The Mentalist star Simon Baker has suggested that his character Patrick Jane is growing darker.

Baker told Entertainment Weekly that the genius crime-fighter is on an “interesting journey”.

“It feels to me a little bit that, here’s a guy who is likable and empathetic,” he said. “And he’s slowly turning to the dark side and [becoming] maybe less empathetic.”

The Australian star admitted that he wants to keep reinventing the Jane character as the fourth season of The Mentalist continues.

“It’s always difficult when you’re on a show that goes for more than a year or a couple of years,” he explained. “I’m always looking for things that are interesting and different that I can exploit within the character.”

He added: “If they’re able to take him into these different paths and avenues, it makes it more refreshing for me.”

Baker revealed in October that he is contracted up to a potential seventh season of the CBS drama.

“We are in our fourth year, but I think my character is unlike most characters on TV,” he said. “If I put my mind to it, I can still make the character entertaining for me to play. I can still challenge myself a little bit.”

The Mentalist continues on Thursdays at 10/9c on CBS. The show will return to Channel 5 in the UK in February.

Source

“The ‘Turn on Tomorrow’ masterbrand campaign captures Samsung’s commitment to bring to market tomorrow’s technology today, with industry leading innovation that transforms how we live, featured across a range of Samsung’s products, from robotic vacuum cleaners and multi-feature refrigerators to state-of-the-art 3D televisions and new smartphones with incredible connectivity functionality,” said Jai Sanderson, Corporate Communications Manager – Corporate Marketing Division, Samsung Electronics Australia.

“Simon was the perfect choice to represent this new chapter for the Samsung brand, as supported by local research which showed him to be a match with Samsung’s brand values, making him the ideal figurehead for our brand,” added Sanderson.

The campaign is currently in development and is expected to run later this year. [SOURCE]

The actor and the campaign will be communicating the company’s ‘Turn on Tomorrow’ brand positioning.

The locally developed campaign, set to air later this year and created by Leo Burnett, will be around Samsung’s pursuit of a better future through delivering product and service innovation. The campaign will communicate the company’s technical innovation across audio visual, IT, telecommunications and white goods categories.

Lambro Skropidis, head of corporate marketing, Samsung Electronics Australia, said: “We believe now is the right time to communicate to Australians not only our diverse product offering, but more importantly our drive to always stay one step ahead of the market and deliver genuine technological innovation that improves people’s lives.”

He added: “Simon was the perfect choice to represent this new chapter for the Samsung brand as he is excelling in his field, passionate about what he does and driven to succeed, making him the ideal figurehead for our brand.”

Baker is an Australian film and television actor who is currently the star of Channel Nine’s television series The Mentalist, and has starred in films including The Devil Wears Prada and L.A. Confidential.

The new campaign is expected later this year. [Source]

Written by J.C. Chandor, who also directs, the project revolves around employees of an investment bank during a tumultuous 24-hour period during the 2008 financial collapse.

Baker will portray a ruthless, high-powered securities broker who oversees the characters played by Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci and Zachary Quinto and drives his colleagues to win by any means necessary.

Bettany will play a top-tier trader, unabashedly unafraid of who he is even as the crisis deepens.

Quinto is producing with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa, his partners at Before the Door Pictures. Also aboard to produce are Joe Jenckes and Benaroya Pictures’ Michael Benaroya and Robert Ogden Barnum.

The film begins shooting next week in New York.

Baker has been nominated twice for a Golden Globe and once for an Emmy for his portrayal of private eye Patrick Jane on CBS’ hit show “Mentalist”. He appears in Michael Winterbottom’s “The Killer Inside Me,” opposite Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, which is being released by IFC Films. He is repped by CAA and Untitled.

Bettany, repped by WME, Affirmative Entertainment and Independent Talent Group, recently wrapped “The Tourist” with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. He next stars as a vampire hunter in the post-apocalyptic Screen Gems flick “Priest.”

Simon Baker (CBS’ The Mentalist), Emily Deschanel (FOX’s Bones), Eva Longoria Parker(ABC’s Desperate Housewives), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (CBS’ The New Adventures of Old Christine), Masi Oka (NBC’s Heroes), Michael Strahan (FOX’s Brothers), Kate Walsh (ABC’s Private Practice), and Rainn Wilson (NBC’s The Office) are featured in the 30-second spot, which reinforces that great change begins with small choices and one decision to change leads to others. The spot ends by encouraging people to tune-in starting October 19 to find out how the networks are participating. The PSA was produced by filmmaker Jesse Dylan, with his agency FreeForm. It begins airing the week of September 28 on all four broadcast networks.

