Prison Break
April 4, 9 p.m. | Fox
After years on the lam the TV series Prison Break is coming in from the cold.
The Fox series that ran from 2005-2009 will debut its fifth season with nine new episodes on April 4.
Created by Paul Scheuring and shot in Vancouver, the season picks up the story seven years later, with Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) discovering, through a very juicy source, that his brother Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) is not dead but still very much smouldering, tattooed, and alive.
However, nothing is simple with these folks, and Michael isn’t living on a tropical island running a fishing camp — his existence has been erased. Through a cryptic message Lincoln, with help, figures out baby bro is locked up in a prison in Yemen. Yikes.
Lincoln does some sleuthing (spoiler alert: there’s a grave and a shovel involved) and takes what he learns to Michael’s former wife and mother of his child Dr. Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies). And, you guessed it, things get real — again.
Dominic Purcell and Sarah Wayne Callies as Lincoln Burrows and Dr. Sara Tancredi in a scene from Prison Break’s fifth season. Photo: Ed Aqaquel.
Along with the brothers and the good doctor Tancredi, also back in the Prison Break lineup are fan favourites — the cellmate with a heart of gold, Fernando Sucre (Amaury Nolasco); newly enlightened Benjamin Miles “C-Note” (Rockmond Dunbar); and, of course, one of the best TV villains ever — Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell (Robert Knepper).
Robert Knepper is Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell on Prison Break.
Now the focus is getting Michael out of prison, and getting out of Yemen.
“A lot of us as characters have tried to change, to become better people. Have tried to exhume elements of identity that we are uncomfortable with,” said Wayne Callies, who was born in Illinois, raised in Hawaii and has called B.C. home for 10 years.
“Part of the story of the fifth season is that there are certain things that are fundamental to who we are, and maybe they don’t change. Maybe who you are and who love don’t change.”
A hit series during it’s original run, it was no surprise that fans embraced the news of a return and flocked to online promos. A trailer on Facebook has close to 60 million views.
“I certainly didn’t expect it. By and large when shows are cancelled it is a permanent death. But the Prison Break fans have been an entirely unique breed. They are so passionate. They are so vocal. They are so involved,” said Wayne Callies over the phone from Texas where she was working on the military drama The Long Road Home.
Vancouver based actor Sarah Wayne Callies is back as Dr. Sara Tancredi for the new fifth season of Fox’s Prison Break.
It was those fans that put up a big fuss after Wayne Callies’ character was killed off at the end of the second season. In season four it was revealed that Lincoln had misidentified Tancredi’s body, and Wayne Callies was working again.
“I was hugely surprised. I was also completely ignorant about the whole thing I just had a baby. My life was diapers and nighttime feedings. I was off the grid. I more or less came to, and it had all happened. I am not sure why. I think if any of us knew preciously why Sara Tancredi or the show as a whole resonated so much with people then it would be replicated, and that kind of success would be enjoyed all over the place.”
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Prison Break isn’t Wayne Callies first experience of elevated and motivated fandom. She played Lori Grimes on AMC’s The Walking Dead.
“Any time a show hits and enjoys that kind of success you have to give thanks for the fairy dust and double down and work twice as hard to earn it,” said Wayne Callies, who is also a cast member of USA Network’s Colony.
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Working on Prison Break last year was a treat for Wayne Callies as she got to stay home with her family, something that hasn’t happened much in this busy actor’s career.
“It is actually ironic in this way of life. We bought our home in B.C. and I proceeded not to work in B.C. for, I think, six years,” said Wayne Callies.
“I worked in Saskatchewan. I worked in Ontario. I worked in Quebec. I worked in almost every other province in Canada but I didn’t work in B.C. for a number of years. The film industry there has kicked back up, and so I think I have done two or three projects there in the last couple of years.”
When she isn’t acting, Wayne Callies makes time for work with the International Rescue Committee. Most recently she was lending a hand in Dallas with refugees who arrived in the U.S. just days before President Trump’s travel ban took effect.
“I think there is a PR war being raged against refugees right now. They are being painted as uniformly Muslim, and then being painted as uniformly violent. To me it is a little like if you were going to take the Westboro Baptist Church and extrapolate that they reflect the beliefs and actions of all Christians.
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“Every refugee I have known — whether they are Buddhist, or Hindu or atheist or Christian or Muslims or Jews — every one of them is someone who has been the victim of violence and wants to live the rest of their lives in peace to a degree none of the rest of us can understand. So characterizing these populations as violent is libellous and slanderous, and is costing people their lives.”
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Wayne Callies says she wishes the media would expand its coverage of the refugee crisis and look to the good and successful stories. But in the meantime, she says she will continue to speak out and work on this issue.
“I’ve been doing this for 10 years I will be doing it for another 10,” said Wayne Callies.
“I feel refugees are being slandered and I am going to raise my voice on their behalf because they can’t. This is not a du jour issue for me. I am planting my stake in the ground, and my stake will be in this ground whatever happens.”
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