10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Blindspot

Blindspot is easily one of the best new dramas of the year. The intriguing premise, non-stop action and stellar cast are some of the reasons viewers keep coming back for more. The story is still being established and there is much more to explore in the seasons to come, but here are a few things you may not know about Blindspot.

1. Jaimie Alexander is almost as badass as Jane.

Alexander plays the lead character Jane Doe on the show, and her physicality closely matches that of her character. She was a wrestler in high school, played the warrior goddess Sif on Thor and was a superhuman on the TV show Kyle XY. Additionally, she has worked with her stunt double for over 10 years and is quite adept at doing most of her own stunt work.

2. The Patterson we see on screen is a far cry from the original concept.

Showrunner Martin Gero once tweeted that Patterson was first written as a 45-year-old stern woman! Ashley Johnson plays her as a young, quirky, funny, intelligent woman, and it’s the best change the show could have made. Johnson is easily a fan favorite.

3. The FBI is faking it!

Their accents, I mean. The show lead, Sullivan Stapleton, is an Australian native. His character, FBI agent Kurt Weller, was born and raised in Philadelphia. Stapleton is mostly successful in pulling off an American accent. The fact that Weller is a man of few words works in his favor.
He’s not the only one. Marianne Jean Batiste, who plays assistant FBI director Bethany Mayfair, is British, but speaks with a bit of a southern accent.

4. The creator of the puzzles is a real-life riddler.

David Kwong is a Harvard graduate, a magician and illusionist, and also the co-creator of crossword puzzles for the New York Times. No wonder those puzzles are so clever and legitimate.

5. Do those look like a lot of tattoos? They are!

There are over 200 tattoos on Jane’s body. It takes over 7 hours to put them on Jaimie’s Alexander’s body. That’s dedication to the art.

6. The opening scene was one of the longest shoots for the show.

That opening shot was used everywhere to promote the show. It caught eyeballs and drew the audience into the pilot. The creators cleared out Times Square in New York in piecemeal for a couple of hours in the early hours of the morning. The shoot itself took about 8 hours, and Jaimie and her stunt double kept having to get in and out of the duffle bag for almost 5 hours.

7. This is not Ashley Johnson’s first TV hit.

Johnson played young Chrissy Seaver on the wildly popular sitcom Growing Pains in the late 80s and early 90s. And she’s been keeping busy over the years working in movies, TV, and doing voiceover work for video games. It feels like Patterson was written with her in mind, but as mentioned earlier, not quite!

8. The title of each episode is actually an anagram

For those drawn to the puzzles every week, the showrunners added a fun little element to the show. The title of each episode is an anagram that can be solved to reveal a clue about the episode. Fans on SM enjoy putting the pieces together.

For example, the pilot is titled “Woe Has Joined,” which is actually “Who is Jane Doe.” Blindspot Season 1 Episode 2 is titled “A Stray Howl,” unscrambling to “Taylor Shaw,” and so on.

9. How many stories can these tattoos tell?

Martin Gero, the showrunner, revealed that they have actually specced out three seasons of Blindspot, tying back to the tattoos on Jane’s body. That’s a lot of great stories to tell and more planning than most shows! Given that the show is doing so well, I think the odds are high that viewers will see all those stories unfold.

10. Zapata will get a love life too, sooner rather than later.

The show has explored a love interest for all the main characters except Agent Tasha Zapata. Mayfair had her one true love in Sofia, her former partner. Weller and Jane have each other, Patterson loved and lost David, and Reade has found an unexpected match in Weller’s sister. Zapata will soon have a love interest in the form of an Assistant US Attorney in upcoming episodes.

Blindspot airs Monday at 10/9c on NBC.