TJ Thyne: We Interview Our Nice Boy

TJ Thyne is a busy man. He stars on Fox’s hit show Bones. He’s the founder and active participant of Theatre Junkies. He spends time giving motivational speeches at high schools and colleges. So when we asked for the opportunity to ask this Nice Boy Hall of Famer a few questions, we kind of figured we’d get blown off. Boy, do we love being proven wrong like this! It’s been a veritable lovefest back and forth as we orchestrated schedules and publicists, with the end result being a delightful glimpse at the man behind Dr. Jack Hodgins. Enjoy it with us, won’t you?

NiceGirlsTV.com: Hi TJ! Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us.

TJ Thyne: Hello wonderful ones! How much do I love NiceGirlsTV.com!

NGTV: And we love you! OK, let’s get to some questions here. Hodgins gets such glee from what he finds in teeny tiny particulates. What do you, as an actor, think about to get there with him?

TJ: What an excellent “actor-process” question!  Look at you, knowing your technique vocabulary!  (laughs) I love that you describe it as “glee” because that is exactly what it is for Jack.  He just gets  a kick out of doing this.  What I love about Jack’s excitement over his particulates is that it shows the excitement young scientists have for the world of Forensics.  I mean, Forensic Science is a fairly young science. It’s only been with us for so many decades now, and only really come into its own in the last decade.  It’s why I always loved that Fox cast a young group of actors to play these scientists.  It illustrates the youthfulness of the very world of Forensics.

TJ Thyne stars in 'Bones' / photo courtesy of Fox

I find myself these days doing a lot of positive speaking and motivation intensives for young kids. I don’t really know how  that started.  People seem to just request that I come to their high schools or colleges and talk to their graduating students…they seemed to think  I’d be someone they can relate to.  It’s a very cool, accidental, gratifying opportunity. [NGTV note: Um, yeah, we’d show up to school that day for sure!] Anyway, so many young adults are touched by the idea of shows like Bones and CSI, that they are going into the study of Forensics for their degree in college, all based on the television they’ve grown up watching the last many years.  Look Mom and Dad, TV watching is making your kids Doctors after all! (laughs)

At the end of the day, we all know that Jack is a gazillionaire.  He’s got more money than most people would know what to do with, and yet he chooses, as a day-in-day-out activity, to show up at the Jeffersonian and work along side Dr. Brennan in putting together theories and proving them as truths. Why?  In the end, for the hope of solving enough murders to hopefully prevent them occuring in the future, thus, in his own intelligent way, making the world a safer place.  Because lets face it, when it comes to Forensic Science, it’s going to be very hard to get away with commiting a crime with people like Dr. Jack Hodgins out there in the world!  A single fiber, a single minute-ism of any kind, and he’s got your ass!  Thus, his glee.

NGTV: So will there be any ramifications of Hodgins’ actions from “The Hero in the Hold”?  Will we see him meeting with Sweets for counseling?

TJ: Naw. Good Ol’ Jack bounces back quick.  The only time we saw Jack go to the world of the soft-science, i.e. psychology with Sweets, was when he lost Zack and lost Angela all at the same time.  That knocked the wind out of Jack.  He was heading quickly down the road of depression.  His best friend Zack was swept up in this horrific murder cult, brainwashed and then Angela, the love of Jack’s life, leaves him. He was fighting with everyone, and just crushed.  So crushed.  That one episode where Michael Badalucco guest starred as Brennan’s intern, Jack finally breaks.  He starts opening up to him about Angela and about Zack and it was, well, sad…and honest and vulnerable of Jack, thus we find him sitting on Sweets’ couch.  I mean, seriously, for Jack Hodgins to willingly be in front of Dr. Sweets opening up, you KNOW things were getting rough for him.  But Sweets by saying “you are fine, it’s normal” actually helped Jack get back on the road to self-belief, which is what everyone needs in life.  And think of this, the Gravedigger was the bane of Jack’s existence, he was hunting the Gravedigger for 2 years, now that she’s caught, hell…his life is finally looking cheery again!

