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Searching for an 'Inner Child' with Fringe Star Anna Torv
by Troy Rogers
 It took a few episodes to get going but Fox's mysteriously scientific series Fringe quickly lured fans into its weekly ratings facility, as the FBI’s Fringe Division began to discover what was really underneath the world of fringe science. Returning to the Fox airwaves on Tuesday, April 7 for a new chapter of Fringe called "Inner Child," the Fringe Division investigates a mysterious mute child living alone underground who forms a connection to actress Anna Torv's Agent Olivia Dunham, while a serial killer resurfaces to publicly display his gruesome artwork.
Now that Fox has taken us inside the world of the J.J. Abrams created Fringe and back again to piece together the mysteries underneath the science (sort of), we're gearing up for even more fringe science goodness now that the Fringe Division is back to on-air business. Late last week, we hopped on the phone to join a conference call with the lovely Agent Olivia Dunham, Anna Torv, to learn more about serial killer artwork, the evolution of her character, and her recent exploration to find her "Inner Child."
THE DEADBOLT: Can you tell us anything about how the serial killer displays at least one of the bodies?
 ANNA TORV: Yes. He calls himself "The Artist" and he sends invitations to his artwork, which are always displayed in public places; kind of really creepy.
THE DEADBOLT: You also mentioned that you liked the running and gunning aspects of the show. What parts of the science do you like?
TORV: I love the stuff that delves into moral and ethical dilemmas, like what people’s boundaries are. What’s appropriate, and what’s not? How far do you go in order to find an answer? And particularly with the Peter, Walter and Olivia dynamic, it’s always changing. Each week, one will be a little bit more gun-ho about wanting to get to the bottom of it no matter what it takes. That's probably the bit that I like the most, actually.
THE DEADBOLT: Is there anything about Olivia you don’t like or would like to see evolve over time?
TORV: I would love - and I don’t know where they’re going, so this is purely conjecture - and actually that ties in with your other question with the science stuff - I love it when it really is fringy science. One of my favorite little bits was really, really early on where Peter and Olivia are going, and they find this girl strapped to a gurney, and Olivia runs off. Peter is on the phone to Walter, and he’s getting phonebooks and speakers trying to pump this girl’s heart back up, and using kind of what’s around. And I like Olivia when she becomes a little renegade, when it’s kind of not by the book, and she goes, 'I’m going to do it this way.' I like it when she gets a little not quite as straight-laced as she is most of the time.
THE DEADBOLT: What was it like shooting The Pacific with Spielberg and Hanks?
 TORV: I only had a little tiny part in that, and I had been in the U.K., and I went back to Australia to do it, so it was lovely. We shot it in Melbourne, but I didn’t get to [a lot] - I think the guys, all the boys had just an absolute ball because they all got to go and do boot camps and they were out and about. But I did all of my stuff on a sound stage.
Other Conference Call Highlights:
Anna Torv on recurring roles popping up in the last few episodes:
"Recurring characters that pop up. Well, Harris [played by Michael Gaston] comes back. I love Harris. I think he’s a really cool character, and we find out a little bit more about him, and also David Robert Jones [played by Jared Harris] kicks back in, who is the scientist that we met in the German prison who escaped. We see a little bit more of him."
Torv on what we’ll discover about Olivia’s past:
 "We slowly start to discover some - I never know what I can and what I can’t say - but we start to discover some things that sort of happened to her when she was really little that she doesn’t really remember, but they start to kind of - you start to see the stories or the lives of Peter and Walter and Olivia kind of begin to interlace a little bit, and you sort of see how their paths have crossed before."
Anna Torv on whether she likes working with the cow:
"Yes. I don’t get to do that many scenes with Gene, unfortunately. Usually it’s Walter of milking her or Peter getting him in trouble for having her in the Lab. Usually when we have the cow on the set, we also have a whole lot of other animals because we’re in some laboratory, so there’s always the wranglers that bring her on, you know, sometimes - we’ll have monkeys or little hairless rats, so it just becomes a menagerie."
Torv and whether we’re going to see more of Olivia and Harris’ history:
 "Yes. And we just, we actually just shot an episode. We actually just finished shooting an episode last week where we do go a little bit into the Harris character, and we find out what side, you know, he’s on and what his motivations really are."
Anna Torv’s reaction to the scripts for the season’s final episodes:
"I’m really excited, and things kind of like, I think because we’re gearing up for the end of the season, we sort of started to, I guess, things sort of started to get a little bit more cemented. We shot an episode a little while ago, one of the last ones directed by Akiva Goldsman, and I think that kind of pushes it into a different direction but not into a different world. It sort of pushes us a little bit deeper into some of the things that we’ve been touching on, and we’re shooting the season finale at the moment, and I’m really excited. I’m excited at the prospect of where the show could go. If we’re lucky enough to shoot a second season, I think it’s going to be really great."
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