He was swamped by fanboys and fangirls at Comic-Con in San Diego in July, and he didn't crack under pressure then -- except to reveal that Dominican actress Dania Ramirez, familiar to connoisseurs of geek chic as one of the sirens from last summer's movie X-Men: The Last Stand, will join the cast as Maya Herrera.
According to Heroes's second-season program notes, Herrera is a young woman "plagued by a threatening ability that has driven both her and her twin brother Alejandro (Shalim Ortiz) from their home in the Dominican Republic to ... the U.S. in search of help."
Press him a little harder, and some other details emerge.
Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) will appear in a recurring role, beginning with the fifth episode, as a mysterious siren, Elle, with cryptic ties to the Petrelli and Bennet families.
The new season will incorporate storylines based in Egypt, Haiti, Mexico, Ireland, Lithuania and Ukraine, in addition to the U.S. and of course Japan, where, in May's season-ending cliffhanger, Masi Oka's character, Hiro, found himself trapped in time, back in the 16th century and facing bushido-blade-wielding characters straight out of an Akira Kurosawa samurai epic.
Mention that season finale -- and some of the more lacklustre reviews for the final chapter in what was one of last season's few TV Cinderella tales -- and Kring is apt to take on a slightly pained demeanour. Heroes is unusual in that it tapped into the mainstream audience, and not just the comics crowd. It was one of Global and NBC's highest-rated dramas last season and was nominated for a best drama Emmy.
"I don't read a lot of the Internet chatter," Kring said, taking a break between scenes on Heroes's main soundstage at Sunset Gower Studios, the former home of Columbia Pictures. "I'm never 100-per-cent satisfied with anything I do, but I was pretty pleased that we were able to wrap up that much story and give ourselves enough of a blank slate to start season two with."
Making Heroes on a week-to-week basis is an exercise in time travel in itself, Kring suggests, with all its attendant headaches and frustrations.
"When you make a TV show, you are often several months ahead of where the audience is. The daily brush fires we're putting out often have very little to with what the audience is reacting to in any given moment."
Rewind to July 2006. Heroes made its original debut at Comic-Con, untried and untested. Kring was, frankly, terrified. He screened the original 72-minute pilot to a hall full of fanboys and fangirls. He knew they wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but that he also knew they would turn on him if he trotted out the TV equivalent of the John Travolta flop Battlefield Earth.
He needn't have worried, as it turned out. Heroes's first chapter was still two months away from being shown on TV in a shortened, 50-minute version, but that first screening was one of those "click" moments that come along once or twice in a TV producer's lifetime. If he's lucky.
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