Quotes About Television

There's a pace in TV I like.

What I love about 'The Office' is the fast pace and the zaniness of those characters.

I did a network show in the U.S. before, and I loved it, but you have eight days to shoot an episode, and it's just a ridiculous pace.

The danger of serialization is that you almost get into a monotone - where they all have the same beat and pace, and it's all one long thing - and when you can kind of do this interesting mixture of episodic and serialization, you can kind of take the audience on a more interesting journey.

A lot of times in television, it's incredibly rushed, and you're just trying to get the pace.

On television one gets to do things in detail and at an easier pace. You can experiment a lot with the character, give it lot more time, and let it grow.

I like the mad and neurotic pace of television.

Film and television are just different. Film is cool because it's a complete package. You know the beginning, middle, and end. You can plan it out more, which I like. But with television you get a new script every week, so it's constantly a mystery as to what you're going to be doing.

There's a lot of writing in television that can sound like it's taken out of a package, and the way to get around that is to not allow yourself to deliver it that way.

I always enjoy a challenging role and I don't have to worry about always looking my best on TV as that comes as part of the package when your acting.

TNT is a really great company to do a show for. They really believe in their shows and give shows a lot of support. They have it all worked out before you start shooting. Everybody's on the same page.

Whether it is television or film, the character on the page has to speak to me.

We don't sit down and look at the news pages and think, 'How could we do an episode about that?'

One of the things I've been most excited by is U.S. television drama. For my money, it's some of the greatest narrative art of our time. Each series is like a 19th-century Russian novel: you need to do a lot of work in the first few episodes, just as you do in the first 50-60 pages of those books.

Most shows are normally 40 or 50 pages.

On my last two days of 'Young and the Restless,' I had 120-something pages of dialogue. My last two days.

With television, sometimes the writing is continuous and happening at every moment, and you'll get new pages at the last moment. We have to incorporate that into what it is that we're doing.

I'm on television far too much. I'm not sure why. I've watched myself on TV from time to time. It's painful.

No-one tells you about being in episodic television and it ending. No-one tells you how painful it is. How bizarre it is when you've dedicated your life to one character for five years.

There are folks who now know black families - like the Johnsons on 'Black-ish' or the folks on 'Modern Family.' They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

Especially while television I think is going through some growing pains or is in need of - I think current comedy is a bit, uh, not happening, you know?

I'm really the only artist in my family. I have one cousin who is a painter. I think I developed all of that from television and books - from being, essentially, an only child. I'm my mom's only child and my dad's fourth child, but separated by 14 years.

I don't covet images or belongings. My television set and video are rented, any paintings aren't worth a fortune, and money is of little interest.

I think I grew up in an 'acultural' household - no books, no paintings, never went to an art gallery. I say that, but of course we had the TV.