Once upon a time there was a blogger who was invited to Los Angeles for some incredible experiences with 24 old and new friends!  That is exactly how I felt last week, like a princess in a fairy tale.  It wasn’t a dream but a reality to jump in a shuttle and head to the ABC building for breakfast and a screening of the season 6 premiere of Once Upon a Time.  Not only that, we got to chat with co-creators and executive producers Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz (“Lost,” “Tron: Legacy”) for some exclusive information on the upcoming season.

Once Upon a Time

Welcome to Storybrooke, a small town in Maine that you won’t find on any map. This town is full of magic, populated by fairytale characters once cursed by the Evil Queen Regina to live in our world—deprived of their memories and happy endings. Until Emma Swan came to town and changed everything. With the help of her son, Henry, Emma embraced her true identity as the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming—the Savior destined to break the Curse. But even after returning everyone’s memories, Emma’s mission was far from over. With the Curse broken, Mr. Gold (aka Rumplestiltskin) was free to bring magic to Storybrooke. And magic ALWAYS comes with a price…

As Once Upon a Time returns to ABC for its sixth season, TONIGHT, SEPTEMBER 25 (8:00–9:00 p.m. EDT), on the ABC Television Network, so does its classic villain—the Evil Queen.

In the season premiere episode, “The Savior,” as our heroes set out to stop Hyde, Emma develops a mysterious side effect, and Storybrooke becomes a haven for people from the Land of Untold Stories. Meanwhile, Regina and Zelena embrace their newfound sisterhood by becoming roommates, while Rumple tries to free Belle from the sleeping Curse with the help of a stranger. In flashback, Jafar confronts an afflicted Aladdin in Agrabah, and a secret about the Savior is revealed.  Watch this teaser to prepare for tonight!

“Once Upon a Time” stars Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White/Mary Margaret, Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan, Lana Parrilla as the Evil Queen/Regina, Josh Dallas as Prince Charming/David, Emilie de Ravin as Belle, Colin O’Donoghue as Hook, Jared S. Gilmore as Henry Mills, Rebecca Mader as the Wicked Witch/Zelena and Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold.

Guest starring are Raphael Sbarge as Archie Hopper/Jiminy Cricket, Beverley Elliott as Granny, Oded Fehr as Jafar, Deniz Akdeniz as Aladdin, Tarun Keram as Emir, Peter Marcin as Chief, Farris Tyab, Jordan Ashley Olson as Young Nurse/Oracle, Giles Matthey as Morpheus, Thomas Gasior as Musketeer #1, Ingrid Torrance as Nurse Ratchet, Hank Harris as Dr. Jekyll and Sam Witwer as Mr. Hyde.

Without giving too much away, here are some of the highlights from our interview with Adam Horowitz (AH) and Edward Kitsis (EK) and what to expect in season 6!

Land of the Untold Stories

Can you explain the concept of the untold story and how it is going to affect our regular characters?

AH: With untold story in the past we’ve seen the characters within the storybook who have been affected by the curse whose happy endings have been ripped away by the Evil Queen and her curse. With the Land of Untold Stories, it’s a little bit different, and what we’re exploring is characters who have run away from their stories, who have left them and gone to this other place. Now they find themselves in a storybook in stories that may have been put on pause and resumed. So rather than stories that necessarily that have ended in a certain way, these are stories that were kind of midstream that for whatever reason these characters didn’t want to see it continue.

It’s kind of a different way into kind of looking at what some of these classic characters have gone through, and how, and finding another way that they can kind of intersect with our characters.

What was the selection process like for choosing the untold stories? And how deep are you going? And how much of that time will be focused on those untold stories?

AH : We have a dart board.

EK : The second episode is The Count of Monte Cristo and The Count of Monte Cristo was a master of revenge. So that you’re going to see the story unfold where we realize he has a past with the Evil Queen, who we also know was interested in getting revenge. When we bring in new characters it is the fun of telling that story. Also though, how it filmatically links back to our characters. And I think what you’ll see in this first bunch, or actually the first 10 episodes is it really is, we’re back to, it’s just our characters. The villain is obviously the Evil Queen, Rumple is not looking very heroic right now, and Zelena is caught between two sisters. We’re going to see some chaos in Storybook unfold, but really a lot of it is going to be between our characters.

