Criminal Minds' Thomas Gibson Q&A: 'Nothing shocks me anymore'

by Catriona Wightman

There's nothing like a good crime drama to settle into, and if you fancy a bit of a binge you're in luck - the sixth season of Criminal Minds is out on DVD on Monday!

To celebrate the excellent news, Digital Spy and a couple of other reporters caught up with Thomas Gibson, who plays Hotch, for a bit of Criminal Minds chat...

How did you feel about the drama surrounding AJ Cook and Paget Brewster? Are you glad to have them back?

"Of course I'm glad they're back. I think we were all taken by surprise by the move on the part of the network last year to curtail their appearances on the show. I don't think there was any good reason for it - I don't think there was any reason for it whatsoever. We're still trying to understand what the motivation was. But regardless of what it was, we're very happy to be on this side of that development and having them both come back."

What makes Criminal Minds different from other procedurals?

"I think it's the fact that instead of physical forensics, it's psychological forensics. I think that's basically what sets it apart, as well as the character development. These are interesting stories, these are universal stories, because unfortunately the cases that we deal with are some of the darker sides of human nature.

"I think those are universal themes, and trying to explain why a particular person made that horrible choice to do such a terrible thing over and over again, and these characters do try to kind of unlock the motivations and therefore the case in order to find them.

"But also the fact that there's character development. I think some of the procedurals when the genre first rolled out 10, 12, 15 years ago, there seemed to be a focus on the procedure itself and not the characters at all. I think one of the things that's developed over the last 10 years or so is you have the reintroduction of interesting characters in these procedurals.

"So I think that's maybe one of the reasons that this show has been successful. We all work very well together, it's an interesting and good group of actors and the characters are all very complementary to each other as well. Somewhere in there is maybe one of the reasons it's working."

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