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The Mentalist star explains how his show transcends the procedural cop genre. (2:24)
 

Full interview. (11:36)
 

Tavis: Simon Baker stars in what has quickly become one of TV's most popular shows, "The Mentalist." Prior to his current role he also starred in the CBS series "The Guardian," and the hit movie "The Devil Wears Prada."

"The Mentalist" airs Tuesday nights at 9:00 on CBS, as if you didn't know. (Laughs) Here now a scene from "The Mentalist."

[Clip]

Tavis: So Jonathan, I got to bust Simon right quick. Get a shot of these shoes he has on. Don't move, Simon, don't move. (Laughter) Not mine, his. Can you get those shoes, somebody?

Simon Baker: That's the best I got, mate.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter) I just wanted to -

Baker: I'm working from here down. (Laughter) Each week I get a new paycheck - I've got a new shirt, jacket. (Laughter)

Tavis: I just wanted to point out that as well as his show is doing, his feet are still on the ground. Take that any way you want to take it.

Baker: Firmly planted.

Tavis: Firmly - (laughs). How old are those shoes, Simon?

Baker: These are - I think they're about five years old.

Tavis: They got some wear and tear on them.

Baker: They're just starting to get good.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) I'm glad to have you here.

Baker: I was going to say, I sat down and I went - I was going to say right at the end, they're nice kicks you got there, Tavis.

Tavis: Oh, thank you.

Baker: Yeah, they're nice kicks. I do like good shoes. Here's the deal. I had a suit that I was going to wear. I came from work this morning down at Union Station, put the suit on, pants were a little tight. (Laughter) Don't get to exercise much when you're doing television all day long, so I had to nix the suit pants, which means I couldn't wear the suit shoes with the jeans, so I was like - and literally, I said, "He's going to say something about my shoes." (Laughter) Well.

Tavis: And I did.

Baker: Yeah.

Tavis: I didn't let you do.

Baker: It's a good start.

Tavis: And that's way too much information, number one, but number two, aren't you supposed to know these things? Aren't you the mentalist?

Baker: Yeah, I thought -

Tavis: You couldn't see those pants weren't going to fit?

Baker: I thought you'd be in here. (Laughter) That's what I thought.

Tavis: All right. (Laughter) I'm going to leave you alone. I love - I'm not trying to bust on you. I love the fact this guy is still comfortable enough to be himself and wear what -

Baker: It's a funny thing - on the show, I wear a pair of old shoes. The character wears - I wear smart suits and I wear a pair of old brown leather shoes, and a lot of people comment and say, "Why do you wear those shoes?" And there's two reasons - one, it's an absolute element of the character that is it's about mileage and history. And I think shoes are like wheels - that's your mileage.

And the other thing is it's completely practical. When I'm acting, I want to feel comfortable, and more often than not you don't see someone's shoes when they're on screen, so I want to wear something that I feel comfortable in. Hence, I feel more comfortable (unintelligible).

Tavis: You don't see them unless an arrogant talk show host makes his director show your shoes to the national TV audience.

Baker: Yeah.

Tavis: I apologize for that. Not really, though. (Laughter) Anyway, what do you make of the fact that this show has become such a break-out success?

Baker: Yeah. Everyone asks me that question, and I can't make anything of it other than it is a very good thing right now. You sign on to a show like this, you obviously want it to be as good as it can possibly be, which is one thing, and you want to be proud of it, first and foremost.

Then if it reaches an audience, then that's gravy because then you've got a chance of continuing to do it. Not every show, no matter how good they are, get to reach an audience. The planets have to align, it's not - I felt there was something in the script, obviously, that I thought was interesting about it. I didn't know necessarily that it would click with the psyche and it just sort of does.

Even my sister in Australia, who grudgingly sort of wants to compliment me on anything (laughter) - I was on the phone with her, she said to me - she's a doctor and she's sort of like, "Like your show. It's really good." (Laughter)

"We have a real chuckle when we watch it." I was like, "Really?" She goes, "Yeah, I'm really proud of you." I was like, ah, that's from my sister.

Tavis: Tough customer.

Baker: Tough.

Tavis: That sister is. You said something a moment ago I want to go back to, when you said that you do a show and you want it to be something you're proud of; if it connects, that's gravy. What was it when you saw the script, what is it about the show, that you are proud of if it had not become a success?

Baker: Yeah, well, that's an interesting - that's a really good question. Success has, as they say, I think - was it - I don't even know who said it - success has many parents, and failure is an orphan. But I was thinking about reflecting on my career and different things, and some of the jobs that I've done that failed I loved more than the ones that succeeded because no one else loves them, and I lived with them just as much. (Laughter) They're still all children of mine, in a way.