I gotta say, I love this character.  I also have faith in him.  He’s sarcastic as hell and opinionated sure, but deep down, this guy is as grounded and caring as they come.  He’d jump in front of a moving car for Brennan, Angela, Cam, Sweets or even Booth.  Jack is left alone in this world.  He’s the only child of two parents who are gone.  Jack’s family? Jack’s only family are those six wonderful people (and that includes Zack).

NGTV: Of course we have to ask: is there a future for Angela and Jack?

TJ: Jack Hodgins is madly, madly, madly in love with that woman! She is the love of his life, and she is the one that got away. For four years he has pined after her. He has proposed to her 3 TIMES! He has showered her with love and praise and lust and desire and passion and…still, she can’t fully commit to him. As much as Jack wants to believe that Angela loves him as much as he loves her, her actions don’t really show that. She’s kissing other guys, wanting to sleep with other people, dating other people right after dropping Jack and saying “move on, I have.”  He just..at some point, you have to sit back and say ‘wait…maybe she really isn’t into me…maybe I’m projecting this…”

TJ Thyne and Michaela Conlin in 'Bones' / photo courtesy of Fox

Angela is all Jack has ever wanted and more, but even when he embraces her free-spirit attitude and gives her all the space she asks, she walks away, she doesn’t commit. So what’s a guy to do? At what point does the guy say “I’ve got to protect myself now. I’ve got to protect my own heart.”  Which is the place Jack has finally arrived at.  He would do ANYTHING to continue to meet her in the storage room for passionate love making sessions (laughs), but how fair is that?  How wrong is that when it means something to him and might not mean something to her.  It’s what the “earring” moment was all about in a recent episode.  He was just in bed with her and said this moment is amazing, but I want more, I need more.  And she walked away. He’s putting on a happy face now because he has to, but all he wants to do is spend the rest of his life, making her happy.  Thus the earring. That holding on to her, that hope that she will one day some day see him, really see him.

So, for now, Jack Hodgins, for the first time in 4 years, needs to go think about himself in this.  Needs to walk away from Angela so he isn’t hurt yet again. If you asked Jack, he’d say “oh yeah, we are great friends, there’s nothing there.”   But every time she walks by, he’ll discreetly inhale the air  just to get be close to her.  Every time she looks at him, he’ll stop breathing for just a minute.  And every time she accidentally brushes his arm, or touches his shoulder, he will melt.  One day, he’ll move on, maybe.  Or maybe, just maybe, the storybook ending will come a knocking and Jack will get his lady. And on that day, should that day arrive, he’ll fall to his knees and cry to the heavens with open arms, a resounding THANK YOU!  THANK YOU!  THANK YOU!!!!

NGTV: I think we all just swooned over Jack even more. Wow. On a more lighthearted note, your short film Validation is just delightful. Tell us a little about the project, how you came to be involved with it, and what it means to you.

TJ Thyne in 'Validation'

TJ: My good friend Kurt Kuenne and I felt the world needed to smile.  So we set out to make a short-film-series that would hopefully do just that.  Kurt said in an interview that I am the most positive individual he’s met in his entire life – which is very nice to hear – and thus he wrote the character based on his impression of me.  (chuckles)

My production company, Theatre Junkies Productions, produced the film and we put our little-movie-that-could into the film festivals just to see if we could make peoples days ever so gently brighter.  It played in over 30 festivals and won 19 awards!  How amazing is that?!  Then we posted it on YouTube so friends and family could see it and it has gone viral!  It has over a million and a half views and doesn’t seem to be slowing down!  That is really exciting to us, since we made this movie out of the love of telling stories and hopefully having a positive effect on peoples lives.

NGTV: It really is a ray of sunshine in a pretty gloomy world. Go watch it, people! Now, what else do you have in the pipeline, aside from more Bones?

TJ: We are making a movie!  We are producing our first feature this summer!  When I take off Jack Hodgins labcoat for this summer, I’ll be putting on Lovell Milo’s clothes and bringing you a film we are extremely excited about. It’s called Shuffle. It’s all the same cast and crew of Validation and it’s a great script!  I’ll let you know how we are doing during the filming.  Keep an eye out for some familiar faces from Bones making cameos, too.