Rockwall, Texas – Three key inmates from Fox’s “Prison Break” already are stretching their legs on this seasonably sweltering early afternoon. First they sprint out of the woods; then they outrace a lumbering freight train.
Better to be on the wrong side of the tracks than behind bars, says panting Peter Stormare, otherwise known for his sinister use of a wood chipper in “Fargo.” “We really went a little nutty. When you’re an actor you’re like a wild horse. You want to scream, you want to do something. It was like visiting a concentration camp every day.”
The show’s principal actors, including Stormare as unsavory John Abruzzi, were incarcerated in an abandoned Joliet, Ill., penitentiary for most of the first season. Now they’re letting loose in North Texas, where filming on “Prison Break: Manhunt” is in the second week of a scheduled 10-month shoot. Everyone is still getting acclimated, save for local-kid-makes- good Lane Garrison. The 26- year-old joined “Prison Break” last October as inmate David “Tweener” Apolskis. Now he’s a full-fledged regular who still has a hard time believing it’s all for real.
“For me it’s definitely a homecoming,” he says. “It’s been a surreal experience. … People in the cast call me every night. Where do I go to eat? Where do I go to meet beautiful women? I just tell them, ‘Go to the gas station. Everyone here is beautiful.”‘
Many of those same beautiful women might be on the lookout for Wentworth Miller, who became the show’s uncontested heartthrob during the course of Season 1. His character, Michael Scofield, orchestrated his own imprisonment as part of a grand plan to get wrongly accused brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) off death row and on the lam. Many magazine covers later, Miller is of two minds about sudden fame.
“It has been an adjustment,” he says while we sit on handy wooden apple boxes during a break from filming. “Everywhere I go, I run into someone who’s a fan of the show. And that’s a good thing. You want people to love your work because you want to stay employed.
Miller says he has driven through Texas several times on cross-country trips. And as a high-schooler, he spent a week in swim camp at the University of Texas.
“Of course I only saw the inside of a pool, so I didn’t really get to explore what Austin had to offer. I’m really looking forward to having some time to check out Dallas.” Stormare, whose homeland is Sweden, already has been to the museum and recommended a visit to his cast mates. “I must say they’ve kept it very nice and open, airy and eerie. It really broke my heart. It gives you a sense and a scent of the times.”
The show’s 22-episode second season is supposed to encompass three weeks in the lives of its characters. This means the fugitives are stuck with their short prison haircuts. Or as Miller says, “You’re not going to see me in dreadlocks by the end of the season.”
