Now that the TCAs have wrapped up, it’s been a whirlwind of interview writing and recapping from all the coverage I gathered at the event, parceling out as many scoops and spoilers to you as I can in anticipation of the upcoming fall season.

So I’m emptying out my Notebook this week with scoop from a Homeland Emmy nominee, The Originals’ creator and Katie LeClerc on Monday’s summer finale of Switched at Birth. Let's do this!

HOMELAND As Jessica Brody on the Showtime hit drama, Best Supporting Actress Emmy nominee Morena Baccarin told me not to expect to see her character get much happiness when the new season starts next month: “The end of season two was incredibly intense in the sense that [Jessica] found out her husband is in fact a terrorist and is out there in the world even though we, as the audience know that he’s potentially not guilty. So where we start at season three, she’s been dealing with months of the backlash of that. He gets to go away and be in hiding, but the family is out in the public eye, and so they’ve had to deal with death threats and things that have been going on with them.”

Baccarin - who told me her real life pregnancy will not be incorporated into the show - also regularly goes to Sci-Fi conventions, such as the recent Wizard World in Chicago. I asked her if she misses her short haircut from her days playing Anna on V and she said: “I do! I miss it all the time. It was a really easy, low maintenance way to be. I do miss it. The fun thing about hair is you can do whatever you want with it, you can cut it, you can grow it out and stuff. I’m sure I’ll be still ever changing.” (More to come from our chat next week on TV Fanatic.)

THE ORIGINALS Creator Julie Plec is one busy lady! This fall she’s overseeing the launch of The Vampire Diaries spinoff while still keeping an eye on the show she helped steer into a huge hit for The CW. As if that weren’t enough, she’s also Executive Producing The Tomorrow People with Greg Berlanti. She laid it out for me how she’s juggling it all. “The main priority at the moment is making sure The Originals gets up to speed and is great because if we make a mistake doing a spin-off that feels less than, or weaker than, or not as enjoyable as The Vampire Diaries, then we have failed so spectacularly…for me it's about, it's making sure that creatively, and then from a production point of view, that we are kicking ass.”

And while still involved, Plec has turned over the reigns of TVD to someone who knows the show well since she’s been there the last few seasons. “Thankfully, Caroline Dries is taking over The Vampire Diaries, and is pulling, probably, 80% of the workload there. So, I'm there for more of a supervisory assist. We spent a lot of time at the end of season four, breaking season five, so we've got that kind of covered.” At this early stage in both show’s seasons, Plec did breathe a sigh of relief that things are on a good track. “Thank God,” she remarked, “if that wasn't going well, I would probably be in an asylum.”

SWITCHED AT BIRTH The summer finale is coming on Monday for the ABC Family drama and Katie LeClerc (Daphne) teased what we might see in terms of whether sleazy Chip Coto will get his comeuppance in the finale. “The thing about Chip Coto is that he is scary,” LeClerc said. “I think he’s not afraid to retaliate. He definitely is aware that Daphne’s a minor, and I think that complicates things a little bit for him, potentially. But really it’s Coto against Kennish, and now that there’s two Kennishes, I think Coto’s barriers have gone up even more than they were before.”

On a lighter note, and with a third season coming in early 2014, who would LeClerc love to share scenes with on SAB and also help bring some music to the show? “I really think that it would be amazingly fantastic to have Kristin Chenoweth on our show,” she shared. “I’ve been pitching from the very, very, very, very, very beginning that we need to have a musical episode being that Constance Marie was originally a break dancer; Lea Thompson was originally a ballet dancer; Lucas Grabeel, obviously, High School Musical.  I think that Kristin Chenoweth would be an amazing addition to, perhaps, a musical episode.”

That’s a wrap for this week! Anything else you’re dying to know about your favorite show or one of the new fall offerings? Leave a comment here or you email me directly at jim@jimhalterman.com. And remember: follow @TVFanatic for all your TV scoop!

Source:
http://www.tvfanatic.com/2013/08/jims-notebook-homeland-the-originals-and-switched-at-birth/