Garret talked to SCI FI Wire last month. The interview contains minor spoilers for the back nine.
“I know John Henry gets to leave,” Dillahunt said in an interview last month in Hollywood. “He gets to cut the umbilical cord, thankfully. I’m tired of being in that room. And I’m also tired of having my lines broadcast behind me on that screen, because I can’t mess up at all, and they’ve been kind of complex. But it’s going to be interesting.”
Dillahunt added that he’s grateful the show’s producers kept him on even after they killed off his character. “I’m really grateful that they trusted me enough to sort of give me another character, basically,” he said, adding: “He’s like a super-powered infant. You know, he’s very [intelligent, and] he’s very dangerous, I think, because of that. So we’re going to see him out in the world. He’s going to make a friend, yeah. He’s going to learn about fear, emotion, I guess. … They told me today I get in a big fight. I don’t know with whom; I’m anxious to find out. They said it’s a big learning experience for him.”
With Cameron (Summer Glau) maybe?
“I don’t know,” Dillahunt said. “I hope so. We’ve been dying to have a real fight. She just walked in and shot me. Whaa?”
Dillahunt, like the rest of the Terminator cast and producers, is philosophical about the ratings-challenged show’s move to Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT, leading into Dollhouse at 9.
“None of us really know what it means,” he said. “It’s such an odd time. … It’s really hard to gauge who’s watching what [and] how. A lot of my friends watch the show, and they don’t even know what night it’s on, because they just push ‘record series’ [on their DVRs]. They don’t know what night it’s on. If they didn’t have the TiVo, they wouldn’t know when it was on. A lot of people think it doesn’t matter, the timeslot. … But I think there is a lot of audience that’s kind of ignored, the older crowd that does stay at home, and they do tune in. And maybe they’ll be mined more efficiently.”
It’s been surmised that Terminator will have to improve in its new timeslot to get any kind of third-season pickup. “I assume a lot of people have always felt that we’ve been on the chopping block from day one, but here we are still, so I’m bad at predicting,” Dillahunt said. “Just when I think, ‘Ah, that must be it, we’re picked up.’ Like, ‘Ah, great news.’ So I hope they let us know soon, one way or another. But it’s a good show, you know? It’s hard to worry about those other things. And make a good show. I think it’s a trap.”