Flash Forward…Rewind

John Cho and Gabrielle Union on set

OK so anyone who is ever been around me on a red carpet or set visit or basically anywhere I’ve done interviews or even when I’ve befriended strangers know I have this habit of asking random questions that in some odd way, are relevant.

Anyway…ABC has this show Flash Forward. I happened to visit the set one day. And I really wanted to ask this one question…so I did. But, to understand the question, I guess I must explain the show.

Basically, in the series premiere of Flash Forward last fall, a dramatic event occurred that caused everyone in the world to black out for 137 seconds.  During the blackout, people saw glimpses of their future… specifically, visions of April 29, 2010.

Life-changing, right? I mean, you can’t possibly go about life normally knowing what’s to come…thus, these 137 seconds, in my opinion, forever change the characters’ lives.

So I ask:
What 137-second moment changed your life?

Michael Ealy and Joseph Fiennes

Joseph Fiennes (FBI Special agent Mark Benford): “There was a moment, but I don’t remember what happened. I did black out with too much tequila once at a party in London (Haha). Those two minutes are missing and I’m terrified that someone’s going to come up and say “hey!” I’d never had that experience, of literally losing time. That’s my blackout.” (PS I love his British accent.)

John Cho (FBI Special Agent Demetri Noh): “I think that all of your life turns on 2-minute moments or shorter. You know, there are just big lulls of time in between, and really the moment is a moment where everything turns, literally a moment where everything clicks in your brain. So I would argue that everything is a moment.” (PS I think talking to him is cool because yes, I loved Harold and Kumar. I may just dedicate a whole post to him later.)

Christine and Courtney

Christine Woods (Special Agent Janis Hawk): “I think it took me two minutes to decide to leave college and come to LA. It took me about two minutes to decide, ‘Three years, I’m done, let’s go, I wanna work.’ I was a the University of Arizona, I was a musical theater major, I was like a triple major, I was working so hard, and I remember I just had this epiphany. I woke up one morning, and I just thought, ‘I wanna go work, I wanna get out of here.’” (PS apparently that’s what I did wrong in life. I shoulda totally  dropped out of USC in 2006, I would have made it then…)

Courtney B Vance (FBI Assistant Director Stanford Wedeck): “I was doing a play in Chicago, and I just happened to audition for a movie, and got it on the spot. But I knew I couldn’t do it, I was just auditioning to keep sharp and I got it on the spot, and it created a firestorm, and my [137-second moment] I guess was when I made the decision NOT to do it, and to stay in school and finish up.” (PS I also should have gone to theater school at Yale like Courtney. Then dropped out like Christine.)

Michael Ealy (Marshall Vogel): “I was playing Hamlet actually, I was doing a scene where Gertrude his mother smacks him – [the actress] just smacked me and as an actor, that was a breakthrough moment for me. I was like ‘Oh wow, I didn’t know  she was gonna do it,’ there was no reaction – that really hurt! And it changed the rest of the scene for me, all of sudden it became much more passionate, probably more accurate.  It was just a quick moment, but it definitely affected me as an actor and made me want to be a bit more method as an actor.” (PS I kinda wanted to slap him. Just to test this out. But then I thought it’d be awkward. )