Originally Published April 9, 2007
"You really feel like 'I'm an FBI agent!' You're like a cowboy or a superhero or something."
That's how Paget Brewster describes playing the role of Emily Prentiss on Criminal Minds. Truly one of the funniest people I've ever spoken with, you'd think Prentiss was a comedian and not a serious FBI agent. (Shows how good of an actress Brewster is!)
Let's start at the beginning, when Brewster was first approached by the Criminal Minds producers. "I was doing a movie in New Orleans, and it was the fourth movie I'd done in a row... I like doing movies, but I don't like doing my laundry in hotels," Brewster said. "I loved the show. I watched the show. Although, I knew the hours would be a bummer, but I'm like, 'I'll go meet them.'"
Immediately Brewster questioned if the people on the show were fun. The producers were telling the truth when they said yes, since Brewster said it really is the most fun set she's ever been on. "And thank god too, because the hours are as bad as I thought they'd be," she said, referring to the mostly 12-15 hour days.
Brewster, in her humorous fashion, described why the set is such a good time. "FBI, death, murder. There's something in there that generates a really funny atmosphere."
Not sure why that's cause for a laugh? Let Brewster do the explaining:
- "There are some 17 hour days, and I'm not there even as long as the crew. The reason they're so funny may be some kind of sleep psychosis... I don't know how they do it, but they're all very humored people, and they could be psychotic."
- "Someone walking around, and their neck is ripped open, and they're eating pizza... It's
funny!"
- "When we pull our guns, they're real guns and they have to check them with little flashlights... In one scene we had to drive to a country club parking lot and then take an hour long shuttle ride, and there's no cell phone service, we couldn't have heaters, and it started snowing... It's so ludicrous that everyone has to have a sense of humor about it."
- "I love the dead people. Some of these people don't have any lines. These actors have to lie on the ground and it's always either too hot or too cold. They're covered in blood... and they have to lie there for hours. Or they're on a freezing cold gurney and they're naked and they're painted blue. I love being the corpse mom, saying 'Do you need a blanket or an ice tea?'"
Thankfully the Criminal Minds set is just as entertaining as Brewster hoped. "That is what I asked the writers right away because if I'm not going to have fun, I won't do it. I'll quit. I'll go do a sitcom or bartend. I think I told them I would show up drunk. I said, 'If you are lying to me by saying it's a fun set and you hire me, I'll get you to fire me."
It might be a bit surprising that Brewster is so comical since many viewers know her as Beth Huffstodt on Huff and Prentiss on Criminal Minds, which are both dramatic roles. Brewster admits, "I do get scared sometimes that I'm not good enough at drama." (She must be hallucinating!) Of the two parts, Brewster said Criminal Minds is more fulfilling. On Huff, "You do a crying scene and you're shooting for five hours and you're crying for five hours. Then [on Criminal Minds], I'm running across the street holding my gun with Shemar Moore. It feels like being a rock star. It's so satisfying."
Don't get me wrong, Brewster isn't all jokes when it comes to Emily Prentiss. In reference to her character she said, "I think she wants to fit in with the group. She wants to be accepted by her team. I think she's really earnest. I think she's trying very hard... She has a value to the team, but she's a little green compared to the rest of them."
Being a new character isn't always easy. Even Brewster understands why some of the fans aren't completely accepting of her character. "The show didn't need another person. It just didn't. It was an ensemble. They didn't need to bring on another person." She went on, "What they [viewers] were saying was fair, which is 'Who is this strange person? I want to know more about Garcia. And that's absolutely valid. Watching the show, if I hadn't gotten the part, I would have felt the same thing."
Yet that doesn't mean it was easy for Brewster when some Criminal Minds fans resisted her entrance to the show. "I had to get rid of my Google alerts because so many people hated Prentiss... You do take it personally. You want people to be happy. You make a living entertaining people. You don't want them to hate you. That's the worse thing that could happen."
Does the BAU team then accept Prentiss as a member of their team? "I think it's slightly grudging acceptance," Brewster said.
