When the television industry was crippled by the recent writers' strike, a lot of new shows became casualties of circumstance. For the long awaited Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the writers' strike disrupted the show's first season momentum, leaving both fans and its creator, Josh Friedman, on pins and needles as Fox decided whether to give the series a second season. Although Friedman and his writing team of Terminators had to alter the remainder of the season once the show returned for a shortened first run, The Sarah Connor Chronicles went out with an explosive bang.

For the upcoming September 8 second season premiere, Friedman cast Garbage front-lady Shirley Manson in the role of a CEO of a high-tech corporation while John Connor’s 16th birthday forces him to confront the reality of his destiny alone amid the chaos at the end of season one.

As fans get set for a new season of Terminator goodness, we spoke to Josh Friedman on a conference call where he filled us in the casting of Shirley Manson and more.

THE DEADBOLT: What was the decision behind adding Shirley Manson to the cast, as this is her first acting job?

JOSH FRIEDMAN: I’ve known Shirley well for a couple of years and off and on for many years. She’s a friend of my wife’s. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed her and I’ve known her as a performer. And last year when we were doing the show, whenever I’d see her I used to joke with her about coming on the show to do one episode or something like that, because she never acted and we were like, ‘You should come, do one thing - come be a scary terminator for an episode or do something like that.’ And she always said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re never going to do that.’ And then this year, when we started casting, I actually wasn’t thinking about her for this part. We just started casting this part and somewhere about a week into casting I thought, ‘I want to bring Shirley in and see if she’s up for it; see if she wants to do it.’

She was actually in Europe, I think for a funeral, and I e-mailed her and said, ‘Do you want to come in and audition?’ And she said, ‘Well, yeah. I’m coming back to town on Sunday.’ And I said, ‘Well, we need you in on Monday.’ She came and she did it and she’s just got incredible charisma. And also, she’s just very professional. She’s always prepared and the learning curve in terms of the craft part of it has been very high so far. So I don’t know, it sort of happened organically. But she also had to go through the entire audition process like any other actor. She was given no extra points for being Shirley Manson. I think she was given minus points by people who thought she couldn’t do it.

THE DEADBOLT: And she’s the CEO of Cyberdyne?

FRIEDMAN: It’s not Cyberdyne, but she is a CEO of a large company.

Other Conference Call Highlights:

Josh Friedman on bringing the religious aspects to the forefront this season:

"It’s something that’s always been in the franchise, I think that Sarah as a sort of radicalized Mary figure and John as sort of a Jesus figure has always been on the franchise. It’s stuff that is thematically interesting to explore and I kind of became fascinated with it through the Ellison character. Part of it was just because Richard T. Jones is quite religious and I spend some time talking to him about it and I figured it seemed like a really natural place to explore some of those themes, especially with him regarding whether or not his faith is either confirmed or challenged by the things he’s seen. I think it’s easy to assume oh because there are Terminators in the universe that means that God doesn’t exist or something, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. So it’s interesting to see people sort of, with particular ideologies have to try to fit radical world views into it."

Friedman on the end of season one, the strike, and restarting the series with the premiere for season two:

"Well, I think now, for people who’ve seen the first episode you can see that I was very interested in the aftermath of that episode and last year we would’ve done a version of this episode, but I had a whole different concept of one that I really couldn’t do for a season premiere, but it was certainly about the aftermath of the truck explosion. I think that we really have stayed on track with the show storytelling-wise, but episodically it changed pretty radically from last year."

On his approach to the death of one of the characters:

"It’s usually their behavior on the set. No, it’s pure storytelling, I mean it’s painful to say goodbye to actors, especially this show everyone is wonderful, they’re all lovely people and going to an actor and saying, ‘Here’s the script and this is what’s going to happen.’ It’s extremely difficult and for us it’s never been driven by economics or anything sort of extra curricular. It’s often sitting in the writer’s room and you sort of have this dawning realization that you have a really good idea story wise, but it’s going to end up costing somebody a job and it’s not easy. I mean these are people and most of them will go on and get other work, but it’s not a fun thing to do really."

Josh Friedman on finding a balance between the effects and action and keeping the humanity going:

"You know, at this point I think it’s kind of become an organic thing for us. I think we sort of have a sense of how much action to have in any given episode. It does shift sometimes and sometimes in terms of the realities of production you don’t have the time or money to do big things all of the time in every episode, which I’m happy for, I mean I kind of like it. The money people come to us and say this episode is gonna have to be a little smaller than the last episode. I kind of enjoy writing smaller, more character driven episodes and I think that at the end of the day... Well I think there’s sort of two... There’s three audiences I think for the show, there’s the people who really come for the action, the people who really fell for the characters, and then there’s the large group in the middle, which is the people who want both. Those are the ones I think are the most pleased consistently because they get one or the other every week, but to me it’s a drama, it’s still a family show, a family drama that’s in the science fiction world and has action in it. But I still think it’s character first for me."