The Big Bones Interview: Deschanel and Nathan Dish on Season 10B

Will there be an eleventh season of Bones? How will Emily Deschanel’s real life pregnancy dove-tail into the storyline in Season 10 B? What new development will put pressure on Booth and Brennan’s relationship? Is someone thinking of leaving the Jeffersonian institute, and what manner of new ‘Big Bad’ is on the horizon?

These were just some of the questions asked during our roundtable interview with Bones stars Emily Deschanel and EP Stephen Nathan this week. You want answers? We got answers! Read on for full highlights from our call.

Brennan’s pregnancy will Have a ‘tremendous impact” on the series

Stephen Nathan: The pregnancy is just going to have a little more impact on them this season. Brennan now realizes what it is to have a child, and having a family expand and grow. Now she knows the tremendous risk that she and Booth’s job have in terms of how it affects their family.

She’s going to have to deal with that. It’s something she was a bit oblivious to before, because she didn’t have the experience. There are emotional considerations that surprise Brennan and will affect the pregnancy for the rest of the season.

Emily Deschanel: You’ll see Brennan going through a whole thing. She doesn’t really accept her pregnancy for a period of time. Having a second pregnancy is different than having a first pregnancy. Each one is different. Brennan is experiencing that, and like Stephen said she realizes what it means when you’re working in their kind of world, and putting yourself in danger. She’s out of the field a little bit more this time. You’ll see there are a lot of emotional things that happen for Brennan, because of this pregnancy.

Stephen Nathan: Brennan’s pregnancy will have a tremendous impact on the series, certainly giving us a season finale that is deeply affected by it.

Emily Deschanel as Brennan | Co. Cr: Patrick McElhenney/FOX

The pregnancy storyline will cause Brennan and Booth to reevaluate their lives and jobs

Stephen Nathan: The baby will not appear this year. I know everyone kind of expects it, but we’ve had a lot of births on the show. We’re just trying to approach the whole thing a bit differently –  to see the emotional complications rather than the physical complications of this pregnancy,  because this pregnancy is much more fraught emotionally for both of them for many, many reasons.

There’s also the preponderance of cases that have affected their life over the past 10 years of working together and how that affects their perception of their situation, and their perception of the world, and the world they want to bring their new child into and raise their family. So all of this has a tremendous impact on them. Do they want to keep getting shot at? That’s the real question.

Emily Deschanel: They had their house blown up last season. It’s big risks, this job. Booth was in jail. It’s a really risky, dangerous job to have, especially the way they do it. It’s something that they’re considering heavily.

Stephen Nathan: And we’ve never seen them take a break. When they separated before, Booth went to war. We’re going to be treading some new ground.

An upcoming story arc involving Booth’s gambling relapse is one of Nathan’s favorites

Stephen Nathan: It’s always hard for me to pick favorites, but I think the storyline that is the most emotionally rich for us is Booth’s relapse into gambling and how it affects Brennan and the family.

The ripples go out from that and cause a lot of changes, not only for Brennan and Booth, but for the other characters as well.

There’s great stuff between Cam and Arastoo too. Arastoo going off to Iran and their relationship being in jeopardy and his life being in jeopardy.

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We will deal with “more than one” recurring villain this season

Stephen Nathan: We’re going to be dealing with more than one. We have an interesting new serial killer who appears and gets somewhat resolved in second half of this season.  It’s actually resolved when someone is on death row about to be executed. But at very end, someone resurfaces from beyond the grave and comes back to alter everybody’s life yet again.

Emily Deschanel: Ghosts?

Stephen Nathan: No ghosts, but I would imagine people who are committed to the show will know that our favorite serial killer was Pelant, and although Pelant is in fact dead – and Pelant himself does not resurface – the effects of Pelant’s life have not gone away.

Brennan (Emily Deschanel, L) and Booth (David Boreanaz, R) | Co. Cr: Patrick McElhenney/FOX

On staying fresh after 10 years, and the big question surrounding an 11th season

Emily Deschanel: Stephen and all of the writers do a really wonderful job of keeping things interesting -changing dynamics of the characters and changing the characters with us. I love working with the actors. I love working with the writers. I love working with our crew. We have an amazing group of people. It feels like a family. We’ve worked together for 10 years. Sometimes there’s odd tensions and things like that on different TV shows, but we don’t have that here.

David Boreanaz and I have always thought it’s very important to continue working on your acting and putting 100% into everything you’re doing. Putting that investment into the show is important.

I still love doing the show. It’s a really interesting character that I love playing. I’m interested in continuing and it doesn’t seem like we’re at the end of the story yet. Maybe we will by the end of next season. Hopefully we will do another season, but it’s not official.

Stephen Nathan: I just want to say that you will not be disappointed with the second half of this season. We’re going from death row to miniature golf to Tehran to yoga studios. I would strongly recommend you get a seat on the bus, because it’s been a terrific year.

We left off with the 200th episode. We’ve been gone for a long time, but we have been packing little surprises away in our little sack for you. We’re really looking forward to the second half of this year. I can promise you won’t be disappointed.

Bones returns to FOX with it’s Spring Premiere “The Psychic in the Soup” on Thursday, March 26, at 8pm ET/PT on FOX.