Michael Scofield / Wentworth Miller

A mon avis ils ont du l'obliger à s'habiller avec les vêtements de la marque 10 minutes avant l'atterrissage

Wentworth Miller, devenu célèbre grâce à son rôle dans PB est arrivé à l'aéroport Pu Dong aujourd'hui à 17h30, la série américaine PB étant devenue un succès, son arrivée pour la première fois en Chine a retenu l'attention de nombreuses personnes. Wang Leehom qui arrivait par hasard à ShangaÏ pour donner un concert, arriva en premier et fut entouré par quelques photographes. Ceci suprit Wang Leehom, mais après avoir réalisé que les médias étaient là pour Miller, il s'est senti un peu géné. (le reste ne concerne pas Went, ils espliquent que Wang est sorti de l'aéroport, escorté de 6 gardes du corps dans la plus totale confusion).

La star Wentworth Miller fut surpris par la passion des fans lors de son arrivée en ville pour promouvoir la marque de vêtements nationale Me&City.

Il fut accueilli par des fans à l'aéroport international de Pudong mardi soir. Miller répondit patiemment aux demandes d'autographes et de photos.

Hier soir, Miller a assisté au show de mode et à la fête Me&City qui se tenait à Central Park à Pudong.

Miller doit tenir une conférence de presse aujourd'hui au magasin phare de la marque Me&City sur Nanjing Road avant de continuer son tour de Chine à Péklng.

Jouant dans la série de la FOX "PB", Miller, agé de 36 ans, est né en Angleterre et fut élevé à Brooklyn, un quartier de New York. Le personnage de Michael Scofield, joué par Wentworth Miller a apparemment fait forte impression au téléspectateurs chinois, vu que Miller déclencha des hurlements de la part des jeunes femmes qui l'ont vu.

En Chine, Wentworth est connu sous les noms de Wenshuai ou Mishuai, qui sont des combinaisons de son nom (ou nom de son personnage) et du mot chinois pour "beau

WENTWORTH MILLER: THE THIN LINE BETWEEN GOOD AND BAD

Miller’s
character, Michael Scofield, along with Prison Break, quickly became a
world wide success. In few years, the young British went from a
Princeton University student to the most wanted prisoner in TV and a
sexual symbol. Now he debates between the values of his alter ego on
screen and his own.

The studios where they are filming the first
episode of Prison Break's fourth season, is stationed in a corner of
Los Angeles, California, in Century City to be exact; certainly, close
together to the famous building that Bruce Willis destroyed in the
first Die Hard part and that nowadays gives refuge to Fox's corporate
offices TV. After passing several doors, we enter one of the many local
studios. There we are opposite to a group of persons glued to a couple
of monitors; one of them was raising the voice to an enviable volume,
it is a question of the twelfth director in the story of this
franchise. "We go again", he was shouting, and immediately five of the
stars that were sharing the scene were repeating, already in an
automatic way, the dialog in question. It was surprising to see
villains and good united in pacific chat, the brothers Michael and
Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) were meeting again with their friend Sucre
(Amaury Nolasco), with the ex-guard Bellick (Wade Williams) and the
bipolar and slightly reliable ex-policeman Alex Mahone (William
Fichtner).

Wentworth Miller is very similar to his character
Michael Scofield; he has unmistakable features, such as his wrinkled
frown, the detail analysis of every comment and the skill to escape of
any uncomfortable question. “I always wanted to be an actor, since
I was a kid, but growing up it seemed less realistic. My parents are
university teachers; they always put special emphasis in education. I
knew that first I had to obtain a title (degree) and afterwards I could
dedicate to what I wanted. I went to Princeton, in New Jersey; acting
seemed more a hobby than a career, but it always attracted to me the
idea of working in television or cinema. I packed my things in my old
Toyota, my clothes, tennis rackets and many books and drove from
Pennsylvania up to The Angels. There was an employment waiting for me
there: one of my father’s classmates had a small producer who was doing
movies for television. During a year and a half I was his assistant
without pay, office chief, assistant of direction and dog walker, I
brought the food and doing photocopies. I unconsciously realized that I
was there to become an actor, that I had to take risks or always would
wonder what would have happened if I had tried it. The worse thing that
could happen was that I would retake my career or would be employed at
production companies, agencies, studies or any another trade at the
industry, thing that I did for six years crossing the city and the
opportunities that one was offering. I have known the industry from
another perspective, different from the one that the majority of actors
have. This way I have valued all the work that is behind a movie or TV
series”.

