Golden Globe-nominee Wentworth Miller (shown right), the 37-year-old actor who became an overnight sensation and instant sex symbol for portraying the clever and hunky Michael Scofield, gives his last performance of the series in Prison Break: The Final Break. Required to keep most of the two-hour film’s storylines and plot twists close to the vest, Miller (a British-born, Brooklyn native) chooses to reminisce about the four seasons he spent playing Michael Scofield on the hit series.

In this interview with Earl Dittman, the personable and witty Miller (a Princeton grad and a veteran of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer) recalls some of the stranger fan encounters he experienced over the years as Michael, reveals how many packs of cigarettes a prisoner can get for a 8 X 10 of him, why he tries not to pick his nose in public and if being the series’ leading man helped him out with ladies at all. Plus this week’s DVDs and Blu-rays, all after the jump.

After four seasons of brothers Michael Scofield (Miller) and Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) plotting to break out of domestic and foreign prisons and on the run from law enforcement, corrupt government bigwigs and secret criminal organizations, the final episode of the award-winning, critically-acclaimed and highly rated hit series Prison Break signed off this spring. If you caught the finale a couple of months ago, you know what is in the future for most of the PB characters. Prison Break: The Final Break picks right after the brothers are cleared of all wrong doing and before Michael’s unfortunate…well, you know. In The Final Break, we catch Michael and Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies) trying to fashion themselves some semblance of a normal life together. Of course, do you really think Michael and Sara could maintain a fairy tale, happily-ever-after life together? C’mon, this is Prison Break. With cast members Dominic Purcell, Amaury Nolasco, Robert Knepper, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe and William Fichtner back for another series of twists and turns, Prison Break: The Final Break offers hungry fans another taste of Scofield’s mind-boggling rescue abilities, in addition to revealing some pretty startling secrets about those around them.

Would you say that you are as you as clever and resourceful in real life as Michael was in Prison Break?

“Not as much as he was. I was hopeless in the math and science in school. So I really relied on the writers to bring me up to speed when it came to mentioning something like ‘Fibonacci.’ I think that it might’ve been an episode or two before I clued into the fact that that was a reference.” [Laughs]

What did you find most surprising about Prison Break, as a series?

“I guess what really surprised me was how powerful a medium that television really is.”

Since television is such a powerful medium, do you still get recognized a lot?

“Yes. Everyone has TV sets. We still have fans all over the world.”

What do most fans usually say to you?

“It was always a positive experience. The fans are so respectful of the show, and it’s a real pleasure talking to them. What they were basically telling me, throughout the time the show was running, is that when they don’t miss an episode they’re making time for you, your story, your work and my life every week. I always considered that the highest compliment.”

How did the success of Prison Break help you out with the ladies — off the screen?

“It was a double-edged sword. Obviously, I had a calling card that works quite well in certain situations. [Laughs] I did have some strange experiences, though.”

What type of experiences, for instance?

“Well, once, I was at the mall, and a woman came up to me, very politely and very respectfully, and she wanted to take my picture, and she had her camera cell phone as they all do. She wanted to take the picture herself and so she kind of sidled up to me, and I put my arm around her and she held up her phone, but couldn’t take the picture because it was shaking like a maraca. She was that nervous, and I could feel her vibrating next to me and it was starting to make me nervous. Then, she had to ask a complete stranger to take the picture for her, and as soon the picture was taken – as soon as she had my image in camera – she stopped looking at me. She continued interacting with me, but she only looked at the image on her camera. She said good-bye to the image on her camera.”

That must have been really weird.

“It really was. I can probably write an essay about the disconnection between perception of image and reality. But it was a very strange moment to stand there and realize that someone – who five seconds ago wanted nothing more than to acknowledge your work – now very much wanted the experience to be over with, because it was almost as though she couldn’t handle the real me standing there.”

How stressful is it for you to be recognized all the time and to have people know who you are and to think they know things about you?

