Posted at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 2, 2008

Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green) get closer to exposing the machines in the season finale of "Terminator."

Brian Austin Green has had a good time guest starring on Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” but he’s not giving away any secrets.

In a conference call with reporters last week, Green wouldn’t say whether he was coming back to the show next season. During the conference call, Green didn’t provide any spoilers about the two-hour season finale set to air at 7 p.m. Monday.

“Whenever I do an interview, if [I] give any little bit of anything, people will talk enough about it that they'll start to figure out what's going on,” said Green, who plays Derek Reese, John Connor’s uncle from the future. “It’s a very fine line of what you can and can't talk about.”

Series producer and creator Josh Friedman agreed, telling the reporters he hates spoilers.

“I’m a facist about spoilers,” he said. “I’m the biggest pain in the ass to the marketing and promotions department. I think they were very happy that I was on strike for 14 weeks. Since I’ve gotten back, I get these little emails saying, ‘Can we show them this?’ and I say, ‘No!’ If I had my way, the commercials would be 30 seconds of black with the words ‘Sarah Connor’ on them.”

Friedman said he’s been happy with Green’s work on the show and he’d love to have him back, but at this Fox hasn’t even agreed to renew the series.

Go to the jump to read an edited transcript provided by Fox of the conference call.

What do you think the odds are of renewal given the rating situation and the cost of production?

Josh: Well, let me take the second part. You know it’s not actually an expensive show to produce. In fact, I think we’re below the budget of many action shows that are on TV right now. In fact, our budget is much more in line with your basic drama that you would find on any network. So I don’t think that cost at this point plays much of a factor.

As to the ratings, you know I don’t know what to make of it, really. I think that the show has done well for a new show and for a new drama. There are not many that do very well or haven’t been doing very well, certainly in the last strike era. And we do very well in certain demographics. We do very well in DVR. We do very well on downloads. I think for our type of show that is a big chunk. We were one of the top five shows being TiVo’d right now, which is how I watch the show because otherwise no one would know that I’m watching.

Is there anything you can tell us about the upcoming season finale? Of course without giving too much away.

Green: Oh boy. Josh?

Friedman: First of all, TV is also my pacifier so—

Green: It’s a really hard question.

Friedman: A hard question; I’ll just say there’s a lot of chickens and a lot of roosting.

Green: You know, it’s funny, I was online last night going through some of the chats just to see what people were talking about, and this is one of those shows, unfortunately—I mean it’s unfortunate for me in the sense of whenever I do an interview that if you give any little bit of anything, people will talk enough about it that they’ll start to figure out what’s going on. So it’s a very fine line of what you can and can’t talk about.

Friedman: It’s cool. I’m kind of with Brian. I’m a fascist about spoilers. I’m the biggest pain in the ass to the marketing and promotion department, and I think they were very happy that I was on strike for 14 weeks. I seemed to be—

Green: … around you?

Friedman: Yes, they … whatever they want to do and since I’ve gotten back I get these little e-mails and they say, “Can we show this?’ And I say, “No.” If I had my way the commercials would be 30 seconds of black with the words “Sarah Connor” on them.

Green: I actually did a talk show one night and the only clip we could get of me on the show, because I hadn’t premiered on it yet, was the teaser from the episode before, so it was like “Next week on the Sarah Connor Chronicles” and it showed my running and fighting, everything that everybody else had seen. We couldn’t get anymore footage than that. I knew at the end of it all that was Josh’s doing.

Brian, do you know of any plans to keep you going in the second season at all, if there is one?

Green: That’s a question for Josh. I have no idea.

Friedman: All I’ll say is that I think Brian is doing an awesome job and I think he’s brought more to the series than I even imagined that he would. So I’m really happy.

Green: I can carry heavy things. I think that’s what—

Friedman: He moves furniture.

Green: I’m hauling furniture—

Friedman: He’s like a grip.

Green: I’m really helpful with cleaning days and stuff like that in the house.

Friedman: That’s why they kept him on 90210 so long actually.

Green: (Inaudible.)

Friedman: At some point he was just walking around carrying Shannon Daugherty’s gondola or whatever that thing is called.

Green: That should be episode one of season two, I’m just in the house with an apron on lifting furniture and just cleaning underneath things because I’m strong enough to do it. That would be awesome.

Brian, where was the future war battlefield location shot, and did you have a good time with that?

Green: Oh, I had a fantastic time with that and that was sort of shot all over. Most of the battle stuff was in downtown Los Angeles, and it was actually a concrete recycling factory. So it was helpful, they didn’t have to bring the actual cement in, just everything else.

Did you get to keep your outfit?

Green: I wish. Because if I did, I would actually have it on one of those mannequins in my movie room or something, here. It was the coolest thing ever. The blaster alone, the fact that I was the only one with a green scope on it was pretty cool. But there were a bunch of specific little things all through the costumes that—just little details that you really didn’t pick up, but everybody had Terminator Kills on their sleeve, these little badges. And they were just little Terminator heads but everybody had one for every kill. Some guys had one and I think I had seven, which was pretty cool.

What’s it like to be in a scene with an actress that really as a machine can’t react to you the way a normal actor would be able to react to you?

