TV and film were always governing passions of mine, and that first wave of great HBO shows in the early years of the millennium was feeding my desire for fiction more than the books I was reading.
I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.
We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.
America's popular heroes have seldom been its great thinkers, and even less its scientists. The success of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' which seems to give the lie to this claim, is more the exception that proves the rule.
Reality television hasn't killed documentaries, because there are so many great documentaries still being made, but it certainly has changed the landscape. There is this breed of gimmicky documentary that is basically a reality show.
People know the facts of a story just as well as the people on TV do, and they have more platforms to hold the media accountable when they don't get it right. We are a world full of media experts. That's a great thing.
I know what it takes to go from the point where someone's looking at a newspaper article, and thinking, 'Oh, this would make a great TV series,' to the point where you're actually on a set and there's a camera aimed at someone.
I mean, I'm pretty good in real life, but sometimes people seem surprised that I'm like a normal teenager and wear black nail polish and I'm just a little bit more edgy than the person I play on television.
What does good in bed mean to me? When I'm sick and I stay home from school propped up with lots of pillows watching TV and my mom brings me soup - that's good in bed.
I left Britain in the mid-1990s when TV was going down the cundy - another good Dundee word - because I wanted a film career. But as I get older, I find myself being drawn back to my roots, and I'm loving it.
I don't like watching television too much; it tires me out for some reason. But I saw a fair bit of 'Game of Thrones' because it was so good. I mostly watched episodes that I wasn't in.
The Times' new credibility committee report that was issued on Monday very specifically said they will be putting in a policy that reporters must get permission from their department heads to appear on television, which I think is a really good thing...
People have asked me why are Australians and Brits so good at American accents, and it's quite simple. We grew up listening to the American sound on our TV. That's why American actors have a hard time with foreign accents.
Why do British people make such good TV? It's so annoying. Stop it. Is it because they have free health care? Uggh.
There have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. It was a really good tour. It seemed maybe about a week too long.
If the project has good writing and is something I get excited about, then I'll do the role. And if it's for TV, I'll ask myself, 'Is it a show that I'd watch?' If it's a play or movie, I'll want to know if there's a good director attached.
Lawmakers have good reason to want a healthy broadcast industry. Broadcast TV stations provide more than 186,000 jobs on an annual basis, which directly generate more than $30 billion in economic activity.
Asylum was good exposure for me and it is still shown quite often on television. I remember the special effects people had fun making a little doll that looked like me - which is not so easy - and it had to move along the floor.
I have such a soft spot for the really cheesy zombie movies, but if I had to pick a really good one, I'd have to go with an actual TV show and say 'The Walking Dead'.
As a writer, you're really in control of almost everything. That's not the case in TV. You have to be prepared to work with a lot of people to make something happen, and you got to be prepared, at least in the beginning, to not be too good at your sp...
We're very good at telling what happens and showing people while it happens... But sometimes television fails to take the time to say 'Why did it happen? What does it mean?' - To step back a little bit.