EIF is mobilizing the entire entertainment community around the ground-breaking, multi-year iParticipate campaign, which promotes a new way of thinking about service and seeks to persuade millions more Americans to volunteer regularly. As a centerpiece, the major broadcast networks and others will spotlight service through scripted programming, segments and PSAs with inspirational messages and storylines about volunteerism. More than 60 shows have signed up to participate. [Source]

So look. I know some of you are probably scoffing at the folly of this exercise, thinking to yourselves, “What’s the point? The nods are — as uzh — going to go to James Spader, Hugh Laurie, Holly Hunter, and Mariska Hargitay (even though SVU has gone completely off the rails).” But with Emmy opening up room for a sixth nominee in its main races, maybe there’s cause for a little optimism, for the belief that heretofore brilliant-but-unheralded performances might make the Academy of Television Arts and Science’ grade. (Of course, if your ideal candidates don’t get recognized, they might wind up with a nomination in EW.com’s second annual EWwy Awards.) So check out Gold Derby’s list of front-runners in the men’s and women’s lead drama races, then tell us who you’d like to see get his/her name called on July 16. In the meantime, here are four folks I’m rooting for:

Mary McDonnell, Battlestar Galactica: Seriously, Emmy, THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE. McDonnell’s been revelatory for four seasons of BSG, and her final episodes showcased some of her finest work, as her Laura Roslin convincingly shifted from flirtatious lover to defiant cancer patient to resurgent fleet heroine. Failure to recognize her genius would be like calling Bill Gates a small business owner or saying Michael Phelps is just an okay swimmer. (Okay, so those are frakked up examples, but you know what else is frakked up? The inevitability of another McDonnell snub!)

Edward James Olmos, Battlestar Galactica: Can you imagine one of the best SciFi dramas in recent TV history without Olmos’ stoic-but-tender performance? Yeah, me neither. If McDonnell gets her due, so should this dude. So say we all? So say we all!

Regina King, Southland: Maybe her role is too subtle for Emmy voters, but with a single facial expression, the 227 vet Ray star can deliver the equivalent of 1,000 lines of dialog. Witness that rush of maternal love when her Det. Lydia Adams cradles an abandoned baby, or the ferocious lioness who’s unleashed when gang members descend on her house to try to gun down a young witness, or even the weary singleton who strains to smile her way through another doomed lunch date. Is there anything King can’t do? (And don’t answer me by asking, “Win over fusty Emmy voters?”)

Simon Baker, The Mentalist: Yes, his CBS crime procedural is a breezy trifle, but is there any TV star who’s more enjoyable to watch than Baker? His Patrick Jane may not pack the gravitas of characters in more Important Series, but damned if I didn’t find myself completely submerged in his world for an hour every Tuesday night last season.

All right, PopWatchers…you’ve got my list of Emmy longshots in the Lead Actor/Actress Drama catgeories, now it’s time to head to the message boards and share yours (along with your reasons why). Ready, set, argue!

source:  http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/07/emmy-regina-king-edward-james-olmos.html

All but two of CBS’ shows — returning and new — will premiere between Monday, Sept. 21 and Sunday, Sept. 27. And — wouldn’t you know it? — CBS’ premiere dates coincide with the official start of the Nielsen season.

The two exceptions are “Survivor: Samoa” and “Three Rivers.” The long-running reality hit’s 19th installment will premiere on Thursday, Sept. 17, one week ahead of the Thursday premieres for “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “The Mentalist.” The organ transplant drama “Three Rivers,” featuring the return of “Moonlight” star Alex O’Loughlin, will premiere on Sunday, Oct. 4, allowing the 15th installment of “The Amazing Race” to have two-hour launch on Sunday, Sept. 27.

Because CBS is proud of the longevity of much of its schedule (including “60 Minutes” starting its 42nd season), it included original premiere dates for all shows in the network press release.

