The One Thing Emily Deschanel Believes Bones Could Have Explored More On Cable
Hart Hanson's massively popular Fox procedural "Bones" ended its run back in 2017 ... and when it did, star Emily Deschanel weighed in on the one thing she wished the show had done. Namely, Deschanel — who plays the preternaturally brilliant forensic anthropologist Temperance "Bones" Brennan on the show — loves and respects the character she brought to life, but she had hoped that the series could have been more direct about Temperance's likely neurodivergence.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly after the finale "The End in the End" aired, Deschanel said that she was genuinely honored to play a woman crushing it in a male-dominated field. "I loved playing a character who is such a brilliant female in science who is also not shy about telling people about her brilliance, that has so many different ways of living her life," Deschanel said. "She's not set by certain mores of our culture, and she makes up her own rules and is an independent, free-thinking, truly unique individual, and I loved that, especially a strong, powerful, successful, brilliant woman working in science." After saying that she's particularly delighted when young female fans tell her they want to go into STEM because of her character, Deschanel weighed in on the possibility that Temperance has a form of autism called Asperger's, which often causes difficulty with social interactions.
"Also, to have a character who is not wonderful at social interactions," Deschanel continued. "If it was a cable show, she would have had Asperger's. Hart and I talked about that. I've heard from younger people who are on the spectrum or have Asperger's themselves that they loved seeing a character who was not dissimilar from them portrayed on television, so that makes me happy to represent that. I know we weren't truly representing someone with Asperger's exactly, but there are qualities that Brennan has."
Emily Deschanel worked hard (especially in the Bones series finale) to keep Brennan from becoming one-dimensional
For pretty much all of "Bones," Temperance is defined by her brain and her social awkwardness, which definitely indicates that she has Asperger's ... until something happens that threatens to take her brilliance away, perhaps for good. Ultimately, though, Emily Deschanel didn't have a ton of time to play Temperance in a moment of serious crisis because said moment came right at the end of the series, when the show's penultimate episode and finale gave her a unique challenge. After an explosion at the Jeffersonian Institute — where Temperance and her colleagues solve cold cases using human remains — Temperance's ability to understand complex concepts is temporarily impaired. This is particularly hard because Temperance does prize her intelligence above all else, so the explosion certainly causes Temperance to wonder: what would she be without her extraordinary intelligence? Who is she really, and can Temperance fully realize that she's more than just a super-smart person?
"It forces her to look at herself and know who she is without her brain and her mind working the same way that she's used to," Deschanel noted regarding Temperance's arc in the final episodes of "Bones." She also pointed out that, whether Temperance has Asperger's or not, she's not defined by her brain:
"I think that ultimately, you want people to recognize that a person is not just the sum of all of their brain cells — they are more than that, hopefully. Brennan would always say there's no such thing as a soul, so this is all stuff she has to grapple with when she loses what she has identified as a big part of who she is."
Was Temperance Brennan meant to be autistic? Here's what the creator of Bones has said
Okay, so let's get to the bottom of something: is Temperance Brennan specifically coded to be autistic or have Asperger's? In a 2010 interview with TV critic Alan Sepinwall for NJ.com about autistim and Asperger's on-screen, "Bones" creator Hart Hanson confirmed that, yes, the character is meant to have Asperger's ... and that he actually based the character on a real-life friend with the syndrome.
"If we were on cable, we would have said from the beginning that Brennan has Asperger's," Hanson told Sepinwall. "Instead, it being a network, we decided not to label a main character, for good or for bad. But those elements are in there."
It's genuinely a shame that Hanson and his team didn't feel like a network like Fox would be a good home for a show about a character living with neurodivergence, particularly when it comes to representation of autism on-screen. Still, it's good to get confirmation from both Hanson and Deschanel that they wish they'd explored this aspect of the character way more, and for any future "Bones" rewatches, it's important to recognize that Temperance Brennan is meant to represent people living with autism and Asperger's.
"Bones" is available to stream on Hulu now.