So back to your question, which was more about if it hadn't succeeded, what did I love about it? What I loved about it when I first read the script, and I have a pretty subversive sense of humor - it was a CBS procedural television show. There's a million of them, and they all do reasonably well. But I thought what was kind of interesting about this show is it had a subtle, sly wit to it.

It almost poked fun of itself as a procedural show whilst being a procedural show, and I thought that was kind of clever. I think maybe I was on my own when I thought those thoughts, (laughter) but then I sat down with Bruno Heller, the guy that created the show, who created "Rome," and he's a very dry-witted Englishman, and he completely understood what my take on it was.

That yeah, I said, "You're having a bit of a lend of yourself while we're following the procedure of the show. And he said, "Shh."

Tavis: Don't tell anybody, yeah. What was your process, your procedure, for connecting with the character you saw on the page? I assume as an actor you see stuff on the page and you start going through - every actor has his or her own process for how they connect, how they relate to, how they discover this character on the page. For this particular character, help me understand how you connected to the character.

Baker: I work more or less on the space that's provided on the page for me to fill in the gaps. A lot of scripts, the characters are very prescriptive on the page. In the ink, it's very prescriptive. This, the situations were very, very prescriptive. It was very clear, the circumstances that the character had gone through to get to the position that he was in, but Bruno had allowed space for me to interpret that, and that was what was exciting to me.

It's always the promise of what you can bring in fleshing it out. If you're going to do a film, obviously it has a beginning, middle and an end, and it's a finite piece of work. When you're doing a television series, episodically it's finite but it could potentially be on the air for you know how long some of these things go for - 10 or 15 years or something.

Now the first thing I look at is am I going to get bored by episode 10, or is there going to be room for me to play around still in the fifth year of the show? Bruno had created a character on the page that I could put a lot of different dimensions into in the playing so that down the track I didn't always have to play, oh, that's beat five that we've seen 400 times before. I can take it in different directions all the time.

It's difficult on television to find characters A, that have that room, and B, work with people that will allow you to take those liberties with the character, and I got lucky with both those things.

Tavis: Part of what works for me about the show - and I'm just one viewer - with all due respect to your fine acting, it's where these storylines come from. Where do these writers get these storylines from episode to episode?

Baker: Yeah.

Tavis: Some of this stuff's pretty amazing.

Baker: That's the struggle.

Tavis: Yeah - trying to find good stuff?

Baker: Well, trying to find good stuff. It's also, in essence, we have - it's a procedural show that - and so many people are familiar with the concept, the procedure of a cop show that we understand it automatically. It's in our consciousness when we're watching a television program.

What we're trying to do is present the box of what that is and then step outside, take the audience outside of the box to solve the problem in a different way. We don't rely on science, DNA, and microscopes. It's sort of a throwback -

Tavis: Although that ain't a bad strategy.

Baker: Yeah -

Tavis: Every show that does it is a hit.

Baker: Sure. (Laughter) Sure, sure. But what we've done with the show is to try to find the truth less under the microscope and more sort of in the fabric of human nature, which is, in essence, a bit of a throwback to the shows that I grew up watching on television, where it was more about can you read this person, is this guy lying, or is the intriguing part of observation and awareness, which is innately part of acting.

You go to connect with someone immediately, and to get information and to build a rapport with someone you have to make a connection. And I think that's sort of the essence of my character and the way the show works, but going back to the storylines, we often have very, very normal crimes that we solve in an extraordinary way, and occasionally we get an extraordinary crime that yeah, that these guys, they sit in a room and throw around.

Some of the ideas must be unbelievable - freakish, because some of the ones that end up on the show are pretty out there.

Tavis: How did you - let me close with this as an exit question. I want to go back to your sister. How did she end up a doctor and you an actor? How did you end up -

Baker: She paid attention at school.

Tavis: (Laughter) Ba-dum-bump.

Baker: It's pretty easy.

Tavis: And he does comedy too. (Laughter) I'll leave it at that. That's our show for tonight. Simon Baker, of course, stars in "The Mentalist" on CBS. Congrats on a huge success, man.

Baker: Thanks, Tavis.

Tavis: And I'm sure this'll be around for a while, so you'll come back and see us again.

Baker: All right, I will. I'd love to.

Tavis: And next time, with a pair of pants that fit.

Baker: It's a pleasure.

Tavis: Yeah, pleasure to have you on. (Laughter) You can keep the shoes - keep the shoes.

Baker: I might leave them for you.

Tavis: Sit down, I've got to say goodbye - don't go nowhere. (Laughter) That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Access our radio podcast through our website at PBS.org and I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, and keep the faith. Now you can put more miles on those shoes.

Baker: All right.