The first talent panel of the day at the Syfy Press Tour was 12 Monkeys. The panel was attended by stars Aaron Stanford, who plays time-traveler Cole, and Amanda Schull, who plays Dr. Cassandra Railly, Co-Executive Producer Travis Fickett, as well as EVP of Original Content of Syfy, Bill McGoldrick, who did the introduction.

McGoldrick gave the journalists some information on the series, and talked about how it is based on the film, which commemorates its 20th anniversary next year, and features the character of Cole who time travels from 2043 to present day. As in the film, Cole is on a mission to stop a deadly plague.

After a trailer of the show, Fickett talked about why it’s a perfect time now for the show. “I think because the audience was ready for a serialized time-travel show, something that Terry [Matalas] and I always wanted to do, and they, I think, were educated. The audience is educated now as to the intricacies of that kind of narrative style. Lost tricked everyone into doing a time travel show. At the start of season four, they're like, "Oh, by the way, we're a time travel show now," and it worked really well.

“I think it's always been an under-utilized part of science fiction in television. Most of the time it was…[an] episode of the week or it was procedural or, you know, it wasn't a continual story like a larger canvas.

“And the cool thing about 12 Monkeys the movie was, it was this big pillbox, it was this great mystery, and it all kind of tied together as the audience unraveled it. And it does feel like what you get out of serialized television.

“So, when Terry and I had written another time-travel project and demonstrated we knew how to do that. And we met up with Atlas, with Chuck Roven and Richard Suckle, who had been dying to make this into a TV show and they just couldn't figure it out. That was the genesis.”

The actors talked about the way they approached their iconic roles. Stanford didn’t approach Cole much differently from any other role. “I really just approached it the way I approach any role. It's such a daunting thing to try and fill the shoes of somebody else, particularly somebody like Bruce Willis who played such an iconic role.

“I just had to sort of push that aside and not think about that, and approach it as I do any other role where I just want to make the character engaging and interesting and real and make him somebody that the audience can connect to.”

Schull agreed. “I am just going to piggyback on that and say also that while we are taking on those roles, at the same time, we're sort of departing from the characters that were in just the film and taking the series down a chain of rabbit holes that the film wasn't able to portray in their finite amount of time in the film.

“So while we are the characters from the film, we're reimagining and a sort of expansion of those characters as well, so we're not exactly the same people.”

Fickett expanded on that, talking about how the series will differ from the film. “There's a spiritual continuity, in a way. I think it feels like the movie a lot of times in that the hero is an unlikely hero. He's doesn't have the best time machine to achieve this mission. There is a tinge of madness and craziness throughout the whole story, and that, kind of, was one of the central sort of tenets of the movie.

“Also, in the movie, you didn't know until the end what the 12 monkeys were and how the virus broke out and all of those things, and that's going to be the same kind of mystery that we're dealing with.

“But it wouldn't be any fun for anybody if we just did the television version of that story, you know. So we're taking all of the elements that we kind of loved, the impressions from the movie, and not the straight, you know, checklist of story items.

“I think fans will be pleased with what we took and what we expanded and what we changed.”

Stanford added that while the pilot follows the film fairly closely, it takes a dramatic turn from there.

Fickett also talked about the balance of adapting from the film, yet keeping the series original. “Cole and Cassie are their own identities...And they've done an amazing job of creating very distinct characters that are unto themselves.”

Stanford talked more about the opportunity to play such a part. “I think it's both daunting and very exciting as a fan to get an opportunity to do something like this, because in a way you can just sort of just touch that movie that you love so much and feel like maybe you'll get a chance to live inside of it a little bit.

“But in terms of making sure that it's a different thing, it just happened naturally.

“You have an entirely different team. You have an entirely different cast...it just happens naturally. Can't help but be different.”

Schull talked a bit about playing Cassie. “I think this has been an incredible gift for me. The character that Terry and Travis have written in Cassandra is a dream. She's strong and smart and she doesn't back down from a challenge, and it's a real honor to be able to play something like that, and not a woman who, when confronted with an obstacle, becomes less than. She will always stand up to a challenge.

“And also, the element of time travel and alternate realities, I think in a lot of ways is every actor's dream to be able to be one character on a television show, but to have all these different incarnations of that person.

“We get to go to work and some days I'm, you know, a person living in one reality, and some days I'm a person living in another reality, so I get to try on a different suit.

“It's very exciting, and hopefully it will be so for audiences as well.”

The three talked about the confusing nature of time travel. According to Stanford, “Our script supervisor has her work cut out for her, just keeping track of all of these jumps back and forth to the future, and it's getting very, very complex. There're multiple versions of us running around in the same scene, so it's a job. It's a job to keep track of, for sure.”

Fickett however, talks about what they have done to make the story easier to follow. “The story might not be linear and we might be messing around in time and everything, but emotionally, the story is always linear and you're following this progression. And if we didn't have these guys to be able to carry that through on an episodic basis, then the audience is never lost because they are with them emotionally, and that's why they can't be confused. And we always have to tell them this is where you are in this scene, this is what's happening, and this is where your character is and what they feel, because as long as the audience is emotionally engaged and understanding, oh my God, they're going through this horrible thing and they've had this loss and they've, you know, moved through this territory, I think it's going to be pretty satisfying dramatically.”

According to Fickett, the season moves quickly. “We are moving pretty fast in this season, because, you know, Terry and I have a motto: You might not get another season, so don't leave anything on the table.

“So we're telling a lot of story and we're letting these characters go through a lot. And you're going to see a lot of different sides of them and shades of them.”

The actress talked a bit about the evolution of the characters. “It's not so spotty, all over the place that it's a different person. I think there is also a gradual evolution of each person, and you see where they came from and you're on track with them with where they go. It doesn't seem unlikely or unrealistic, I don't think. I think it's a natural progression.”

During the time of the panel, production was about to start filming episode ten. 12 Monkeys premieres January 16, 2015 on Syfy.

Be sure to check out the photo gallery for this panel.