Fringe star Joshua Jackson has claimed that he will play a reduced role in the upcoming fourth season of the show. Jackson, who portrays Peter Bishop, told IGN that he will appear in "less" episodes than usual in a continuation of the story laid out by the third season’s finale.
Jackson said, "Our show is not a star-driven show, it's a character-driven show. I know [the producers] want me to be a part of Fringe, but I know they also want to tell the story in the best possible way." Jackson also described Peter's decreased role in the Fox sci-fi drama as "ballsy." "It's so unusual to take one of the three leads... and to break them out of the show," he said. "Particularly on network television where a lot of it really is personality-driven. There's a lot of nervousness about upsetting the apple cart."
In the third season finale of Fringe, Peter was erased from history by a time paradox. Jackson said of the twist: "That cliffhanger was so big that if [the writers] half-assed it in the beginning of season four, I think our audience... would kind of smell the suck on that. They'd be kind of disappointed that we gave them this big thing, and then we didn't actually go after it. Jackson previously confirmed that production of the fourth season of Fringe had begun without him, though showrunners Jeff Pinker and Joel Wyman later confirmed that he will appear in future episodes.
The fourth season of Fringe is scheduled to begin September 23rd.
