Zooey Deschanel and Emily Deschanel tell all about their sisterly bond and 'Bones' collaboration

Zooey Deschanel and Emily Deschanel

Ever since "Bones" went on the air in 2005, people have been wondering if the drama series would have Emily Deschanel (who plays the show’s Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan) acting with her younger sister, Zooey Deschanel. Now that question has definitely been answered with a resounding "yes." Zooey guest stars in "Bones" as Margaret Whitesell, Brennan’s newly discovered distant relative, in an episode titled "Goop on the Girl" that premieres December 10 on Fox at 8 p.m. Eastern/Pacific Time.

It’s a rare guest-appearance on TV for Zooey Deschanel, who’s made a name for herself as an actress who primarily does movies."(500) Days of Summer," "Yes Man" and "The Happening" are among Zooey’s recent films. The sisters’ on-screen collaboration was perhaps destined to happen. Emily (who’s four years older than Zooey) might not have ended up as an actress, since she originally planned to be an architect. Fans of "Bones" are probably glad that Emily became an actress instead and that the Deschanel sisters have finally teamed up for their first time on screen. In a recent telephone conference call with journalists, Emily and Zooey Deschanel talked about this special collaboration, their sisterly relationship, and which famous siblings they admire.

What was it like working together?

Emily Deschanel: It was fun. It was great, especially I think that first day was less hectic. We had a scene. It was just Ryan O’Neal and the two of us. It was really nice. It was great. We’ve never worked together before, except for our own plays that we’ve done together, right?

Zooey Deschanel and Emily Deschanel in "Bones"

Did you learn anything about each other that you didn’t know before during the process?

Zooey Deschanel: Things about acting, wouldn’t you say?

Emily Deschanel: Yeah, right.

Zooey Deschanel: I don’t know if I would say I learned anything. But I definitely had a really good time.

Is there a memorable Christmas that you two as sisters can look back on with fond memories? Any traditions or anything?

Zooey Deschanel: Emily likes to sleep in on Christmas morning, and I like to wake up early, so Christmas was a day of compromise.

Emily Deschanel: Yes, for sure.

Zooey Deschanel: I don’t know if there was any Christmas that comes to mind. I know that we both love Christmas.

Emily Deschanel: They all kind of blend together.

Zooey Deschanel: Yes, exactly. I think that Christmas is always used at any point in the year to cheer us up, like each other up. We would use that to cheer each other up if we were in a sad mood or something, we’d just start talking about Christmas. So we always have loved Christmas. I don’t think there’s any particular Christmas that comes to mind.

Zooey Deschanel and Emily Deschanel at the 2009 Vanity Fair Oscar party in West Hollywood, California

Which of the two of you was the first to be turned on to acting?

Zooey Deschanel: I feel like even though I’m younger, I started working first professionally, but we both were interested in acting as kids. Emily finished school first.

Emily Deschanel: I think we both loved doing plays since we were really young. But I didn’t think of it as doing it as a profession. I think Zooey knew she wanted to be an actress from when she was very young. Whereas I didn’t think I wanted to do that.

Zooey Deschanel: Yes, you wanted to be an architect.

Emily Deschanel: Yes. So I held on to that dream for a while.

Zooey Deschanel: I think you liked the way it sounded, maybe.

Emily Deschanel: No, I love architecture. I just love the combination between art and science, I guess.

Zooey Deschanel: Engineering.

Emily Deschanel: Engineering, exactly, mathematics. So I don’t know, but then I started doing plays in high school and really loved it and considered it as a profession as I got later in high school.

Emily Deschanel and Zooey Deschanel in "Bones"

Do you watch each other’s work?

Zooey Deschanel: I think we try to do as much as we can. Emily, obviously, being on a show, there’s so much more output. I mostly do movies, so it’s like I’ll come out with something like once or twice a year and Emily has something on every week. So it’s a lot to keep up with, but I try the best I can.

Emily Deschanel: And I try to see pretty much everything Zooey does. Some things are harder to see because they only have a limited release or whatever.

Zooey Deschanel: I think we’re relaxed, but we try to.

Emily Deschanel: We’re supportive, but not fanatical.

Are there any other successful siblings or sisters you admire?

Zooey Deschanel: Dylan Fontaine and …

Emily Deschanel: They did not get along though.

Emily Deschanel: The Kardashians, of course.

Zooey Deschanel: The Olsen twins.

Emily Deschanel: That’s such an interesting question. I’m trying to think. There’s the Arquettes. They’re cool. We like them. I don’t know. My mind goes blank.

There’s Sienna Miller and her sister Savanna.

Zooey Deschanel: I don’t think I know [Sienna Miller's] sister.

She designs their clothing.

Emily Deschanel: She’s a designer.

