'Magnum P.I.' Star Talks Feeling More 'Connected' To Fans After NBC Renewal, And The Challenge Of Coming Back
Transcript
00:00 you return to filming, did that give you a different perspective at all, knowing how many
00:04 people were invested in bringing you back? Yeah, you know, you see the numbers, but they're just
00:10 numbers and you're like, wow, that many people are watching us every week. Well, that's cool.
00:14 You know, but you can't imagine them as human beings, individuals. And when the fans started,
00:23 I mean, even though, you know, we get DM'd and people post on Twitter and stuff,
00:29 you don't really get to know them very well. And I felt like I really felt more connected to the
00:36 fans after they, you know, started the petition, put up billboards. And I felt like I knew who
00:43 they were. And then I felt more like obliged to try to take care of them. You know what I mean?
00:52 It's kind of nice. And we have fans in the strangest places. I don't know exactly where
00:58 we're airing, but apparently we have fans in Brazil and Japan and France and the UK.
01:05 I don't know how. I don't know how this all works out, but yeah. So, you know, it's thrilling.
01:16 Yes. It really felt very real when I saw that there was a billboard.
01:22 Oh yeah. They somehow, I don't know how people do this. So they, they put, they put their money on
01:30 the line to do that. They, I don't know how you, how do you do that? How did they connect with each
01:36 other? I don't know, but those billboards aren't cheap. No. And it couldn't be just one or two.
01:42 It had to be a lot of fans came together and put the money up.
01:46 The break between seasons four and five was the longest that you've had over the years of Magnum
01:52 PI. So what was it like to pick up playing Kumu again? Well, you know, we did have a long break
01:59 when the pandemic hit. We, we normally start in July and we didn't start until September. So we
02:05 had that experience of, you know, are we coming back? Cause when the pandemic was happening,
02:11 we didn't know what was going to happen to people doing television. And this was a different one
02:18 because we didn't know if we were coming back ever. And then we got picked up by NBC. So,
02:24 you know, it's always like, how are we going to accommodate the needs of the fans as well as the
02:36 accommodate the needs of, of the stories that we have to tell on the show. And I think in this case,
02:44 we were, I'm not sure if they were already in because they didn't expect to get canceled.
02:49 So they were already anticipating what the storylines would be for the next season.
02:53 And that's good. So we already knew kind of what was going to happen.
03:00 But we just didn't have the staff. This normally, well, so they only had, I think they only have
03:06 eight writers for this whole season and we're doing two episodes at the time. So when you're
03:14 doing two episodes, you have to write at least two shows, right? So we had to write all these shows
03:20 like immediately. So that was difficult, I think. And, you know, trying to fulfill everybody's needs,
03:29 they focused mostly, I think, on the stories that they had already planned.
03:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]