'Blindspot' Postmortem: John Hodgman Talks Fischer's Backstory and Fate

Warning: This story contains spoilers for the “Erase Weary Youth” episode of Blindspot.

John Hodgman was judge and jury, but not executioner on this week’s episode of Blindspot. Instead, his alter ego, FBI mole-hunter Chief Inspector Jonas Fischer, wound up taking a fatal bullet fired by his prisoner, Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander). That means he’ll never succeed in his long-term goal of unseating Bethany Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) as head of the Agency’s New York Field Office. Then again, it appears that Fischer had bigger plans than his first appearance two episodes ago let on. As Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) pieced together after a long day of being interrogated by the chief inspector — who had been dispatched to the office to ferret out the mole responsible for leaking top-secret info — Fischer was the guilty party and paid for his betrayal with his life.

Before Fischer was exposed, he successfully cast doubt on everyone else in the office during a series of intense one-on-one interrogations. More importantly, he was able make several of them doubt Jane, who he arrested and was in the process of locking away for a very long time when Weller showed up to intervene, and Jane took advantage of the situation to remove an obstacle from her path. This being Blindspot, audiences have come to expect that things aren’t always what they seem, but speaking with Yahoo TV, Hodgman officially confirmed Fischer’s time of death.

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“I’m sure your question is, ‘How did I survive being shot in the chest so I can return to Blindspot again and again?’” he says, laughing. “And that’s also my question. I was so mad when I saw that I was going to be shot in the chest. I really, really enjoyed working on the show.” Hodgman also filled us in on the secret backstory he created for Fischer and Mayfair and why Stapleton doesn’t like being interrogated by nerds.

You were always such a great guest on The Daily Show, so it’s fun to watch you be so straight-laced and serious here.
I’ve had a couple of straighter roles, although none that required me to really drain all humanity out of my face as Jonas Fischer. Except perhaps the mad psychiatrist on The Knick who enjoyed pulling peoples’ teeth out. Jonas Fischer probably has those tendencies, but has the social skills to not actually do it.

That kind of 19th century behavior probably wouldn’t be tolerated today.
Wait when is Blindspot set? It thought it was, like, 1910. Is it supposed to be about the present day? [Laughs.]

Actually, it’s probably more like medieval times. It is medieval what Jaimie Alexander has to go through to get those tattoos on her body every episode.
That’s true! I can’t say that I witnessed that firsthand, because they have a separate hair and makeup trailer for that process. She goes through a lot to put those tattoos on. I’m glad it’s not me. All I had to do was have tattoos put on underneath my mustache. That was going to be the big reveal in the episode — I was going to shave my mustache off and there would be this huge mustache puzzle underneath. But I guess they decided to go a different way.

I enjoyed how Fischer was revealed to be the Verbal Kint/Keyser Söze of the episode, although you didn’t walk with a limp.
Yes, they decided they didn’t want me walking with a funny limp. But they indulged me in so many other things. The truth is that when I was shooting my first episode, I didn’t know that was going to happen with Fischer. About halfway through that episode, [series creator] Martin Gero — who I met and become friendly with on HBO’s Bored to Death — took me aside and said, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? You turn out to be a spy!” I went, “Oh, thank you! As if this couldn’t get any better.” The best thing about being the villain is that the villain never believes he or she is the villain. Fischer thinks what he’s doing is absolutely right. Maybe the reason he was recruited is because he believes the entire FBI is run by a bunch of sentimental dopes who took in a tattooed mystery woman and gave her access to all kinds of classified information they probably shouldn’t have!

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That’s right — put that way, he really is the hero of the show.
Well, we still don’t know what the full story on Jane is. I would be very surprised if it turned out that she was a monstrous villain. On the other hand, seeing the twists and turns they’ve taken so far, it would be very interesting if the Jane Doe prior to the tattooing and forced amnesia might not want to be the Jane Doe that Jane Doe wants to be anymore. I’ll be interested to see how that develops.

She certainly doesn’t hesitate from shooting Fischer, even claiming that he had a gun when he clearly didn’t.
Once I knew my fate, I kept taking Martin aside saying, “Is there some way you can weasel out of it so I can come back and see my TV friends again?” But Jane really couldn’t let him go. He knew too much. One of the things that makes the show really interesting is that there are these layers of moral ambiguity. It was pretty clear during filming that Weller kind of knows that Jane executed Fischer. He talked both him and Jane into believing this was a good kill, and it wasn’t. It certainly wasn’t good for me!

So much of the episode involves you interrogating the rest of the cast. How long did those sequences take to film?
Well, part of interrogation is wearing down the subject with disorienting and tedious questioning for hours upon end. And that’s exactly what we did! [Laughs.] We had one long day where cast member after cast member was brought in one at a time and hooked up to a phony polygraph, and me — a person they didn’t know very well — would ask them questions. They had obviously read the script and there were some responses they needed to give to drive the story, but Martin would also come over to me and say, “Ask them this,” just to get them off balance a little bit. So there was a certain amount of improvisation happening.

Sullivan really didn’t seem to enjoy being seated down in front of this pencil neck with a mustache having to answer my questions. I think on some deep Method level it really bothered him. So I’d ask him what his name was and he’d curse at me or he’d say “Bugs Bunny” or something like that. He’s a dude who is used to dominating a room, so imagine facing me and being told you had to answer my questions. One of the most satisfying moments of my career was falling over and over again in the hallway after being shot, and then Sullivan said, “Tough nerd.” I was like, “Yeah, I like to fall down. I’m really good at it.”

Fischer and Patterson have a prickly rapport as well after the first time he interrogated her.
Ashley [Johnson] and I had never met before, but we both have a passion for nerdy things. She told me a lot about playing Fallout 4 all weekend, and asked what I was playing and I said, “Um… Pong.” I don’t have time anymore, I have children! [Laughs.] But I didn’t have to work very hard to terrify her as Fischer, because she’s really good at acting terrified. Watching her, I felt like I had the best seat in the house for an incredible night of theater.

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Fischer’s death means he’ll never complete his goal of taking over Mayfair’s job. Based on what we learn in this episode, do you think that was his plan all along or was it a distraction from his spying?
I think he really did want her job. From his point of view and the point of view of his mission, to become the head of the FBI’s New York office would be a good thing. I actually think that long before Fischer was recruited to be a spy, he and Mayfair were lovers, or they had fling together at the Academy. There’s a clear history between them, and I think you can feel the smoldering tension between me and Marianne [Jean-Baptiste].

Great backstory! Did you share that with Marianne on set?
Oh yeah. She rolled her eyes. [Laughs.] But Fischer certainly had a thing for her because I have a thing for her. She’s an incredibly charismatic person. What you see on the show is this picture of strength and confidence, but she also sings and she entertains the whole set. I really enjoyed hanging out with her.

Fischer’s body may have expired, but is there any chance his spirit will live on and come back to haunt Jane, either metaphorically or literally?
As far as I can see, it’s pretty clear that he’s dead and will not come back. The show does rely on a certain number of flashbacks, so all I can hope for is that maybe they’ll flashback to Mayfair’s days at the Academy when she was dating Fischer! It’s many a day where I’m wandering the streets of New York thinking how he could have survived. Is there any way? I really don’t think there is. I really think that’s the end of him, and it makes me said. But with this show, you never know. Blindspot is unpredictable!

Blindspot airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on NBC.