Zooey Deschanel: Oh, OK. So it can be beyond [entertainment] … I like those sisters who design Rodarte. They’re cool.

Emily Deschanel: I didn’t know sisters designed it. I guess the Arquettes in terms of actors, but I don’t know. I think it’s limited. I don’t know, yes. It’s not like I’m going around thinking of all the sibling sisters that we can admire, so it’s hard to think of that, I guess.

Zooey Deschanel and Emily Deschanel at the Los Angeles premiere of "(500) Days of Summer"

Is there something in your DNA or what have you that you think helps makes you successful?

Zooey Deschanel: It’s hard to separate nature from nurture.

Emily Deschanel: Yes, because we both grew up in the same household. I think of things that are more nurture in that, we grew up in a household where our mother is an actress, so our parents couldn’t really tell us not to be actors, because that would be hypocritical. But yet we saw a lot of actors, family friends and our mother. We saw lots of people struggle. It’s a hard business. It’s a hard profession to pursue, so we didn’t have any delusions, I guess, about it going in, so we knew that we had to be really perseverant and work hard.

Zooey Deschanel: I think, too, there was no sense that this wasn’t a job that you had to work at. There was no delusion of glamour, really.

Emily Deschanel: Yes, I think a lot of times people go into the profession and think that it is about glamour … that it’s easy, an easy job to do. That’s it’s easy to get jobs. I think we never thought any of those things.

Zooey Deschanel: That it’s all about how you look.

Emily Deschanel: Yes, there’s so many things people think about acting that we knew the reality. I think we both just fell in love with acting and performing and all of that. So I don’t know. I think that that really helped certainly. And it’s nice to have family who understands what you’re going through when you’re going through it.

Now that you guys have acted together, would you consider recording some music together?

Emily Deschanel: You’d have to ask Zooey if she’d be willing to record something with me.

Zooey Deschanel: We’ve never done music together so much, not something I’ve ever considered. Emily is a very good singer, but I hadn’t thought about it, so I don’t know.

Emily Deschanel: So, no, we haven’t considered it.

Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz in "Bones"

Emily, the "Bones" Christmas episodes are always really special and bring everyone together. How do Booth and Brennan grow closer this Christmas?

Emily Deschanel: That’s a good question. It’s so funny because we’re several episodes beyond the Christmas episode, so I have to think back. I think that the episode brings up a lot of questions for Booth and Brennan. Brennan opens up and has a new level of compassion that you’ll see in the episode. I think any time characters have a breakthrough on some level, that either Booth or Brennan has some kind of break though, then that brings both of us together.

I think that brings us closer and you’ll see in the episode Brennan has a new level of compassion and starts to have a paradigm shift in how she’s looking at certain situations. So Booth holds her hand through that. I think when you go through something, it changes you, it’s profound in a way. And if somebody is there helping you, that brings you closer together. I think that’s definitely what happens in this episode. Christmas brings people together, so as much as Brennan resists that aspect, she usually ends up together with people in the end on Christmas.

Why has it taken until now for you two to work together professionally?

Zooey Deschanel: I think that we’ve had different career paths. It seems weird, but it’s sort of difficult to schedule. I talked about doing a "Bones" episode for a couple of years now, but it never ended up working in my schedule because with films, you end up getting a job and you have to leave and go somewhere the next week sometimes.

For instance, when we shot this a couple weeks ago, we had scheduled it thinking that I would have two weeks off after I came back from Ireland. I was shooting a movie in Ireland. I ended up having to stay there another eight days or nine days. So I literally came back on Friday and we started shooting on Tuesday or something. They were packed up against each other, so it’s hard to schedule.

I think that both of us like to let each other have our space because there’s always the one thing that I would fear of working with a family member is you always want to make sure you don’t bring any silly bickering or anything like that to the set. We don’t really do so much anymore, but you worry that it will bring up your little family things.

I was hesitant — not hesitant — but I just wanted to make sure that everything was right. It was really fun. Emily was extremely welcoming and accommodating and very sweet. It ended up being really fun. I was glad I did it.

Ryan O'Neal, Emily Deschanel and Zooey Deschanel in "Bones"

Is the story at all open-ended for you or is this strictly a one-off?

Zooey Deschanel: I don’t die at the end of the episode.

Emily Deschanel: Don’t give anything away now. I’m joking.

Zooey Deschanel: It’s Emily’s set.

Emily Deschanel: We’d love to have you back.

Zooey Deschanel: Thanks.

Emily Deschanel: Anytime, so I think it is open-ended. I think it’s open-ended for a reason. We’ll see. It took us five seasons to figure out when Zooey could come on the show and it may take five more seasons.

Zooey Deschanel: Season 10.

