As Fringe Comes To An End, Aussie John Noble Reflects On His Role As Walter Bishop

Plenty of US shows have had Australian leads, but Fringe is one of the few that has two (and a third for the final season): Anna Torv playing Olivia Dunham and John Noble as the eccentric Walter Bishop. With the series’ conclusion fast approaching, Noble took the opportunity to look back at five years of the show’s sometimes hilarious, sometimes gruesome moments. Warning: Spoilers ahead if you’re not up-to-date with the show.

In a conference call with press, Noble felt the script for the final show was “the best finale I’ve ever read, just in terms of being able to tie up the five years”, according to an article on Blastr. Given how many loose ends were left dangling with the massive shift in time frames between the fourth and fifth seasons, we can only hope the writers have tied them up reasonably well. I mean, what happened to poor Lincoln Lee?

As for Walter himself, Noble’s happy with where the character ended up by the final show. From Blastr:

“If you had asked me in season one where I thought Walter should finish up, it would’ve been exactly where he does. That’s the remarkable thing. When I say I think it’s a great finale, that’s the reason why. I think it’s the perfect out for Walter.”

He also reveals that the original Walter, particularly the season one version, was his favourite to play:

“I’ve played a bunch of different versions of him. Gee, I don’t know. I loved it when he was being random, which was probably the original version of him, more than anyone else. I loved doing Walter then and all of the different mental states that we’ve played during the time, but when he was being completely random and had very poor social skills.

“Going backwards, the pure fun was the original Walter, who was just released from a mental institution and probably shouldn’t have been. He was just fun, because he could basically say and do anything and get away with it. The most difficult Walter was the one that I had to play when there was no Peter in the world. That was really tricky.”

Head over to Blastr for the rest of Noble’s thoughts on the series, including some tidbits on scenes from the finale.

[Blastr]

Image: Fox