Joshua Jackson Looks Back At ‘Fringe’ And Explains Why He Signed On For Showtime’s New Series ‘The Affair’

Dawson's Creek alum Joshua Jackson wasn't looking for another TV series after finishing Fringe, but when he saw the script for The Affair he couldn't say no. The 36-year-old actor opened up about his time on Fox's Fringe and why Showtime's The Affair, which premieres tonight, was the perfect next step.

After playing Peter Bishop in Fox's Fringe for five seasons (running from 2008-2013) Joshua revealed he is happy that they were able to finish the series with the final fifth season and that he has no regrets about how it ended.

"I actually really thought that [executive producer] Joel [Wyman] wrapped the story up in a really good way. I'm happy that we got to come back for that last season so that we had the chance to finish the story, because that would have just sucked to have to leave it open-ended at the end of all that," Joshua told TV Line.

"There's such a temptation to try and do something either shocking for shocking's sake or overly maudlin because I don't know why. I thought that was a really elegant, joyful ending to the show. I thought it was really appropriate."

Despite his love for the show, the hard production schedule and long seasons made the Fringe actor decide that he wanted to take a break from TV for a while. That all changed however, when the role of Cole Lockhart in The Affair presented itself.

"But you know, 22 episodes a year, it's a grinder, and you stack a couple of those on top of each other, and it's difficult. So I took a good, long time before even starting to read scripts again and was not really all that engaged in the process. But last summer, there were two scripts that were really excellent," the Inescapable actor told the publication.

One of the scripts was for a one-year series while the other was for The Affair. After talking to show's creator Sarah Treem, Joshua signed on for the Showtime series. The fact that the show will only have 10 episodes this season was also big factor for Joshua.

"What appealed to me was not actually the subject matter, per se. I thought that the humans inside of the subject were very real and fleshed out in interesting ways. As happens a lot inside of a relationship, I tell a story that I think we both agree upon, and my version of it and your version of it are very, very different. And I thought that that was a really smart way of examining how we all live inside of our own narratives. I guess that's the actor in me," he revealed.

In The Affair, Joshua plays Cole, a man struggling to deal with the loss of his child, while his wife Alison (played by Ruth Wilson) looks to a married man named Noah (played by Dominic West) to cope.

"Over the course of the story, I think the choice is constantly evolving of where the likeability or the moral center of the show would be. Because as they make these choices, both positive and negative... the subside of every negative choice they're making is that it's for love, which is quite a powerful statement," Josh told Just Jared about the affair aspect of the show.

"They are making these seemingly destructive choices for something that is so powerful they can't deny it. Over the course of the season, I think you go back and forth."