Kiefer Sutherland “very proud” of Season 6 despite hitting “rough roads”

Jack Bauer would probably have thought of an escape plan, but at the July 23 Fox All-Star party in Santa Monica, reporters literally cornered Kiefer Sutherland to get his thoughts on this past season of 24 and why Africa didn’t pan out for the coming “day.”

“I felt that [Season 6] was no different than any other season,” said Sutherland. “Every season we’ve had our strengths and every season we’ve confronted some bumps and hiccups. I felt that last year, the first four episodes were probably the best four we had ever done, and we certainly closed the show really well. We hit some rough roads around Episodes 13 and 14 [but] it’s a difficult show to write so we’re accustomed to running into things that we don’t agree on, but by virtue of the schedule, we have to plow ahead. But I was very proud of our last season.”

Despite scrapping their initial plan to shoot part of the coming season in Africa, that plotline has not been entirely abandoned. “We will maintain the Africa story line, but I think it was very difficult to shoot a television show on two, potentially three continents. They found a better way to tell the story from this country’s perspective.”

As the first scripts of the new season were written off, Sutherland and the rest of the cast found themselves on an extended hiatus, which according to him is nothing unusual. “We start over three or four times every year,” he points out. “And we do two more shows than most shows, so it’s been a grind. It feels like a seven-year job. It never goes away.”