Having recently landed two high profile gigs that include an upcoming guest spot on CSI and a pivotal role in the CW’s much-anticipated ARROW re-imagination, there’s no denying that the talented Paul Blackthorne has quite an exciting few months ahead of him. Unfortunately, there’s also no denying that before the actor can tackle any of those roles, he still has to survive his most challenging one to date, that of reality television producer/explorer Clark Quietly on THE RIVER. So just how does he plan on doing that? Well, we recently had the pleasure of catching up with the talented UK import to find out just that, alongside what terrifying plot developments await fans of the mysterious ABC series. See for yourself, after the jump.
Paul Blackthorne: To me it really came down to the non-conventional nature of the show, the quality of the writing and the character. This nice ambiguous character, who is not necessarily good or bad just sounded interesting. I also found the show itself to be a very original concept, almost as if you’re watching a reality show.
Does MAN VS. WILD count as a reality show? That’s one I like watching. I like watching all that wilderness kind of weird stuff because one of these days I know I’ll end up getting completely lost in the middle of nowhere and I’ll try to remember what Bear Grylls said on the show. That’s about as close to reality as I would get myself.
Well, first and foremost, the reason that he is down there is obviously to shoot his reality show which he will carry on doing no matter what threat might present to himself and others… to a point. Obviously, he does have feelings towards Tess (Leslie Hope) and even some of the other crew members, he has a history with these people. So as much as he’s coming across as ruthless in terms of getting the footage at whatever expense, he does care about these people and I think that was evident in the episode where everyone went blind and he certainly was doing everything he could to try and help Tess. But, at the same time he’s in a conflicted state a lot of the times, because it appears he’ll push things as far as he can in order to get the TV show and be abel to sell it.
Well, it’s one of those situations where the more you know the more you realize you don’t know. But at the same time, things are moving forward and audiences will get a better idea of what’s going on. It’s television! Nothing ever is fully resolved, you got to keep people interested and wondering.
We’ve very much been seeing things from the crew’s point of view thus far and something that happens a little bit more in the next couple of episodes is that you’ll be seeing something from Emmet Cole’s perspective. So we now start realizing what on earth is going on through his world. It’s through found footage and what have you, but what I can say is we get a much bigger insight as to what on earth Emmet has been up to in these missing months so now we get a chance to see Mr. Bruce Greenwood in all his glory which is always a good thing to watch. 
THE RIVER airs Tuesdays at 9PM on ABC (CTV in Canada). Catch up on past episodes you may have missed for free online at clicktowatch.tv