Emily Deschanel: We’re so happy it worked out. It was something we’ve been trying to do for the beginning, but it’s scheduling. It’s hard.

How involved were you coming up with a character that Zooey would play? Did you guys get any input about that she would be a relative of Brennan’s and anything like that?

Emily Deschanel: Hart [Hanson, creator/executive producer of "Bones"] came with the idea. He had the idea for a Christmas episode and told me some things about it. That she would be my relative, one of the two living relatives in my life.

Zooey Deschanel: See, I never signed on. They said do you want to do it and this is the time when we could do it. It seemed like, good with my schedule, but I’ve never ever said yes to anything without reading, knowing what the character is first. So it was a little bit scary for me because, obviously, I knew all the writers on the show are really good. And that they weren’t going to hang me out to dry, but …

Emily Deschanel: [It] put you in a compromising position.

Zooey Deschanel: It was a leap of faith, because I’m just not used to that. But they were very receptive and let me give some of my ideas and we were able to come up with a cool character, I think.

Zooey Deschanel at the 2009 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles

Does your relationship in "Bones" mirror at all your real-life relationship?

Zooey Deschanel: No.

Emily Deschanel: No, not at all.

Emily, "Bones" has really kind of directly addressed the Bones/Booth romantic aspect of the show and their relationship. What do you think about the direction the show is taking?

Emily Deschanel: I think it makes sense. We’re in the fifth season of the show where the two characters have this chemistry together. Yet nothing has happened and I think that it’s a great way to explore this relationship and take it to another level without actually necessarily having some physical connection, I guess, to put it that way. I think it’s clever. I like this aspect.

It takes the relationship in a new direction and it takes it to a deeper place. The fact that both Booth and Brennan had that … well, Brennan wrote the book while Booth was in the coma and then Booth had the coma dream that was inspired by the book. The fact that it didn’t happen in reality almost doesn’t matter that much because it happened in their minds and they can’t get it out of their minds, especially we’ve been exploring Booth because his feelings are a little more on the surface. I think it’s an interesting dynamic and I welcome it. I think it’s a clever way to deepen the relationship and explore the couple in a new relationship in a way. It’s almost like a new relationship.

Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz in "Bones"

Is there any type of romantic flirty thing going on between Margaret and Booth?

Emily Deschanel: No.

Any other upcoming guest stars that you would like to share with us?

Emily Deschanel: Other guest stars? We had Richard T. Jones do an episode, Diedrich Bader came back and is doing an episode. I’m trying to think of other people who were doing the show. Those are the two that come to mind off the top of my head.

Richard T. Jones is an episode. It’s really interesting when we get locked into the lab by these government agents. They’re insisting that we tell them cause of death with these bones that they brought. We start investigating and there are a lot of things lead us to believe that the bones, the remains that they brought are that of John F. Kennedy. So we go into what happened with the Kennedy assassination, so that’s a fun episode that Richard T. Jones is in and actually Diedrich Bader is also in that episode.

Did the older sister/younger sister dynamic play a role on the set at all?

Zooey Deschanel: It’s more like it was Emily’s set, so I was happy to be working for her to some degree, I guess. You’re a producer on the show, so …

Emily Deschanel: I guess that’s true. You are performing; you’re one of my favorite employees.

Zooey Deschanel: Thanks. So, it was actually really very smooth and I had a great time. I loved working with Emily. It was really fun.

Emily Deschanel at the Monte Carlo Television Festival, June 2009

Were there any other collaborations not related to "Bones" that you would like to do together?

Emily Deschanel: We don’t have anything like that.

Zooey Deschanel: No.

Emily Deschanel: Besides this experience, our business, we have our own relationship that has nothing to do with business.

Zooey Deschanel: Yes, I think it’s better. It’s so fun to do "Bones," but I think it’s like in a lot of ways, it’s just nice that I can stand back and just see Emily and be proud of her and stuff without having to be in business so much. I just feel like it makes more sense for us to both have our own little things that we do.

Emily Deschanel: We can be supportive, but we don’t have to work together.

Zooey Deschanel: Exactly, yes, the less politics involved in your relationship … I always think it’s better to be able to be supportive.

Emily Deschanel: From a distance.

Zooey Deschanel: I think it adds stress to the relationship do something like that. I just think that we don’t need that. It’s better to have a relationship and have that stress with other people.

Emily Deschanel: Exactly. And in conclusion, we enjoyed working together.

Zooey Deschanel: It was fun.

Emily Deschanel: We had fun and hope to do it again sometime.

Zooey Deschanel: But not for too long.

Emily Deschanel: Exactly.

Zooey Deschanel: But it was fun, it was really fun to watch Emily work and I enjoyed it and I’m excited to see the episode.

Emily Deschanel: Me too.