Source: BuzzFocus.com
Date: October 9, 2009

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the live set of “White Collar,” the upcoming “Character’s Welcome” addition to USA Network. Before we visited the set, I got a chance to speak to Tim DeKay (stars as Peter Stokes) and Matthew Bomer (stars as Neal Caffrey) regarding their on camera relationship.

Here’s what they had to say:

Bags: Neal and Pete have such a yin and yang, married personality. They almost have, like a little bromance kind of relationship. How will that play out as the series progresses? Like, what kind of “Odd Couple” relationship will you guys explore?

Tim: It’s still—I think that’s a big part of the show and it continues on, you know. We both—I’ve said that we both respect each other. There’s an odd respect that we both enjoy and we know that each other enjoys solving something. Now I—Peter looks at it different, solving something than Neal does, but they—it’s—and Peter is aware of that. So, he can have Neal go do—perhaps do something that shouldn’t really be done, but he does it. And, I think that out of that, they—and deep, deep, deep down inside, they like each other. They just—they do, they do, they like each other. They say, you know, Peter will tell me, he’s a pain in the ass, blah, blah, blah…

Tim: Well, there’s an episode that we’ve just shot that I think is very telling. Peter has some time off. He has some time off and very telling as to what he does with that time off.

Matthew: I would just say, in terms of perpetuating, I would even go further and say that really, the relationship between these two characters is really the center of the show. And, I think what makes that relationship interesting and something that will continue, they’ll always have things that they clash on. I think Peter is fundamentally one way and Neal is fundamentally one way and they’re both adults, so that’s probably not going to change too drastically.

But, I think they have a certain set of strengths and weaknesses that compliment each other well in terms of solving cases. And, so as the series progresses, we sort of find—we get a better idea of what those are and what is interesting is that Neal has so many things going on, but ultimately, the person who effectively ended his—ended, for now, his career as a social engineer, is also the person he really trusts more than anybody. And, I think that’s an interesting dynamic as well, because there’s the complication of he’s also the person who took something away from me.