s a good deal of that. When we speak to the real-life policemen, they emphasize that you go into situations, on a daily basis, that are so terrible that you have to come away with a sense of humor about things. Some procedurals have a tendency to be very much about the police element, and I think we’ve allowed ourselves to look at the people behind the badges. Hopefully, that’s more interesting and, certainly, more humane.

MediaBlvd> Oftentimes, first-year shows take a little while to get on their feet. Have there been  particular challenges in getting through your first year?

Bruno> No, not really. That’s just what you have to do. You have to get up and shoot stuff, and cut it and play it. It’s moving forward, identifying what makes the show work, and figuring out what’s popping and what isn’t. Those are the challenges. The cast is popping. I like to think that we know how to cast well, and this group just has a natural, organic feel of the general workplace of people that you want to spend time with. Ultimately, all you can ask for is people you want to spend time with.

MediaBlvd> Even though Rome was such a huge project, it was one that you could plan way ahead and only had to do 12 episodes a year for. What’s different about doing this many episodes?

Bruno> Essentially, it’s kind of improv. With 23 episodes a season, you are putting on a show every week, so it’s looser and more adventurous and, to a degree, experimental, in that way. With Rome, we were following a historical track. We had hundreds of years of story, laid out for us. This is a collaboration between us and the audience, essentially. You are responding constantly to what you are feeling from what the performances are doing, and how people are responding to that.

Bruno Heller, Simon Baker and Robin Tunney

MediaBlvd> For the actors, what has surprised you most about your character, as the scripts have come in and the show has developed?

Owain> I heard CBS describe the show as a dysfunctional family, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that. As we’ve grown together, as friends and colleagues, that feeds an interesting dynamic between us. And, Bruno and his team have been very observant and aware of our rivalries, our upside downs and our little individual nuances, and has factored those into our characters. That’s definitely helped to feed our own understanding, as people, into the characters. Simon> I have fun. I suddenly feel like I’m in fifth grade. I’m surprised that I’m still having fun and I don’t have to work so hard. You make a pilot and you go, “Ah, yeah, that’s a great pilot.” You can look at it, observe it and think about it, but then once you get into making episode after episode, it’s a moving target. Things are flying at you. You’ve got episodes that are about to air. You’ve got stories coming in for new episodes. You are cutting a previous episode. You are shooting something else. You are looking at the next script. It’s all flying, and the show hasn’t even premiered yet. And then, it premieres and the studio tells you what they like, and there’s what you like, and you see how the actors are working together. It’s so detailed and intricate that it’s like debris flying at you at 100 mph, from every  different direction. You can manage it to a degree, but it’s a moving beast. You hang on and go, “I couldn’t get that perfect. Maybe next time.” It’s really tricky. It’s like playing cricket on the  back of a semi-trailer with people driving by, throwing cricket balls at you from every different direction.

Robin> What I find the most solace in is that, when you do a movie and you see the movie and you felt like you made the wrong choice in the scene, it’s up there forever. I’m really critical of myself, and I go, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe I decided to do that. That was awful.” But, on television, you can see it and go, “Next time, I’m going to try, in that situation, to handle it differently.” As an actor, you are constantly given the opportunity to hone a character and make the right decisions, and Bruno has been really generous in giving us different opportunities. It’s not like they see that one thing works and that’s what you are given to do, every single episode. It’s a trial-and-error process, and you are critical of yourself and want to make it better. So, it’s been good.

Tim Kang> Bruno actually gave us all a great place to start, as far as our characters. Starting with the pilot, he gave us just enough to sink our teeth into, and it was something substantive, but he didn’t give us everything. We can decide, on our own, where these characters are going to go. It’s exciting, from week to week, to figure out what’s going to happen and what’s coming down the pipeline, and see where your character is going to go.

MediaBlvd> Bruno, since the pilot, as you’ve watched your actors become their characters, over the course of the season, what adjustments have you made?

Bruno> It’s hard to be specific. It’s really just a question of getting to know people, and not necessarily going, “Oh, they are good at this. They are good at that.” After a while, you see them and hear their voices in your head, when you are writing the character, so you’ve got their sense of timing. For instance, Tim is a master of the deadpan, as good as I’ve ever seen, so we feed into that. Amanda has a certain enigmatic quality about her, so we use that. Owain is a great light comedian with looks and glances. Everyone has something about them, that is ineffable, that you try to internalize.

MediaBlvd> Why do you think procedurals are doing so well right now?

Bruno> One of the great things about watching TV is the familiarity of it. At a certain time, every week, you are going to come back to a story that you are familiar with and that you understand. Procedurals allow you to check in with that family, and it’s a family that, unlike in a serial drama, things aren’t going to change. Stuff happens, but there’s continuity. That would be the joy of procedurals, as opposed to other forms of drama. And, we catch the bad guy.

Simon> It’s ridiculous how well procedural shows do. I’m theorizing, but I think that we are in a time where people look for closure, and it’s as simple as that. With a procedural show, you do get closure, at the end of the episode. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end.

MediaBlvd> What convinced you that there was room for another hit procedural?

