Nikita’s Aaron Stanford at SDCC 2012 (Video)

At San Diego Comic-Con, I talked to Aaron Stanford about the upcoming season of Nikita. What’s in store for fan-favorite Birkhoff? Be sure to check out the video footage below for some hints at what’s to come. And you can read the highlights of the roundtable interview here:

• He joked that everybody will die except Birkhoff next season. It will be all Birkhoff all the time. “Dialogue will be between him and a pre-recorded him, on a video screen in front of himself.” The name of the show will, of course, have to change.

• He has appreciated and enjoyed the development of his character in Season Two.

• Where do we find Birkhoff in Season Three? Division is back. It’s been sold as “This is not your father’s Division,” and our heroes are and back under their own authority. At the same time there is more to the story. There will be tension. “It’s a military construct, so there’s gonna have to be a chain of command.” Tension will come from who is in charge, and how people react to that.

• Will Birkhoff be okay with returning to Division? To return to the old life that he left behind, after all that has happened? Stanford says that it’s not clear. Birkhoff has changed a lot. In Season One, he was under the thumb of Percy, but then in Season Two, he was independently wealthy and became the financier to the team. “He was like the Charlie of Charlie’s Angels.” Yes, he’s back at Division, but not in exactly the same capacity. “I think the idea is that he has more autonomy and he has more authority this time.”

• What will happen between Birkhoff and Sonya? They had the same jobs, under Percy and Amanda, respectively. Who is running tech now? However, as Craig Silverstein hinted at, there is a rift between the two characters that took place during the break. Stanford suspects that the rift is the fault of Birkhoff. They ended Season Two with a kiss, and when we return, a month will have passed. “It’s not good. […] Saying he’s getting the silent treatment is putting it mildly.”

• Another person at the table asked about Traveler, his ABC show from 2007. Did he learn anything from that show that he brought to Nikita? “You know, it was the same genre essentially, but the characters are quite different. […] I mean, Will Traveler was essentially … they wanted him to be a Jason Bourne like character. […] Very different from Birkhoff. I’ve more learned about working in this genre just from being a fan of this genre, and all the films that I’ve seen multiple times over and over again and studied. I think that’s where you learn how to work in genre, just by being a fan.” I never watched Traveler, but apparently it also starred Matt Bomer. Please excuse me while I scour the internet for video.

Photo and Video by Lucia Giusti, Copyright © 2012 TheTelevixen.com