The full premiere list:

Thursday, Sept. 17
8:00-9:00 p.m. ET “Survivor: Samoa” (19th Installment Premiere)

Monday, Sept. 21
8:00-8:30 p.m. ET “How I Met Your Mother” (5th Season Premiere, OAD 9/19/05)
8:30-9:00 p.m. ET “Accidentally on Purpose” (Series Debut)
9:00-9:30 p.m. ET “Two and a Half Men” (7th Season Premiere, OAD 9/22/03)
9:30-10:00 p.m. ET “The Big Bang Theory” (3rd Season Premiere, OAD 9/24/07)
10:00-11:00 p.m. ET “CSI: Miami” (8th Season Premiere, OAD 9/23/02)

Tuesday, Sept. 22
8:00-9:00 p.m. ET “NCIS” (7th Season Premiere, OAD 9/12/03)
9:00-10:00 p.m. ET “NCIS: Los Angeles” (Series Debut)
10:00-11:00 p.m. ET “The Good Wife” (Series Debut)

Wednesday, Sept. 23
8:00-8:30 p.m. ET “The New Adventures of Old Christine” (5th Season Premiere, OAD 3/13/06)
8:30-9:00 p.m. ET “Gary Unmarried” (2nd Season Premiere, OAD 9/14/08)
9:00-10:00 p.m. ET “Criminal Minds” (5th Season Premiere, OAD 9/22/05)
10:00-11:00 p.m. ET “CSI: NY” (6th Season Premiere, OAD 9/22/04)

Thursday, Sept. 24
9:00-10:00 p.m. ET “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” (10th Season Premiere, OAD 10/6/00)
10:00-11:00 p.m. ET “The Mentalist” (2nd Season Premiere, OAD 9/23/08)

Friday, Sept. 25
8:00-9:00 p.m. ET “Ghost Whisperer” (5th Season Premiere, OAD 9/23/05)
9:00-10:00 p.m. ET “Medium” (Network Debut, OAD 1/23/05)
10:00-11:00 p.m. ET “Numb3rs” (6th Season Premiere, OAD 1/21/05)

Saturday, Sept. 26
8:00-9:00 p.m. ET Procedural repeats
9:00-10:00 p.m. ET Procedural repeats
10:00-11:00 p.m. ET “48 Hours Mystery” (Season Premiere)

Sunday, Sept. 27
7:00-8:00 p.m. ET “60 Minutes” (42nd Season Premiere)
8:00-10:00 p.m. ET “The Amazing Race” (15th Edition Premiere)
10:00-11:00 p.m. ET “Cold Case” (7th Season Premiere, OAD 9/23/03)

Sunday, Oct. 4
9:00-10:00 p.m. ET “Three Rivers”(Series Debut)

THE Mentalist star Simon Baker was in good company at game two of the NBA Finals series in Los Angeles yesterday.

Baker and his son Harry sat courtside for the match between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Orlando Magic, with the Aussie star chatting to movie heavyweight Leonardo DiCaprio at half-time.

Other celebrities catching the action courtside included singer Rihanna, actors Zac Efron, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg, and musicians Sean “Diddy” Combs, will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas, and Maroon 5′s Adam Levine.

Baker’s next project is The Killer Inside Me starring Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba and Casey Affleck.

Thanks to The Mentalist, he has become one of the most popular TV stars in the US.

An online viewer poll recently voted the crime drama as the best new show of 2009, and named it as having the sexiest cast.

Gone are the days when being a leading man on television meant being the most likable guy onscreen. TV actors now get to show their skills with dark, complex characters — even on broadcast network shows. The Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Richmond and Matthew Belloni gathered six fine examples of TV’s new actor elite — Simon Baker (CBS’ “The Mentalist”), Bryan Cranston (AMC’s “Breaking Bad”), Laurence Fishburne (CBS’ “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”), Michael C. Hall (Showtime’s “Dexter”), Denis Leary (FX’s “Rescue Me”) and Bill Paxton (HBO’s “Big Love”) — to discus the grind of series work and the good fun in playing bad guys.

The Hollywood Reporter: You are all the leads on hourlong shows. What is the toll on your lives?

Bill Paxton: I drive from my house to make the call on Monday morning and I’m lucky to see my house before 2 o’clock in the morning on Friday night. It’s a monastic kind of existence. I just stay in a hotel out there (in Santa Clarita, Calif.). I feel like a weird monk. The hardest thing is to go from such an intense work situation to just all of a sudden, that’s it.