Simon> I didn’t look at it like that. I was titillated by the idea of the character. When I first got the script, I thought it was a procedural on CBS. They do procedurals. And, I thought, “I don’t know if I want to do that, as an actor. That might be really limiting.” But then, I thought it was very well written, the character had so many different layers, and there were so many different ways you could go with the character that I didn’t think it would get boring. Growing up, I watched procedural shows, and I really enjoyed them.

Tim> I actually didn’t have any options. Bruno gave me the job, and I took it. That was it. He said, “Do you want to do this?,” and I said, “Yes!”

MediaBlvd> Do you have any theories as to why this particular series has somehow tapped into the zeitgeist and gotten 19 million viewers to make it the number one new show?

Bruno> I’ve got no theories at all. It’s probably not a good idea to inquire too much into it because I would make the wrong guess. I don’t know. We’ve got a great cast. We’ve got a great lead character. It may be that there’s old-school elements in this that are different from a lot of procedurals we see on the air. It’s not particularly slick. There’s an honesty about it.

Simon> “Leave well enough alone” is the thing I keep hearing my nana saying to me, in my head. She’d say, “When everything is going really well, just keep out of the way of yourself, Simon. Don’t get in front of yourself.” I don’t want to touch it. It’s good. We are really happy

MediaBlvd> Bruno, was there ever a point in the development of this show, or even early on in the production, where concerns were expressed about offending the viewers who believed the world that Simon’s character comes from?

Bruno> No, not really because we were always committed to being respectful and accepting the people that believe that stuff. This show doesn’t take a position on that, really.  Patrick Jane does, and I know the way I feel about it, but you can’t disprove something like that.  So, we embrace that larger world without using it ourselves.

MediaBlvd> Will there ever be a resolution about the time Patrick spent in the institution?

Bruno> We won’t be going back to the institution much. With the Red John storyline, we will go to that world, occasionally. That’s always part of his journey, but we’ll go there sparingly. This is a procedural detective show, and that storyline is the over-arching epic storyline. There’s a really delicate balance we have to keep walking between telling that story and telling the week-by-week stories that are really the meat of the thing.

Bruno Heller and Simon Baker

MediaBlvd> Simon, how much is your character being fueled by retribution and revenge, at this point? How much more of that side of him are we going to see?

Simon> Obviously, it depends on how much is placed in the script, but I’m always looking for points, within an episode, where we can reveal an element of what does drive the character, even if it’s just a silent beat or a moment. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sign-posted. I’m always looking to find bait, so that we see that there’s more to this character than just the flirtatiousness of him.

MediaBlvd> Is there ever a conscious decision, with a show like this, to tease the whodunit aspect a little bit more in some episodes than others?

Bruno> Yeah. It’s like magic tricks. You have to keep changing the trick that you are doing, otherwise it becomes predictable. So, with whodunits, sometimes the fun is in seeing an

obvious villain, and sometimes it’s in really playing the whodunit mystery angle. We very much try to keep that fresh and loose. The show is predictable, but not necessarily in the same way, every week.

MediaBlvd> Bruno, what can fans of the show expect from the rest of the season?

Bruno> I’m reluctant to get into it because I would be vague, in a not particularly useful way. Because it is a procedural, one of the things we are trying to do is see how little we can change a show, as it rolls forward. There’s a nervous tendency in TV, these days, to keep stories, characters and situations rolling forward, in a way that isn’t necessarily good for that show. My main creative impetus, at the moment, is to see how we can put the show into a dynamic status to see where we can take the whole thing. I hope we’ll have many years to keep  telling this story, so every week, there’s going to be fresh, interesting and novel stuff happening, but it’s not going to be moving the whole house forward.

MediaBlvd> And, you’re not under any pressure to build something into the last episode of this season, regarding either a relationship or a crime to be resolved, in the first episode of the next season?

Bruno> Certainly, storytelling would lead us to that kind of result, but no. With both CBS and Warner Bros., because it’s been a great collaboration, the show comes together so nicely. I can’t think of any point at which anyone has been suggesting we go in a direction that I don’t think we should go in. It’s always very clear which way to go.

MediaBlvd> Will you wait to reveal the serial killer until the very end of the series, however many years it goes?

Bruno> I’m certainly not going to tell anyone this season.

MediaBlvd> Simon, how has your life changed since the show started?

Simon> My accountant talks to me a little bit more. No. I’m really happy. I’m busy. I have to schedule things more, and be a bit more organized with my time. I’ve got a whole bunch of very new friends whose company I really enjoy, and a great new crew that I love to work with.  Life is very good.

MediaBlvd> What are the advantages of doing films compared to TV?

Simon> Doing movies and doing television, it’s basically the same principle. With television, it keeps moving. When you do a film, it’s finite and it’s done. I enjoy the detailed process of making a film, but once it’s set in stone, it’s set in stone. In television, you get another try. You can say, “Oh, we’ll try again next week.” Personally, creatively, I like the charisma and the speed in which television works. It’s really exciting, and it makes me feel very alive. I love being on a set.