After an eight season run as Jack Bauer on FOX's hit TV show, 24, Kiefer Sutherland returns to the small screen starring in the new FOX series, Touch, created by Tim Kring (Heroes).
Sutherland stars as a single, widowed father, Martin Bohm, who struggles to connect with his 11-year-old son Jake (David Mazouz). On tonight's preview of the "Pilot" episode, Martin discovers that his son is able to predict things before they take place. The episode includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw as social worker Clea Hopkins and guest star Danny Glover as Professor Arthur Teller.
Earlier this week, Sutherland took part in a press call with various media outlets to talk about his new series, what attracted him to the role of Martin Bohm, and about making his return to television.
At what point did you connect with your character and just know that this was a story that you wanted to tell and be a part of?
It was funny. I was doing a play in New York on Broadway. I had a film that I knew I was going to go do and so I read Touch almost reluctantly. I don't think I was completely ready to go back to television yet. I was enjoying some of the different opportunities that I had had. I think it was around page 30, I remember going, "Oh sh--..." which I just knew I would be so remiss if I didn't take the opportunity that Touch was. I identified with him out of the gate. There was something interesting, because obviously this is very different than 24.
Yet, there is a real similar through line in the kind of character of the man. Jack Bauer would be faced with unbelievable circumstances in the course of a day and he would never win completely. And this guy is never going to win either. He's never going to have the quintessential relationship of father and son. And yet, he perseveres and that's a great kind of character statement and so I identified with him greatly on that and I think as a parent as well, just the sense of responsibility combined with not knowing what to do all the time.
Even though this is again a heightened experience, I think every parent feels that. I certainly can speak for myself and say that I have during Camelia's pregnancy - for nine months I'd have these great fantasies of how I was going to be the greatest dad on the planet. And then [Sarah] was born and a kind of fear came over me like none other that I've ever had in my life. I was confronted with the fact that I really didn't know what I was doing and it was something that I was going to have to figure out as I went.
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