Throughout Person of Interest season 2, a pair of intriguing, brilliant, and tough women were thoroughly integrated into the story and both will be back making their presence known. Last week, I spoke with the show’s executive producers, Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman. In part 2 of our interview, they discussed what we can look forward to in Person of Interest season 3.

Check out part 1 of our interview: 

Person of Interest Interview: Executive Producers Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman Discuss When Fiction Becomes Reality>>>


The season 2 finale ended on a major cliffhanger when the Machine wasn’t found where it was supposed to be. Where will the premiere pick up with that?

Plageman: We think that the franchise of the show, in the sense of, will the machine continue to distribute numbers? The answer to that question is yes. The question is: Is it just relevant and irrelevant numbers? Or, is there a new aspect to the machine’s growth and what it’s endeavoring to do. We talk about A.I. [artificial intelligence] a lot in the writers’ room. What is happening with the machine? It’s a lot of fun. 

And, we think one of the central interesting stories to tell would be, if you believe the majority of people out there don’t have a sense of outrage about what has happened with privacy in this country, what if there were an entity that did? We think that is a very interesting area to explore.

Now that Sarah Shahi has been made a series regular, how will her character of Sam Shaw fit into season 3?

Nolan: She’s gonna fit in with a large gun! We think Sarah is a fantastic actor. We have always wanted to work with her. The interesting part of [Sam’s] background is obviously there’s some similarities in terms of training and lethality with Reese. 

But, we think the fun of her character is that she has a complementary set of skills that we’re going to start to explore, which sort of give us a fun, new dynamic to explore. And, the question becomes how does she incorporate into our world. We’re going to have fun with that journey

Will Root (Amy Acker) be back?

Plageman: Oh, yeah. We left the finale with an obvious cliffhanger with Root. We have no intention of disappointing Amy Acker fans. 

Nolan: Amy is just so great to work with. She’s so cool and incredibly talented. We just love — we love the bad guys on this show. We also love bad guys who you kinda agree with in some ways. That’s always the most fun to write.

Will we see more of Grace (Carrie Preston) and Finch’s story?

Nolan: We certainly hope so. Carrie Preston is an absolutely incredible actor and we love working with her. We’d love to explore more of that back story and of course, Grace, the character, is someone out there in New York. The question of whether Finch will be reunited with her or not is a big lingering question.

Person of Interest returns for season 3 on a new night, Tuesday, September 24 at 10 pm ET. In the meantime, you can catch re-broadcast episodes each Tuesday at 10 pm ET or watch the entire series-to-date via digital download


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(Image courtesy of CBS.)

Carla Day

Contributing Writer, BuddyTV

Contributing Editor and Writer for Collider, BuddyTV, TV Fanatic, CliqueClack, and other publications. TV criticism, reviews, interviews with actors and producers, and other related content. Founder of TV Diehard.