'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is a masterpiece because it is an episodic novel that has a rigorous form - an unprecedented combination. From the very beginning we know the town of Macondo will endure only a century, so there is a limit to the lengt...
Unfortunately, the public might not know that we get a script usually two days before shooting. So sometimes I'm shooting an episode and don't even know how it's going to end because I haven't read that yet.
I've now learned that the most stressful day of filming a TV series is the first day of a new episode. You haven't quite banked the one you just wrapped and are wondering, 'Did I do that right?' 'Could I have done that better?'
I landed the role of Bravo 5, the only female fighter pilot in 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.' I did my bit and fired my guns, but I haven't a notion of which side I was on or who I was firing the guns at.
I'm not the kind of actor that can go completely cold into an emotional scene. I have to transport myself emotionally by whatever means possible, and that basically means you carry the situation with you all week, all episode or all day beforehand.
The centerpiece of 'Law and Order' is the crime, and it starts with the writing. There's a beginning, a middle and an end. It allows the audience to watch any given episode and can drop right in and not feel lost. I think the stark, raw structure has...
My first 'SNL' episode was with Michael Phelps and Lil Wayne. And if you go back and watch the monologue - it was supposed to feature Barack Obama, but we couldn't get him - it was with William Shatner. But if you watch it, Guy Fieri is sitting in th...
After doing comedy for a while and knowing how hard it is to do physical comedy right, I learned how incredibly talented the Three Stooges really were after re-watching old episodes. They still stand up!
'The X-Files' was a hard sell because people didn't know what it was. The network didn't understand what it was that they were buying, and at the beginning, they wanted us to have closure. They wanted us to put the cuffs on the bad guy at the end of ...
The next episode of 3D printing will involve printing entirely new kinds of materials. Eventually we will print complete products - circuits, motors, and batteries already included. At that point, all bets are off.
I want to beat up Michael Fassbender in a movie. I was with him at the beginning of his career when he did an episode of 'Murphy's Law.' He's a proper superstar and enormously talented, but I want to do a scene where I properly duff him up.
Life isn't like a Full House episode. There isn't going to be an easy out to every conflict. There is no milkman, paperboy, or evening TV. There are good moments and bad moments and not everything will tie together nicely in the end. But that's life,...
The first episodes I actually read for 'Downton,' Sybil was really intimidated and hadn't come into her own. So it's only in Series Two that she's become so headstrong. In general, I find it exciting to play strong, female roles because they're shock...
My recipe for bliss on a Friday night consists of a 'New York Times' crossword puzzle and a new episode of 'Homicide;' Saturdays and Sundays are oriented around walks in the woods with the dog, human companion in tow some of the time but not always.
I read the papers, I surf the Web. At the beginning of the year, I try to see at least two episodes of every show on our network. Am I surfing? All the time. I'm aware of the landscape. I'm a competitor, so I have to know whom I'm competing with.
I didn't know what was going to happen with 'Teen Wolf.' I was only scheduled to do four episodes for them, but they kept me on, and I was like, 'Sweet! I'm still employed! That's awesome!' And then, they let me know that they were considering having...
Most sketch aficionados have an enormous amount of respect for 'Mr. Show.' I didn't have HBO back then, so I was always trying to find episodes. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross became celebrities, and Jay Johnston - who's lesser known, but brilliant - d...
People offer me loads of stuff, and some of it I like, but I just can't do it because I can't write it all. So I might get in the position where I have some sort of company and just write maybe the first episode, but these are love projects, in a way...
Most TV shows are writing the next episode while you're directing the one you're doing, and they're trying to figure out what they're going to do, and they're putting it all together.
I don't watch a lot of comedy. For relaxation and escape, I watch shows about how people survive bear attacks. Or old episodes of 'Law and Order,' the Benjamin Bratt/Jerry Orbach era.
I feel like it's a dangerous and dark world if 'Sunny' becomes mainstream comedy. If you were to turn on CBS at 8 o'clock on Thursday and see an episode of 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia,' I don't know if I want to live in that world.