“It’s part of the business. We wanted people to watch the show. And, you want to have a large fan base, and that’s also what I saw when it comes to doing publicity, PR and getting the word out. We were talking about this on set one time, me and Dominic (Purcell), and what we determined is that they don’t pay us to act. They pay us to act as diplomats and ambassadors and politicians and publicists and all those other things that go along with being an actor on a successful TV show.”

Does the lack of privacy ever irritate or bother you?

“You know what, the fans are so respectful that they come up and ask for an autograph or a picture. The interaction is usually done and over with in about five minutes.”

Did you get, or still get, a lot of romantic emails or letters?

“I’ve gotten a few romantic letters, absolutely, which is flattering. But I also know that they have feelings, if you want to call them that, for the character that I played on TV.”

Did actual prison inmates, who were still incarcerated, ever send write to you?

“Yeah, I got a few letter from inmates. Apparently, a Prison Break headshot would get you a pack of smokes. [Laughs] But, the truth is that in a number of state pens they were not allowed to watch the show, because they might get encouraged to imitate it, I guess.”

Being a diplomat of sorts, as you mentioned, for the show, have you always felt a responsibility to act a particular way in your public life – like not getting into legal trouble and not being able to let loose in public?

“Well, you don’t want to embarrass yourself. So, you always might think twice about picking your nose in public.”

Do you do that a lot?

“Picking my nose in public? [Laughs] Sometimes, sometimes there is a small sacrifice in terms of anonymity and privacy, but you never know what you’re going to be asked to sacrifice until it’s already been sacrificed. There were so many pros to this job, so many perks and so many doors that it opened for me that I really can’t complain.”

Looking back, what did fans usually want to know about the series?

“In the first couple of seasons, they always wanted to know about my relationship to Dr. Sara. Everybody would always want to know what the deal was between Michael and Dr. Sara.”

What do you usually tell them?

“There was only so much that I could tell them. What I would say, and this is after they first escaped, is ‘While Michael is now literally free, physically free, I think that his mind and heart are back at the prison.’ If you remember, in the last two episodes of the first season, he lost both a surrogate father figure in the Warden Westmorland and fatally, perhaps, compromised his love interest. So, I’d say, ‘Mentally and emotionally, he’s still very much a prisoner.’”

Throughout the series, you took several cross-country journeys. Early on, what were some of the more interesting things that you saw on your initial treks across North America?

“I stopped off in Santa Fe – which is a beautiful part of the country – and, apparently, where hippies go to die.” [Laughs]

Are you a big souvenir-buying guy? Did you pick-up a lot of nick-knacks at every new location shoot during the series run?

“No, my house would be packed with them by now if I had.”

To do a show as physically challenging as Prison Break, I imagine you had to be in good shape. Did you have a regular work-out routine?

“My work-out routine usually involved eating less. [Laughs] That was tough when we were shooting the first season in Chicago. If you are trying to eat less, Chicago is a dangerous place to be, because the food was so good and the portions were so large, and it was difficult to establish and exercise routine while working five days a week, fourteen hours a day. When we moved to Dallas for the second season, I had a little more free time, because there are so many different storylines, and Michael wasn’t in every scene driving the plot forward. So, I actually hit the pool every once in a while, which was nice.”

Are you an avid swimmer?

“I am. I am.”

Since you can never really reveal plot points, in Prison Break: The Final Break, is Michael still going to be the cool bad-ass that audiences have come to know and love since Season One?
“Absolutely, absolutely, but you’ll get to see other things that I couldn’t or wouldn’t show you in the series. Michael walks that very fine line between brilliance and someone with very serious issues. When I first read the very first script for Prison Break, I thought that this was just a story about a man who was sacrificing his entire life to save his brother. But, now on the other end of four seasons – even after the twenty-two episodes of Season One – I always wondered if that life was worth holding onto because everything that we saw about him in the flashbacks, Michael was driven, lonely, isolated and unhappy. So, I don’t think it was a question of him sacrificing his entire life. It was more of a question of him never having been more alive than he did when he decided to go to prison to save his brother. It’s going to answer a lot of questions about Michael, I promise you.”

Prison Break: The Final Break Blu-ray + DVD Bonus Features: Featurettes and deleted scenes.

Source: http://www.drivenmag.com/