INTERVIEW: Warehouse 13 Stars Talk Final Season, Going Out on Their Own Terms

It’s a bitter sweet summer for fans of syfy comedy drama Warehouse 13.

The show makes a return to our screens this Monday April 14 at 9:00 pm, where it will commence the final six episodes of both the current season, and the series.

The truncated season ahead picks up after the events of last season in which new Warehouse caretaker Claudia (Allison Scagliotti) spectacularly went head to head against Paracelsus (Anthony Head).

So what can fans expect from the season ahead?

Syfy teases that the entire Warehouse team “will confront old questions while encountering new revelations” this season, including – a painful realization that Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly) must face together, Artie (Saul Rubinek) accompanying Claudia on a soul-searching journey regarding her long-lost sister, and Steve (Aaron Ashmore) colliding spectacularly with his past.

ScreenSpy and assembled press recently gathered for a conference call with Warehouse stars Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly and Executive Producer Jack Kenny to discuss the remaining episodes, in addition to taking a look back on the series as a whole and addressing their bitter-sweet feelings on the show’s demise.

“As far as the legacy? We’ll see,” says McClintock of the show’s ending. “Back when they did however many episodes of the original Star Trek, they never dreamed that, despite its being canceled early, that it would go on to be such a huge cult success. So I guess we’ll see what happens. You know, Joanne and I were just talking. I haven’t seen her. I miss her. She’s my friend who I’ve spent the last five years with and so it’s hard. It’s difficult not to see everybody but I know we are all pulling for one another, and I’ll look back on Warehouse 13 as one of the great times of my life and my career. I watched my boys grow up and I think I may have even grown up a little bit myself, but don’t tell anyone I said that or I’ll have to kill you!”

Episode 501 “Endless Terror” Pictured: Eddie McClintock as Pete and Joanne Kelly as Myka. Image © Syfy

Kelly agrees. “You can never foretell what’s going to happen. So all I can say is from my own personal point of view in regards to the show, I learned so much during Warehouse 13. I think now that it’s over, in fact  since we stopped shooting you realize how special it was. And very much there’s times where you don’t really understand what something is to you until it’s no longer there. I think that’s a cliché for a reason but it’s really true for me that Warehouse 13 was a really special time. And I don’t think I understood that until I stopped, you know, until you’ve stopped showing up every day and you say, “Oh my God I’m not going to see these people,” these people you’re so used to seeing every day. These people have been such a big part of my life. It’s a huge change.”

While the group are reluctant to spill specifics on the final six, McClintock shares some details on upcoming episode “The Savage Seduction” which Executive Producer Jack Kenny refers to during our call as ‘The telenovela episode.’

“The last one of course is “Savage Seduction” and wait till you see that one. I mean, it’s so bizarre,” says McClintock. “It’s so off the wall and Aaron Ashmore is just so awesome, brilliant, fantastic and fun. If you know Aaron he’s pretty quiet and he’s pretty reserved, and to see him play this character! He plays two characters on the show. It’s just hilarious.”

“Jack came up to me,” recounts McClintock. “He’s like, “Okay listen. You’re going to have to learn Spanish so start now.” And I was like, “What?” And the storyline is we all get caught in a Spanish telenovela. So, you know, Joanne and I and Saul were all having to take Spanish lessons for about two months I guess. We took lessons during our lunch breaks and it was probably the hardest I’ve had to work on any of the shows or any of the seasons.”

“It was hard having to learn the words and make sure that the inflections were there and make sure that it sounds as though we know what we’re saying, and then translating it back to English as you’re saying it in Spanish.”

“I mean, it was hard for me. I’m like four IQ points above the short bus so it was difficult – but I watched it last night for the first time and it’s so wild and wacky and I’m so proud of it. I think it’s really funny and I think it’s going to be one of the best episodes of the series. Jack directed that so it’s one of the ones that I remember the most fondly.”

“We had such a good time. Honestly we really did have a great time,” says Kenny of the show as a whole. “Almost in every episode there’s a day that I can think back and go, “Oh my God, that was so much fun.”

“And, you know, and there’s also a day where you go, “Oh that was a nightmare,” because it was raining or cold or whatever or boiling hot. But we had such a good group of people and there was almost in every episode a couple of days or more where we just went, “God we’re so lucky to have this and we’re just having a great time.”

“I think that’s why we keep referring to these last six because they were the best time, because most shows don’t get the luxury of ending their series in the way that they want. A lot of shows are yanked prematurely and suddenly. So we got the great luxury and gift of being able to say, “Hey we’re going out and this is how we’re going.”

Joanne Kelly and Aaron Ashmore. (Photo by: Russ Martin/Syfy)

With just six episodes to round out the series, Kenny admits to regrets surrounding some under-explored story lines.

“At the end of last season we gave Joanne a cancer line story,” says Kenny. “And I really would’ve loved to have explored that a little more realistically, a little more over some time have her character get more involved with that. But when they told us we had six [episodes] and we had to end the entire series, we did not want to spend five of those episodes dealing with cancer because it just would’ve been a real downer for the fans, and a downer for the actors.”

“It would’ve been no fun for Jo to have to do that.  I don’t feel proud of this but we kind of ended it quickly and moved on, because if we hadn’t it would’ve been an entirely different kind of an ending to the series and I don’t think it’s what the series actually deserved. I think we could’ve dealt with it in a really cool, interesting way. But instead we sort of kind of wrapped it up and moved on because I needed to.  We had ten stories broken out for the next season and when they told us we had six and we had to end it, we did five stories and five episodes and then in the last episode we did six stories. So we really crammed it all in there.”

Kelly takes a different view, however. “I think we’re all upset that we had to move on so quickly. But also I think that the writers did such a good job with this show. It is really chock full. Looking back after five years we’ve done a little bit of pretty much everything, so I don’t really have any regrets in that way, not at all.”

And as for fans of ‘Pyka’ (Pete and Myka)? McClintock teases “All I can say is this: PYKA.”

“You always say that,” points out Kelly. “You’ve been saying that for five years!”

“It’s my hook. It’s my hook man,” replies McClintock.

“I do think you see a fundamental change in these characters’ relationships as I think you do across the board in the show,” teases Kelly.  “That’s all I got to say about that.”

“There’s an arc that Eddie and Jo have in the last six episodes that’s really fun to see unfold,” adds Kenny. “And you see the beginning of that – the sort of a cracking of that iceberg at the end of Episode 4. But then it really starts to come to fruition in 5 and 6 and – but everybody – every character has a kind of a revelation of sorts in the last episode. Every character is granted a revelation in the defining moment and something really cool to deal with and in a way that really works. So I think – I just – I hope that everybody’s going to be very pleased with the final episode. I think they will be.”

Warehouse 13 premieres Monday April 14 at 9:00 pm ET on Syfy.