Bryan Cranston: What you’ll find (on) all of these shows, we’re all working 12 to 13 to 14 hours a day. If you can do a 12-hour day, you can go home and be with your family.

Simon Baker: Twelve hours, you can have an existence.

Denis Leary: On “Rescue Me,” we do four-, six-, eight-, 10-hour days. When (showrunner) Peter (Tolan) is directing, we do six-hour days sometimes.

Laurence Fishburne: How is that possible?

Leary: Because these actors have been there from the beginning. They are all really good at their characters and they’re fantastic with each other.

Baker: You just did five (seasons). We’re a first-year show, so part of the struggle is constantly trying to find the tone within the writers’ room (and with directors). Director A may be a fantastic director but doesn’t necessarily get the tone. We like to try to do a little bit of mucking around.

THR: Do you guys have a lot of freedom to shape the dialogue of your characters?

Fishburne: We’ve got a collaborative thing going on at “CSI.” There is always a writer on set. You can always say, “I think we need to tweak this.”

Michael C. Hall: When new people come in, if they only know me from the show they’re like, “I’m afraid you might kill me.” So they are a lot more open to my suggestions. (Laughter) And I don’t sway them from thinking that. But I try to honor what the writers write. And my job, first and foremost, is to try to make work what I see there. With the voiceover element, I probably have more to say.

THR: Do you ever worry about the moral lessons your characters are teaching people?

Paxton: I don’t think you can play a character with judgment. I don’t think that’s our place. We’re not the writers. Plus, we’re dealing with a sensitive religion in our show.

THR: Is there an ongoing tension on that front?

Paxton: Not really. We had a little bit of an episode recently where there was a temple rite that was dramatized for the first time in film or television. This stuff is all over YouTube, if you care to look. But this thing started before anyone had seen the episode. Enough people were upset (by that) that the Mormon church had to make a statement and HBO had to counter with an apology — and that was the week I was going to do my victory lap on all the talk shows.

Fishburne: It’s kind of polarizing for people?

Paxton: People look at the show and go, “OK, what is this?” Women, when I first told them I was doing the show, would literally step back away from me because they just aren’t going there. They think, “Wait a minute, this guy’s got how many wives?”

THR: Denis, you are sort of a hero to the firefighter community, even though your character is an insane person. What’s that about?

Leary: There are plenty of firefighters who don’t like what we portray. My character is based on two guys — one of them is a technical adviser on the show — and the crew is based on a particular crew. They all know almost every single fire, event, is taken from stuff from those guys. We wanted to do a school bus fire and I called Terry Quinn, our technical adviser, and he said: “I’m at one now, I’ll call you back.” So that’s where we get the fires. Even this year, we have a thing where one of the younger firefighters opens a bar with another firefighter, which actually comes from this crew. Their goal was to meet chicks. (Laughing) So there are chiefs that wouldn’t want us to tell this stuff, but that’s where the best stuff is. And I agree with Bill: I like the flawed people. And even as an audience member, you can’t really judge them.

Baker: They’re a very different world (on cable). We’re a network program. But there’s no way in the world I was going to sign on to a deal where the character was just one-dimension. Doing five seasons in a row, you’ve got to play a character that’s got a wrongness about him. There has to be some sort of issue and struggle for the character.

THR: Do you think it’s possible to really go to those dark places and flesh things out in the network context?

Cranston: They have to. They have to do what they’re doing now, because cable — with HBO leading the way years ago — changed the whole frontier. Look at Thomas Magnum (of “Magnum, P.I.”). Always did the right thing, always got the girl — the nice guy, never drank too much. Higgins was the role! (Laughter)

THR: Do you get a lot of feedback from people who cook drugs, saying “No, no, you’re doing it wrong”?

Cranston: No. We get it saying, “You’re doing it right.”

THR: Michael, your character doesn’t have any flaws. That’s got to be a problem for you.

Hall: His capacity for stress management is the most remarkable thing. (Laughs)

Baker: The challenge I often find is, I’m on a procedural show, but how do you balance the notion of character? You guys live in the world of character; that’s it. And you’ve got license and room to go with your character and find certain depths. (Whereas), networks are running scared. We want to do that, but we don’t want to offend the Christian right; we don’t want to offend these people. The biggest struggle I find (is) my show is 22 (episodes) a year. It’s personal, physical, emotional torture. There’s a reason why it’s 22, because the body won’t take 23.

