Prison Break’s Robert Knepper talks season 5 and the ‘chameleon’ influence of British actors.

As Prison Break returns to UK screens after eight years, we spoke to Robert Knepper about reprising his psychopathic role of T-Bag and how little he can reveal about David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.



Robert Knepper: There were so many feelings about this coming back. I can’t go anywhere in the world without people resonating with that character in the show. At first, I was a little reluctant to jump back into it because I thought, “Oh it’s going to start all over again, T-Bag, T-Bag, T-Bag.’ You guys on your side of the pond [UK] are the reason why I started acting, with Laurence Olivier being at the top, and Anthony Hopkins, Daniel-Day Lewis, Gary Oldman, Peter O’Toole. These were chameleon actors to me. And no-one told me when I wanted to be an actor that this is the price you have to pay for doing your best work in high profile projects; not going anywhere in the world without people knowing you as that one character.

But I thought that’s okay because it’s a great character. It’s very well written. The greatest thing about it is [creator] Paul Scheuring called me and said, “I really want you for this thing, Wentworth [Miller] and Dominic [Purcell] want to put this thing back together” and I was like, “What are you going to call it? Are you going to call it a reboot?” Because reboot in my eyes doesn’t necessarily have a huge success rate. And I said, “Look the character’s been through a lot in the last six or seven years, I’ve been through a lot as a person, the world’s been through a lot, can you give us something that is still reminiscent of the old but also embraces the present and the future? He said, “Absolutely”. And I’m here to tell you from me, for T-Bag, he definitely gave me that. I’m very happy I said yes.