Characters Expected in Season 6

What are some of the characters we can expect to see this season?

AH : We are going to be seeing Captain Nemo,Count of Monte Cristo, Cinderella, Aladdin, Jasmine, Jafar.

EK : We’re going to meet the Evil Stepmom from Cinderella, we’re going to meet the wicked step sisters, or evil stepsisters.  We’re going to see a lot more of Archie this year, Jiminy Cricket. We’re going to see Elroy and the Dwarfs, our normal group of people. And then there’s be some fun, I think, little things in The Land of Untold Stories.

Belle and Rumple

Can you also talk about the tension in in their relationship? And what Bell is really hoping to achieve this year?

AH : So, you know, because they’ve had that love between them, what’s happen to them is so terrible and has ripped them apart in such a difficult way, she’s really struggling now with how to move forward in life.

EK : Rumple says, I’ll be the best man I can be.

AH : I’ll be the best man I can be, which is a very carefully chosen set of words. He’ll be the best man he can be, but he can’t quite get to that place of actually being a good man. But he does become sort of a better man, but he also never really portray who he is. That’s the push pull in that relationship, she does love him and sees the good and the bad in him, and the potential. It’s that frustration that continues to grow, which is wow, if he could just kind of keep going in that one direction it could work.

AH : But something always sort of pulls him back.

EK : I think, you know, it’s that-that gray area is what we like to write. Because if it was just good, there was just evil and the show gets boring, and for us, we always wanted it to work on the level of taking the icons into humans, you know. So you’re taking the Snow White figurine off yourself and saying, what would she really be like? And the same with Rumple. And every year I always remind our fans that he warned us in Skin Deep, he was a difficult man to love. And every year people fall for him. And then when he reminds you of that they get upset. So this year will be no different.

Love and Family

Six seasons into the show you are at the point where it’s not true love as a romantic love, it can be a parent and a child, or between siblings. Can you talk about sort of exploring, like moving away from what traditional happy ending or true love story would be?

EK : I think that is absolutely true. I think this show has always been about a family. There’s a lot of romance and I think you’re going to see the first few episodes have a lot of that romance in them, but at the end of the day, the curse was broken between a son and a mom. And family comes first on this show, and that is important to us. I think that also we try to do real life like Neil. Neil is Emma’s first boyfriend, we all have them, and you don’t marry them usually, you move on and you learn from them. And they become a how to of what not to do or what to do, but that’s what they were, and that was real to us.

AH : Same with Regina with Daniel, which there’s nothing un-untrue about that love or impure about it, but she moved on and she found love with Robin and subsequently we lost him. But to Eddy’s point it’s character roaming and experiencing things, and the goal of the show has always been to not have it just be a pattern.

EK : I think that in a happy ending they end with happily ever after, which means they go on. They very rarely say the end. So there is no period at the end of this, so how do you live your life like that? You know, if you’re waiting around for here’s the three things that are going to make me happy and then I can just sit down and go, I’m happy, it doesn’t work like that. And I think the characters have to slowly start to realize that as well because I think that a lot of them just believe that, you know, true love’s kiss we wake up and we go off into the sunset, except for there’s another episode the next week and a new marshmallow monster comes to town.

Saviors

Can we expect anymore saviors this season?  Because we had a lot of dark ones.

AH : That’s a great question.

EK : Well what I’ll say is this without trying to spoil too much is, if last year we were exploring dark ones and that mythology, this year we really try to explore savior mythology. What it means to be a savior, what-who- they could have been before, and who they could be next.

Hope

EK : What I can say though is that this is a show about hope and that we treat everybody with respect. And so that’s important to this show. So whatever we call these characters, whether they are from Dickens, or Huck Finn, or whatever  some of them need help and we’re going to help them. And that’s really what we’re going to be about and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the show is don’t trust a villain, because they lie.

AH : It goes to what Snow White says in the premiere, which is they know they’re a danger there, but she welcomes them all.