Throughout Prentiss' initiation into the show, there has been a slight rift between her and Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler). Many fans have interpreted this clash differently, so Brewster clarifies her opinion on the situation:
"She's not in any way as smart as he is. Not at all. She's obviously great with language, but he's able to do things that one in a million people can do. I think what upset him was that a relatively unknown person could see something was wrong. He was caught. She was busting him. If you've ever dealt with an addict, that was actually written well because addicts know what they're doing and they just don't want to be stopped. They don't want to be called on it, questioned, confronted, and that's what Prentiss was doing to Reid, because who the hell was she to him?"
As for the rest of the BAU team, Brewster said, "Judging by a scene we did today - and I really like this about the show - the female characters have accepted her in before the men, and I really like that because I really have a problem with women bashing women anywhere. I just don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't think that's an accurate portrayal of smart, healthy women."
Of the scene Brewster is referring to, she said, "It's actually a true story. There's a female agent in the FBI who I've met. My character started out being based on her. She was in a bar and a guy started hitting on her by telling her he was an FBI agent and she went, 'Oh really?' and he was lying. She started asking all these questions like 'Do you have a gun? Are your credentials on you?' And he said, 'That's classified.' And she said, 'Oh really? Did it look like this?' and she flashed her FBI badge and he ran away."
Brewster, A.J. Cook [JJ Jareau], and Kirsten Vangsness [Penelope Garcia] filmed a version of that scene for the show. "I said, 'When I flash him my credentials, can AJ and Kirsten flash theirs too?... It'll be like Charlie's Angels.' We did it and it was really fun."
Speaking of Charlie's Angels, next week's episode "Honor Among Thieves" will be the first Prentiss-centric episode, with Kate Jackson starring as Emily's mom, Elizabeth. "She was very sweet," Brewster said. "There's a lot of people who if they did something really really big even ten years ago, let alone thirty, they don't want to talk about it. She's so cool about it. She talks about it, she talks about Farrah, she'll pose with anyone in a picture doing the karate chop, and she's great. She's lovely about it."
Fortunately Brewster enjoys her time on the set of Criminal Minds, because the subject matter of the show can be quite intense. In fact, Brewster was interested in profiling many years prior to even becoming involved in Criminal Minds. In the mid-90's, Brewster hosted The Paget Show, a talk show in San Francisco. She recalled, "I was on at 1:30 in the morning and I had pretty scary crackpot stalkers that sent letters and broke into the station and stuff like that. And I started reading about stalking... and I kind of just kept going and know a lot about profilers and serial killers and arsonists and sexual sadists. It sounds very creepy but for whatever reason it was interesting to me."
As intrigued as she was, the show's theme still gets under Brewster's skin. Criminal Minds provides FBI textbooks to the cast and crew to help them better understand the job. "I actually had to stop reading them because it made me so paranoid...It's disturbing. I fortified the hell out of my house, started going shooting. It scared me. There's some really tough images. So how these guys [real profilers] actually do this and look at the worst things human beings can do, I don't know."
Outside of the show, Brewster keeps herself occupied with some very entertaining activities. For one, she does all of the accents for the cartoon American Dad. (Brewster believes this is why the writers made her character a linguist on Criminal Minds - Brewster will be speaking Russian on an upcoming Criminal Minds episode, which she said "was a trip.") She also cooks (and wants to be a judge on Iron Chef America), as well as works on her house. "I bought a fixer upper," she said. This summer, during the Criminal Minds hiatus, Brewster will be traveling to England and Amsterdam, taking photographs for the site SuicideGirls.com "My agent keeps sending me film scripts," Paget said. "Why would I want to work during my two months off? I want to shoot naked girls with tattoos!"
In addition, Brewster said she and costar Matthew Gray Gubler are very similar. "We're both presenting at the American Magician Awards," she laughed. "He's very cool. I like him a lot." And, that's when the laughing didn't stop, as Brewster continued talking about her adventures with Gubler. "It's so stupid. We're also forming a company together. We've come up with a line of skin care products called Blood Bath, that's skin care for goth girls." Brewster was hysterical as she told me about meeting with her business manager and talking to Guthy-Renker about their products. Brewster said if it doesn't work, well then, "We did something absolutely profoundly absurd for a couple of months."
Something else absurd? Not giving every character on the fantastic Criminal Minds a chance. It's hard to accept, and come to like, a new character on a show, especially when you like the character whose place they took. So, as you watch her, remember the actress behind the role, and it will be impossible not to grow to love Prentiss.