THR: Do you venture a lot into cyberspace to see what people are saying about you?

Leary: I have all their names and all their e-mail addresses! (Laughter) I’m working on their home addresses.

Paxton: For some reason, I just couldn’t click over to the digital world. I just didn’t want to. I don’t read reviews either, because if you read the good ones you’ve got to believe them and then you’ve got to believe the bad ones, too. And I had an experience a few years ago when I directed a film and was really proud of it and the reviews just peeled me. I did a Terry Gross interview a couple months ago (on NPR’s “Fresh Air”). I wanted to hear the interview and I had to go on the Internet to hear it, and all of a sudden there were all these responses, and the first one was that I was an apologist for the polygamist movement in this country and I was just taking a big paycheck. It really upset me. It’s hard to separate the message from the messenger. We’re the front line, we’re the face of the thing.

Fishburne: For a lot of people, we really have become these characters that we play and it’s very difficult for people to kind of separate that. That’s really quite wonderful but it’s kind of hard.

THR: We’re assuming none of you Twitter.

Baker: I don’t even know what Twitter is. And I hear it all the time.

Leary: I can’t get the Twitter thing. Do you really need to know what the fuck Ashton Kutcher is doing with Demi Moore? I don’t like Shaq (O’Neal). I don’t need to know whatever the fuck he’s playing. (Laughter)

Cranston: I don’t pay attention to it. I don’t even look at the ratings. Just focus on what you do and go home. I work in Albuquerque, N.M., so I fly home every weekend and just spend time with the family and fly back on Sunday nights.

THR: What’s the craziest thing you’ve read about yourselves?

Leary: I’ve got a million. I got accused of having an aging lesbian eye surgery. Aging lesbian eye surgery — what does that mean? Unbelievable. Needless to say, I’ve never had the surgery. But actually I will at some point, if it makes me look like an aging lesbian and I need that part. There’s no guarantee. Maybe I’ll play Ellen DeGeneres. (Laughter)

Cranston: I don’t read anything, I don’t go online. I don’t read tabloids. No one says anything about me. No one knows anything about me.

THR: How did you pull that off?

Cranston: Because it’s not why I love to act. So I got what I wanted. I’m able to be this other guy and look completely different and just be in the woodwork. And nobody follows me. I don’t have any paparazzi, there’s nothing like that.

Paxton: You need a drug habit.

Cranston: I’ve been married for 20 years.

Paxton: That’s the problem right there.

THR: What is the best thing about fame? Or the worst?

Fishburne: One of the best things is getting good tables at restaurants. And when people are really genuinely complimentary about your work.

THR: Instead of being mistaken for someone else?

Fishburne: Even when they mistake you for somebody else, it’s cool.

Paxton: Dude, you were awesome in “Pulp Fiction”!

Fishburne: We all have that guy.

Leary: My guy is Willem Dafoe. I get mistaken for Willem Dafoe all the time.

Hall: Matt Damon.

Cranston: I don’t get anybody. I don’t look like anybody.

Baker: Fame. It’s weird. I’ve been an actor for 16 years. You’re not qualified to do anything. I didn’t go to school, I sold time-shares, I’ve worked in pubs. But you know what? I can pay the bills. My stepfather was a butcher, my old man was a mechanic, my mom worked at Kmart. I probably earn in a week more than what my family has ever earned in a year.

THR: Does it worry you to see actors being replaced by reality shows and NBC destroying the 10 o’clock –

Fishburne: I’ve got to stop you. I’ve really got to stop you. I’ve been an actor for, damn, 40 years, and it’s really hard to hear you say that we’ve been replaced by a reality TV show. It’s really hard to hear you say that. So you might want to rephrase that for me, man, please.

Hall: There’s also a proliferation of shows and networks. As television goes, there’s a lot more than was there back before reality programs existed.

Leary: I have nothing against Jay Leno, but that’s five hours of shows. If Jay’s thing works, they’re all going to want to do it. It kind of makes you think, “Shit, man.”

Cranston: I was reading something the other day about the girl who does this thing called “The Hills,” which I’ve never seen. And she was like, “I don’t want to do it anymore. They’ve followed me around for the last five years.” That would be my personal hell.