Wentworth has always relied on the support of his
family, in spite of how difficult it is for someone out of the business
(his father is a Law teacher and his mother a special education
teacher, both from Yale University) to deal with the things that happen
in the industry. Wentworth consciously, has the sensitivity of warning
them when something terrible is going to happen to Michael in the
series, so it doesn’t impress them too much.

One might think
that an actor that plays a character with the psychological and
physical complexity that this role demands, had had time to prepare it,
but it was not the case, he was chosen a couple of days after his
audition and began to film immediately. In fact, he was the last actor
who joined the cast.
If we think that he was educated in a
prestigious university and that he has relatives involved in the legal
area (besides his father, his two sisters are lawyers), we might
believe that Wentworth is a critic of the penitentiary systems and the
methods that are used in jails. Nevertheless, on having done the
question to him, his blue eyes hide themselves under the wrinkled
frown, and he evades a declaration that might be compromising,
transforming it into an intelligent revelation.

“There are
some topics that are not adapted to be discussed publicly. I remember
when I was a kid that my father took me voting in one of the elections,
in the 80`s, but he never told me for whom he had voted. There are
topics as the politics or religion that I don’t like to comment. There
will be actors who feel comfortable telling his preferences. I prefer
telling you that during the filming of the first season I had the
opportunity to coexist in a real prison with inmates who acted like
extras; they gave me a different perspective of what life behind bars
is.
We all have stereotypes of what a criminal is, of what happens
in an average jail, and what I still have very clear is that the line
between them and us is very blurry, is not different not defining; we
might easily be in the same circumstances, it is only a matter of
luck... You can be driving, enter a construction site and accidentally
run over a worker, this can make you be in prison 10... It can be
frightening. As there are people behind bars that have committed
horrible crimes, there are those who have not done it, that have
stories like the one I tell you, that they thought it would never
happen to them. Part of the success of the series has to do with
showing that the prison is a hard real-life story and can happen to any
of us. We filmed the first season in a real prison, in Chicago; I was
there 15 or 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, for many months.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day I was going out and could go home,
and it is a great difference”.

Wentworth remembers “My
first acting experience was when I was in kinder, it was a play of a
dinosaur and I played him. My father helped me with the costume in
paper mache, it took him almost three weeks to finish the head of a
tyrannosaurus rex, it was enormous and very heavy. When I made my
triumphal entry on stage, since the head was moving, I tried to support
it by balancing the head, the public exploded in applauses because they
thought I was acting the movement. This connection between audience and
the actor doesn’t have comparison, it was immediate and I wanted more;
it is something similar to an addiction. I never found anything that
made me feel like this and I didn’t want to be behind an office; for me
it was acting or nothing. It took me many years to dedicate to this
that some call “overnight success””.

For many readers,
Prison Break has turned into their favorite series; to Wentworth the
first series he remembers watching is The Muppet Show. "I was glued to the TV every Monday at 7:30 PM ".
Nowadays he is attracted by comic series like Family Guy or American
Dad, and more serious ones, such as The Closer or Law and Order SVU,
which he enjoys on DVD, in the comfort of his house, after a hard day
of filming. "TV is curious; you never know what is going to please
the audience. We knew people liked the hard and realistic histories;
nevertheless, Prison Break is essentially a family story, about how far
a brother will go in order to save the other one. That, I believe, is
the secret of our world wide success. They are universal values, such
as respect to the father, sacrifice, family, and they can be applied in
any society, no matter how different they are”.

“My
favorite prominent characters of the series are Bellick and agent
Kellerman. Seeing the perspective of his character and the way in which
he improves in this universe, I can say that Mahone has a special
connection with me. He’s a good man who does questionable things and
then turns into a bad man for the wrong reasons. It is a mirror where
my character sees reflected and where we’ll see if he continues the
current way. He wants to save his brother, but so many people have died
because Michael put in movement this plan, that the question we face is
how far across the line can a good man go, before you can no longer
call him good. This is the centre of attention of the story; people
wonder how far away they would have gone in this situation, what lines
would be ready to cross so as to save a loved one. It’s because of this
that Michael enjoys the charm of the audience; his experience
represents them behind bars".

For the actor, his similarity with Michael Scofield can be resumed in: "We’re
both clean, compulsive, with great respect for discipline and order,
too analytical and very loyal. There is nothing that we wouldn’t do for
our families or friends. Michael is not trying to be understood or be
liked; he’ll do what he has to. He’s like Michael Chiklis from The
Shield, Kiefer Sutherland from 24, or some Lost characters, they are in
essence good persons, with solid beliefs”.


