2002

Alias Cast & Crew Interview Snippets

All sound files are zipped MP3s, 128 kbps and 48 kHz in quality. You'll need to download them to your hard drive and unzip them to listen to them. Enjoy! :)

Michael Vartan

"He's a CIA agent. His father was a CIA agent. He, he meets Sydney, Jennifer's character, and sort of is assigned to her as, as her guide through the CIA. And all hell breaks loose. They... he sends her on missions, he has to look over her. Of course he's got, you know, bit of a... an eye for her as well, cause she's... not unattractive."

Jennifer Garner 1

"She's a graduate student, just a normal girl. She grew up kind of lonely. Her mother passed away when she was young and her father was very distant. And she got sucked into this whole world of the CIA, looking for a family and for a community. And I think she's as surprised as anyone that she advanced as quickly as she did. And while she was advancing, she grew up at the same time, and she didn't need that community anymore because she found it: friends and, and a passion in her life, a man that she loved very much, and... so it's kind this... all about this two worlds colliding for her."

Jennifer Garner 2

"I'm a fan of women being strong. I was a fan of 'Charlie's Angels' when that came out, I was a fan of 'Crouching Tiger...' when that came out, I'm a fan of 'Ally McBeal'... anytime you see a woman confronting her own insecurities and fears and femininety and strength and I'm all for that. But as far as this spy genre, I'm, I'm learning as I go. And now I'm a huge fan! I'm trying to catch up."

Jennifer Garner 3

"The recognition is nice, but it's really... you can't put anything on that and I, I just, I don't. It's so much more about how much I like my job everyday, and how much I feel like I'm growing in the job and, and what I learn from the people around me and the incredible words that I get to say, which is so rare, especially in television."

Jennifer Garner 4

"Television has been home to women for a long time. 'Cagney & Lacey,' 'Charlie's Angels,' there've always been women who've accomplished things. But I think Sydney is the best amalgamation of... is that the right word, is that the right word... of all of these women to come along: she is strong, she is vulnerable, she is feminine, she is physical... she's kind of everything at once, but in a very grounded, real way. And women come up to me and, and tell me what that means to them, or that they wanted to go back to school, or wanted to take a self-defence class or... whatever it is, and, and I feel like if any woman is standing up stronger because of watching Alias, you know, standing with their back a little straighter... well, then that's far and beyond what we could've hoped for."

Jennifer Garner 5

"Part of it is just being honest to the role. If Sydney is able to punch somebody and have it actually knock them out, or if she is able to run these distances or, or get out of her precarious situations in ways that she does, she would be fit. So I need to be relatively fit. And then in order to shoot something not just once, but, you know, you do several takes of something and then you do it again from another angle, and, and pretty soon you've done something for several hours... you've held a, a very awkward position, so you have to be as fit as the job requires and this job just requires it. [laughs] I'll be in better shape than I ever intended!"

Lena Olin 1

"It's really intriguing because of the, the, the fact that what you were saying about women who watch this and who be inspired, and, and it's about female capacity and power and it's not unattractive, it's very attractive. But in a real way, not in, in a, in a glitzy way... in a, in a very real way. You wanna do your job, you wanna do a good job when you, when you're watching this show, I think. And that's extremely inspiring for young girls/women to watch. And the fact that it's, it's about people and about a dysfunctional family and that whole story is very real and it's really well acted. And then the, the action, the look and all of that on top of that, I think, is a fabulous package."

Lena Olin 2

"I've never done TV before and it's really intriguing to me. When J.J. started talking to me about this, you know, he... what, what he said, you know, the fact that we'll reach so many people hopefully, and the fact that it's coming out so fast. We do it and like in a feature, if you do something, it'll take a year and a half - at least - before you get, before, before people see and before you start talking about it. And, and it's great to have this instant... I'm really excited about that, and to work with the same group of people, to have a cast that you actually stay with for a long time, which is something I loved about the theatre, that it sort of becomes very... it's, it's a close group of people and you see the same people everyday when you go to work. All of that is a very neat..."

J. J. Abrams

"Sydney Bristow is unique because she's an incredibly strong-will person. She's, she's someone that you, you know, someone that you wish you were, someone you wish you were dating. But she's also someone... she's scary because she's got these incredible skills and she's got this strength and this knowledge that I think obviously makes her exceptional, but the real exception is that, in her heart, she's just desperately trying to be a normal person, she's caught up in this, sort of web of intrigue that, that was entirely accidental."

© ABC 2002

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