Abrams, mysterious role lured Nimoy to 'Fringe'

With his "Star Trek" heating up theaters and "Lost" and "Fringe" winding down their respective seasons, producer J.J. Abrams says he is still looking for the next wild idea.

"I always go for the crazy idea and try to make it work," says the wunderkind force behind two of the most innovative series on TV.

He's also being credited with breathing new life into the aging "Star Trek" franchise with his "prequel" film, which topped the box office this past weekend.

In a telephone news conference late Friday, Abrams was grateful for all the positive reviews of his new "Star Trek" but was anxious to see how audiences reacted. Not to worry, the film opened to $76.5 million.

This week, Abram's TV projects took center stage. "Lost" wraps up its next-to-last season on Wednesday night. And "Fringe" welcomed Leonard Nimoy as a key character on Tuesday's season finale.

Abrams says that getting the 76-year-old actor to agree to a part on "Fringe" was similar to selling Nimoy on returning to the role of Spock on "Star Trek." They pitched him the idea, and, like the plan to reboot the classic franchise, Nimoy found "Fringe" to be "interesting and intriguing."

Nimoy's character, William Bell, the mysterious head of Massive Dynamic, will appear in several episodes next season.

Abrams says Bell was to have been revealed earlier on in the first season but as the show progressed just about everything changed - from the tone of the drama to the nature of the characters and their relationships.

"One of the biggest challenges of the first seasons of a show," he adds, "is finding the pace of the series."

For example, the relationship between eccentric scientist Walter (John Noble) and his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) started out strained and somewhat dark. But as the series progressed and the actors' personalities took over, they developed a warm and humorous relationship.

The Olivia Dunham character (Anna Torv) started out as a "guarded, protective woman," but she's warmed up, too. But she still has a lot of emotional baggage.

Abrams says the finale provided a "massive turning point" for "Fringe" and marked "the end of one chapter and the start of another."

He says the concept for "Fringe" came out not wanting to make a TV show that was so complicated that it made your head hurt (an apparent reference to the complicated "Lost").

He says "Fringe" is "meant to be a fun, cool and insane representation of what it feels like to live in a world where science seems to be limitless in what it can do."

He adds that amazingly just about every weird idea that they come up with turns out to have a basis in reality. "We will do something crazy and then I'll read about something just like or close to it in a science journal," he says.

Abrams had time-travel storylines in "Lost" and "Star Trek" but says "Fringe" is rooted in the here and now. However, last week's episode introduced an alternate reality, a parallel universe allowing for more off-the-wall stories.

He says now that "Fringe" has been renewed for another 22 episodes and the characters are established, the creative staff is free to really explore weird science.