EK : The fact that Snow realized they were frightened, and that’s about taking care of people, which is what Storybook is, is it’s a very welcoming town, unless you’re like the queens of darkness and you’ve come to ruin it.

You’ve said over and over again, that this is a show about hope. For all of those fans out there who are still hoping that Robin Hood will come back, what do you say to them?

EK : I’d say dead is dead.

Regina

EK : So I can tell you that a lot of this year is about Regina dealing with loss and moving on, because I think Regina has the most unfair luck of anybody. But that’s kind of what makes her Regina.

AH : And by moving on, we don’t mean like falling in love with someone right away. That’s not realistic to us,this was someone she did love, and who she did lose, and we hope that we deal with that grief and that aftermath in a real way. The premiere explains like that she chooses to have hope and believe that Hades was lying. That’s her taking a leap of faith into believe he wasn’t obliterated, he went to a better place, he moved on. And then when the audience sees the feather come down, that’s telling the audience she was right to have that belief and she doesn’t need that physical proof.

EK : That’s why. Absolutely that’s why we-we did it. If she see it then it’s not fake. Then it’s not taking a leap of anything, it’s fact.

Inspiration

Where else do you find inspiration for the characters and their stories.

EK : You find them everywhere. You find them from life or TV shows. Like Walter White saying I like the life, absolutely was amazing. Michael Corleone closing the door when his wife realizes he’s gone to the other side. All these images stick in our mind. For us Rumple was always part rock star, he was kind of this mixture of Bowie and Mick Jagger and then he’s the Godfather. And you mix those two together and you’ve got Mick Jagger if he was a crime boss and that is kind of where we came this from. When we sat down, we always said it’s fairytales through a Bowie video and which is why you see all these little touches. We draw inspiration for the characters everywhere and in real life.

Social Media Influence

On social media and your fan base, I wonder how much do you pay attention to that on Twitter and if it ever plays a role in the storylines or characters that you bring back?

EK : If we were to listen to everyone, Robin would be both dead and alive. Regina would be with Daniel, the Huntsmen would come back even though he’s a movie star. He would also be dead and Neil would be back. Hook would be alive and dead. Everybody has a different opinion and we’re going to go with the one that got us to episode 115, which is ours. As much as we love the fans and we love their thoughts, by the time they hear them, we’re already on episode 20. So today this will premiere and episode one will get a lot of you betters. But we’re in ten, and so the hardest thing I think in this business is to stay true to your vision, because every day you wake up and somebody is trying to say, are you sure you want to do that?

AH : Right. We love to hear from the fans, we love to get the feedback, and it’s a relatively new phenomena that we get those real time feedback as shows are airing. But what’s hard for a lot of fans to understand, because they don’t make television for a living, is exactly what Eddy said, which is by the time you’re watching the premier we’re already talking about the back half of the season, and how we’re ending the season. It’s like the ship has sailed in a way.

EK : Did anyone read the Hunger Games and after chapter two say they didn’t tell me who won. I hate this book. I have to read 80 more pages? But on TV it’s like I watched three hours, and I want to know what’s happened to John Stow, right now.

How Much Longer?

How many more seasons do you foresee being on the air? Do you have an end date?

AH : How many do you want? We don’t have an end date, but we have an end plan, let’s put it that way. We know how we would want to end the show when the time comes.

EK : I also think Once Upon a Time is a show where season one was different from season two, then season three and we’ve reinvented it every year. Yet it all has fallen under an umbrella where people have stayed with us. Eventually some of the characters are going to have to have their endings and move on. But who knows, maybe there’s a world where this show continues to grow and move on and-and new people come in and out. But we don’t know. We’re not at planning an ending right now, but we’ll see what happens.

AH : We’re in the middle of telling this story about these characters and we’re excited that we’re given the opportunity to tell it.

How excited are you now for tonight’s premiere?

For more information on “Once Upon a Time,” visit abc.com/Once.

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Twitter: @OnceABC and @ABC_Publicity
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My trip that included the exclusive interview with the creators of Once Upon a Time was hosted by Disney but every opinion is 100% my own.