KRISTIN KREUK AT 2012 TCA SUMMER PRESS TOUR BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

The Updated Take

By Valerie Milano

Beverly Hills, CA (Hollywood Today) 10/11/12

“This would be a reboot or a re-imagining.” So, it just felt like, because we liked that show when we were kids, it felt only right to name them Catherine and Vincent,” explained executive producer, Sherri Cooper, referring to the earlier versions, the Disney cartoon and the 1980’s television series.

Tonight the CW, Oct. 11^th, premieres a new series, the newest version of “Beauty and The Beast” at 9pm.

Cooper told Hollywood Today, “we love the ’80s show, but we felt like we didn’t want to just copy that because it was done, and we just started from a place of we wanted Catherine to be somebody who could be saved by Vincent but would also save him in our version.”

The updated take on the old theme involves the beastly back story based in our recent history, beginning with Vincent, (Jay Ryan), losing his brothers in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Once he enlists in the military he becomes the epitome of the uber soldier. Due to a physical anomaly, he turns into a beast, (a handsome, well muscled and not-too-hairy beast).

Mr. Ryan told Hollywood Today and other reporters during the TCA summer press tour, “the beast is something that I can create myself. Sure there’s boundaries to a beast. But I think with this back story, I’ve got a lot to play with.”

Enter Catherine, (Kristen Kreuk), who witnesses a couple of bad guys kill her mother then chases her into the woods where the Beast is there for the rescue.

Fast forward to present day, Cat is now a New York detective and Vincent is in hiding, but their current lives are still interwoven just as their past was.

“It really is about that relationship. I mean, at its heart it is a romance,” explained Ms. Cooper, “There’s always going to be a closed ended case, but we’re always going to feel Catherine and Vincent and where they’re at in the stories that we tell, in the mythology, the overreaching thread, it brings them closer together. It really is a romance.”

Executive producer Jennifer Levin summed it up saying, “the idea that no one’s all beast and no one’s all beauty and sort of what that’s about.”