“Sara
coming back is one of these season’s surprise. From the first episode
characters will suffer mayor changes. To Michael, Sara was dead last
season, that’s what he was told, so he crossed some lines that
otherwise he wouldn’t have crossed. I like to believe he hasn’t lost
all his innocence, but he sure has less than when it all began. He may
not be the same person Sara remembers. Will Michael still be who Sara
recognizes as the man she fell in love with in prison? Is it worth what
they can offer each other? Will Sara be capable of having a
relationship, after having gone and returned from hell? It will
continue being a challenge for them to manage to have a normal
relationship, without gun shots and pursuing”.

Speaking on the creativity in the scripts of the series, Wentworth says: "They
have allowed me to suggest very much in the action scenes and some
dialogs, since the beginning of the series. I am sure that nobody
thinks so much as Michael Scofield as I do, not the directors,
producers nor the public. I feel that I know him so much, inside and
externally. If I see something in the script that doesn’t go with the
character, I have complete freedom of talking about it, and in
occasions they have noticed me.

One of the big challenges of
being employed at a TV series is that you never know how it’s going to
end; of episode in episode, the history can be changing and sometimes
it is necessary to take decisions that can affect future scenes. As
actor, you must fight with it of the best way. If as actors we knew how
the story’s going to finish, maybe we would operate in a different way.
In movies it takes up to two weeks to make a sequence, you have time to
rehearse before filming, here we call “rehearse” to the moments in
which you are building the scene, when the director tells you where to
stand and other actors take place before beginning. In TV you work much
faster, we don’t have so much time, every episode takes up to a week of
filming. It’s clear that I’d like to know better the story, though; I’d
prepare my character much better. Because of that I’m interested in
doing movies; I want the opportunity to be part of some movie in a
nearby future. It’s not that I think that it’s superior that TV, it’s
simply a different challenge, a different stage in which I’d like to
spend time”.

About the stigma that playing a character like Michael Scofield can be, Wentworth says: “I
feel very lucky for the opportunity to play a role and to have caused a
strong impression with him. I know that I’ll be associated with the
name Prison Break forever, because of the big thing that has become
world wide, and that is certainly something valuable. I’ve had the
fortune of gaining more success with it than many actors have obtained
with more years of career; I am very grateful. On the other hand,
Scofield only represents a small part of what I am; I’ve stopped doing
many other things to be able to devote to this series. I was used to
play characters like T-Bag, so it’s a change. I’d like to have the
opportunity to reinvent myself, when I say good-bye to Michael Scofield
(maybe after a small recess). I know that I’ll have to work at it and
to try new stages, maybe an independent movies or a romantic comedy,
something different, in order that people don’t classify me in the same
work. I’ll return to the beginning, will play my cards the best way.
Luckily, I don’t have to worry how to pay rent or things like that; I
might even produce my own story. It’s one of the privileges of the
solvency that has given me being part in a series like Prison Break. It
has also made directors, producers and many people who take important
decisions look at me, now some of them are interested in me. TV is
great for exhibition, in my case it is weekly, in any place where you
are, you have the possibility of seeing the work that we do”.

“I’d
love to some day have the chance of taking decisions, of directing, of
being involved. Once I have vacations, I long to sit down in my
armchair to watch TV and recharge my batteries, because in this full
time job, I have on my shoulders a great responsibility as one of the
main faces of the show; many people depend on me doing my work, in
front and behind camera”.

Wentworth has had the opportunity
to travel the world, maybe the only place he hasn’t been to is South
America, but in all places he has been to, he has been able to
corroborate the great popularity of the show. Luckily he hasn’t had to
fight with the harassment of the paparazzi, since in many places it can
be intolerable not to be able to slip by. “To be an actor equally
recognized in Brazil, Japan or France means very much for my career, it
has turned me into an attractive figure for investors, producers and
directors, and it’s invaluable in this business”.

Miller is
a fan of classic music; although he might not be able to easily
identify authors or executors, he was educated by a strong influence in
this childhood. Since he was a child, he could only listen to classic
music while doing his homework; this led him to develop a preference.
He listens to Ella Fitzgerald, Simon & Garfunkel, Nat King Cole,
music of the 70`s or previous, and in school he was in the choirs,
singing Cole Porter's songs and Van Morrrison .

Definitively, in his zeal for entering the theatre, a musical work in Broadway remains out of the question. “I
don’t believe that I have a voice to do this type of work, I respect
too much people who have a voice capable of filling a stage. It would
have to be a much more silent work, in the Woody Allen style”