The USA series White Collar airs its season one finale on March 9, 2010. The smart series about the relationship between a con man and a FBI agent is a colorful, breezy drama starring Matt Bomer as con man Neal Caffrey and Tim DeKay as FBI agent Peter Burke. The cast also includes Tiffani Thiessen as Elizabeth Burke and Willie Garson as Mozzie. Series creator Jeff Eastin recently answered questions in a conference call interview with columnists.
In this portion of the interview, Eastin talked about the characters and the future character development on White Collar.
Question: When you're writing a show that has so many characters, I mean, when you put your four main characters in a room, they are the four smartest people, period. How hard is it to maintain a level of excellence writing for that kind of a cast?
Jeff Eastin: It can be difficult. What we have done is we have really broken it down to each person has their own sort of specialty. Peter's (Tim DeKay) specialty is usually sort of the puzzle solving, putting the pieces together that an FBI agent would be good at. And Neal (Matt Bomer), I always look at Neal as somebody who can sort of look at the problem from outside the box and approach it in a way that most people wouldn't think to. Mozzie (Willie Garson) adds his own expertise, which usually that sort of that street level guy who knows the way that criminals do it. And Elizabeth (Tiffani Thiessen) has a certain amount of emotional intelligence that we try to play off of. She's going to see things from a human perspective that a lot of times Peter won't see or Neal won't see.
Question : What surprised you the most about filming the first season? Was there something you weren't expecting that kind of popped up, either in the filming or in the story breaks or anything like that?
Jeff Eastin: From a story standpoint, I think probably the most refreshing thing that happened was we've been making a real effort to try to make an intelligent show, to do a show that tries to stay smart. I mean, we may not always succeed, but at least that's our goal. And I wasn't quite sure how that would be accepted. I mean, we have a lot of chess games. We quote Dostoevsky, things like that. I didn't know how things like that would be accepted. Last week's episode, which dealt a lot with sort of the nuance of wine... again, in an MTV world, I wasn't sure if people were going to like it. And the fact that people do, the fact that people seem to really be buying into that and enjoying it, where a lot of shows rely really heavily on action, we obviously don't.
Question: In an earlier interview with Tim and Matt, they talked about their characters having a growing relationship of trust. What do you think the dynamics of the characters will evolve to?
Jeff Eastin: Going into season two, one of the things we want to be careful of is that we don’t adjust too much. But again we kind of keep what’s working. And too, there's a growing trust between the guys. What we’ve really moved away from is Peter is not afraid currently that Neal's going to pack his bags and run. We've definitely advanced the relationship to that not being a big concern. In the first few episodes, it was always is this guy going to dash. In the pilot even, when he says cut his anklet, Peter was pretty sure he'd run.
At this point in the episodes we've done, when Neal, if he cuts his anklet, Peter's pretty sure he's sticking around. So that doesn't really affect the trust between the guys. What does still factor in is Kate, the fact that Neal still has secrets on that side, and Peter has a few of his own. And that's where the trust issues between the guys will still play and will continue to play into season two, the issues revolving around her, around that relationship. I think Elizabeth had a line. If I recall, it might have been flipping the coin, where she says there's only reason Neal will ever lie to you. And he says Kate. And that again, is going to be something we really factor in in terms of the trust going forward.
White Collar airs on USA Network on Tuesday nights at 10:00 PM ET.