Green: Well, it’s fantastic for this job. Summer is so good at completely staying in those moments and I think that oddity is what sort of creates the tension and excitement in the scenes. You do scenes all day long with people that react and when you have somebody that just sits there and blankly stares at you they almost end up becoming these staring competitions. And Summer and I will sort of laugh by the end of them if we haven’t made it all the way through, just because it’s an interesting relationship between the two of us. They’ve both known each other for a long time and there’s a lot of tension within it.

In the last episode, with Summer doing ballet, are we heading to a point where the Terminator's are going to be more like Cylons (on “Battlestar Galactica”), and are going to have more emotional stuff going on? Because it seemed like there was a hint of that.

Friedman: Well, first of all, I would argue, with all due respect, to [“Galactica” exec producer] Ron Moore, that the Cylons have wanted to be like Terminators for many years. Probably all of them wanted to be like “Blade Runner.” But I think she is a more advanced model and she has more ability to at least mimic emotion and do some things. I think any time you have any form of cyborg, android—whatever, there’s always a temptation by the writers to start exploring that whole humanity thing. How far it goes and where we go and what her limitations are is something I’m still exploring. It’s interesting because I think that for where—there are two groups of people I think who watch these shows, there are the real sci-fi people who watch these shows and then there’s everybody else.

It seems that everybody else has probably never seen “Battlestar Galactica” and probably can’t remember “Blade Runner” and couldn’t tell you what was going on. So they’re all fascinated by it, and then you have the people who’ve seen every episode of “Star Trek” and watch that episode where—and they’re like, oh they’re going down this road, because we’ve seen this road, and you sort of have a responsibility on the one hand, I think, to try to explore it in the ways that it most obviously occurs. And then I think to the people who’ve seen these things before, which includes me, you want to keep those people interested so you want to explore it in the ways that we haven’t seen it before.

It’s a delicate balance and we only had nine episodes in and everyone has a different idea as to where, what Summer should be doing, and what Cameron’s attitude should be, and is she feeling emotion or is she just pretending to feel emotion? If you continue to pretend do you eventually feel? How is that possible? It’s something that we toss around a lot and we’re working through it. But when I was writing the show I would not watch “Battlestar.” I said to Ron Moore, honestly I had to avoid “Battlestar” for like a year because I couldn’t handle—they do those things so well, or at least I think they do, that I really wanted to go off on my own and not think about it. Anyway, I don’t know if I answered your question.

Have you actually officially been renewed for season two yet?

Friedman: No. … Everyone’s sort of—the first year show is sort of the ritual for first year shows is to come back into the network and tell them what season two is. Things are just a little weird this year because of having the strike so we have to readjust what our season two plans are. We’re going to go in and sit down with the network and we’ll do a post-game on season one and talk about season two. They’ll make the decision. Fox, they haven’t made a decision on any shows yet. So I fully expect to get in there with them pretty soon and hopefully have an answer pretty soon because we need to start writing.

If you do return, will it be just a half season as well or are you looking at maybe going like a full like 24- or 22-episode season or will it still be like a half season?

Friedman: Again, that’s up to Fox. I don’t know. Last year I had 22 planned and we switched it to 13 and we did nine. So I’m always—when I sit down and plan a season out, until someone tells me otherwise, I plan for 22, and if it’s not going to be 22 I make adjustments. But I always plan for 22. I’ve had ideas for probably the first three or four years. I’ve got arcs for them. Sometimes it just a matter of moving things up or moving things back or seeing where it goes.

Cameron gets all the comedy but nobody else ever seems to be anything but angry. Well, I mean, I can’t see it’s the end of the world. Is nothing funny in the future?

Green: She gets the comedy though by chance. She’s not like Jerry Seinfeld. She’s not standing up there with one liners and—

Cameron’s line, “I call nine millimeter.” Come on, guys. It was awesome.

Green: Yes, it was. That was just an awesome line. That just worked out well.

Friedman: I think that—it’s weird. In the pilot there’s absolutely no humor at all and I say that having written it. And then I sat down and wrote the second episode and I put a lot of jokes in it and most of them were Cameron’s. Everyone ... the table read and when read, it was like, I was really funny. And everyone’s laughing; it was like we had a sitcom taping. And it was like, God, first of all no one thinks that I’m ever funny and I know for a fact that I’m hysterical. They wouldn’t—everyone was like, wow, that’s really funny, it’s really funny and I remember Lena came up to me and she’s like, Josh, this is really funny, I’ve got to do comedy in here. Now you never told me I was going to do comedy. I was like, well, let’s go for it.

Every time people just put on the boots and the leather jackets it just seems people get pretty serious. I’m going to try to get more comedy next season. It’s one of my vows, is that we explore more of the dark humor of the situation. I think there are shows—“Buffy the Vampire Slyaer” did a great job with that many moons ago. I always thought it was a great balance. So if it’s not funny, that’s really just my fault for not getting there. Every time I sit down to do it just comes out the other way.

Green: I laughed in the pilot when she hit Cromarty with the truck. That’s was actually … I got a huge laugh from—

Friedman: It’s always funny when somebody gets hit with something but you end up with Three Stooges humor or Cameron says something odd. But I think there’s never more—

Green: You never know when humor is going to be funny until you shoot it or really until we’re on the day, on the set doing it. You read it and you don’t really pick up the humor until you’re doing it. There are just a lot of odd moments that become really humorous, that are just humorous out of being so odd, I think. Those are the ones I always laugh at.

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