Kevin Pereira: Alright, let’s face it. We all have that one co-worker who goes a little above and beyond what’s necessary for the job, but when your co-worker is Jack Bauer? That’s when bodies start dropping. [Jack Bauer and Renee Walker Rescue Henry Taylor clip plays.] With us in studio, you know her as the FBI Agent Renee Walker on 24, Annie Wersching is here ladies and gentleman! *crowd cheers* What happened?!
Annie Wersching: I dunno! Thanks for showing that clip of Jack and all the bad guys *laughs*
Kevin Pereira: You were playing it ___, Jack was just tumbling around like an idiot.
Annie Wersching: I was just waiting, I’m just waiting.
Kevin Pereira: You were like “I’m gonna pop out and get my shot” and you did. So that was good.
Annie Wersching: Yeah, I was waiting for him to take out about five. Then get the last guy.
Kevin Pereira: You swooped in. But you didn’t save the hostage or something. What happened there?
Annie Wersching: We sorta saved him. He did technically get shot.
Kevin Pereira: I saw him bleeding from what looked like the kidney or the liver? I don’t know if you can recover from that.
Annie Wersching: But if we wouldn’t have been there, it would’ve been worse.
Kevin Pereira: It would’ve been worse. That’s true, that’s true. You were just talking with Olivia [Munn] right before we came back from commercial, that before this, before 24, before you were peeking around corners shooting criminals in their faces, you were on General Hospital.
Annie Wersching: I was.
Kevin Pereira: So how does that transition work exactly? They see you on General Hospital and say we need to give her a gun and let her peek around corners and…?
Annie Wersching: Yeah, General Hospital was hard. It’s definitely a strange world to be in because obviously your father is your brother is your child..
Kevin Pereira: You don’t know that at the time though, cause then that’d be weird. But when you come out of a coma, then they tell you and you’re shocked. Cause then you have a twin sister standing there to support you.
Annie Wersching: Right.
Kevin Pereira: Do you prefer doing the 24 style stuff over the General Hospital?
Annie Wersching: General Hospital was fun, I learned a lot, lot of lines to learn. It was like a class. But 24 is pretty pretty awesome.
Kevin Pereira: That means 24 is heads and shoulders better than General Hospital, okay. That’s fine. I’ll say it for ya! What’s the atmosphere on a set like 24 because I’d imagine Kiefer’s intense?
Annie Wersching: Yeah, the show is pretty intense and if you’re doing an action day it’s usually a pretty funny, joke around, easy. The action days..
Kevin Pereira: Cause the stunt guy might lose his life, but no actors are gonna be harmed.
Annie Wersching: Right, right! *laughs* But if it’s an intense, dramatic, lot of lines, a lot of changes to lines. It’s usually a little intense, yeah.
Kevin Pereira: Did you have to go through any intense kung fu training or firearms training or anything of that nature?
Annie Wersching: I had a little gun training. I was cast pretty last minute, so I had about a week before we started. I had about a day or two of gun training. And the rest of that was just learning different fights on set.
Kevin Pereira: Do they just take you down to South Central and throw you out of a limo and go “Good luck, figure it out”? Front site, you’ll figure it out.
Annie Wersching: Yeah! Yeah, let’s see what you learn! *laughs*
Kevin Pereira: Do they have sanctioned guys that are showing you SWAT tactics, is it anything like that?
Annie Wersching: No, it was just one sort of rigorous day of learning how to hold it, how to shoot it. Load it…
Kevin Pereira: Some dude named Rusty shows up with a duffel bag, “Well what do you wanna shoot?”
Annie Wersching: I think his name might’ve actually been Rusty!
Kevin Pereira: Of course it was. He goes, “Go to my alley, let’s shoot some garbage cans”. The show does not pull punches and the thing about 24 is that you can really be killed off at like any day. So are you at read-throughs around the table hoping that you make it to the last page?
Annie Wersching: No, we don’t do read-throughs. Usually I was just sneaking the next script in the hair and makeup trailer, just looking for my name and seeing if it says like “In a pool of blood” or something. *Laughs*
Kevin Pereira: Exactly, looking for key words like “dead”.
Annie Wersching: Right.
Kevin Pereira: But I checked IMDB and it shows that you look — according to credits, you seem to be alive through the end of the season. Are you-
Annie Wersching: I think if you check IMDB, everybody has all twenty-four [episode] credits as of right now.
Kevin Pereira: Okay. They don’t give it away. Are you coming back next season or can you not say? Okay, you can’t. Of course you can’t. Let’s talk about torture now, cause your character is sort of by the book, everything is to the letter of the law. And Jack is just “do whatever it takes” type of guy. For your character, do you wish that you could just waterboard somebody every episode just for kicks?
Annie Wersching: Wow. My character’s definitely struggling with the torture issue. I had to, I think you were maybe just showing it, I had to decide whether or not to pretend to torture a baby in order to find the President’s husband. Would I do that in real life for Michelle Obama? Maybe.
Kevin Pereira: Would you? You’d do that for the Obama’s?
Annie Wersching: *Laughs*
Kevin Pereira: No, that’s good to know! Yes you can is the answer! It’s actually snuck into the stimulus bill, you can torture babies if you have to. But did they teach you how to torture? Is there something like… Let’s say I have some information about the Obamas, this is gonna get crazy, the ish is gonna go down as the kids say… What could you do?
Annie Wersching: Umm, let’s see. Besides a pen in your eye which I think Jack tried to do, let’s see. *Stands up* You’re gonna escort me out, interviews over. *Kevin touches her arm* I’m gonna break your arm *twists arm up*. There’s more, but I don’t wanna hurt you!
Kevin Pereira: You actually already did, thank you for that! Annie, pleasure to meet you, thank you so much. You guys can catch her on this season of 24, Monday nights on FOX.