A Quote by Bailey Chase

When I sat down with the creators of the show [Longmire], back when we were first starting to do the pilot, Branch was not that interesting on the page. What really sold me on the show and the character was their vision for him. It took the whole first season to flesh him out.
I really loved the story. I originally read for Walt Longmire. He is obviously a very dynamic, strong, manly man that almost any dude would want to play. Once I got in the room and met with everybody, the feedback came back that they loved me, but that I didn't have the age. And then, they brought up the idea of Branch, who wasn't that interesting on the page in the pilot, but once they explained the vision, I really bought into it.
When you introduce a character and show him for the first time, don't show him fully lit. Don't show him one hundred percent to the audience. Show maybe fifty percent or sixty percent so the audience can fill in the dark spots.
It's always interesting for me to watch the pilot of an established show because you see how the writers and actors weren't really sure what the show was and what the dynamics were. If you look at the pilot for 'Seinfeld,' for example, it's practically unrecognizable.
The first season of a show is kind of like an extended pilot. You're only really on the map if it goes a second season.
I had just been doing graffiti around New York and this real estate investor guy had walked through meat packing in New York and saw some of my graffiti. He was impressed and asked if I sold canvases. I really had not made any canvases of my graffiti work yet, but told him I could make one for him. He then commissioned me to make ten paintings and put on my first art show. Between the sold out show and the cops chasing after me it created a lot of media and I've been doing really well since then.
I don't know much about writing a show or being a show-runner on a show, but I can only imagine that when you first cast a show and you first do a pilot, there are so many components that you're throwing into the mix and you're not sure how they're going to develop.
I think what we've been able to do with 'Longmire' is balance this procedural with a bit of a soap opera, and it's a character study of this character, Walt Longmire, and the people around him.
I was friends with Cube; he was also a fan of mine, and I a fan of him. Even before Balistyx happened I was hanging out with him, taking him to 'The Arsenio Hall Show' for his first time. I was like, 'Ice Cube, I've got a plus 1, you should go,' and I took him. Cube wasn't known at all yet.
I think so often about how, when I was starting out at UCB, Conan O'Brien was in town, and on his show back then, they sometimes did character bits, and I started getting paid to dress up as a page or a Dutch boy on his show.
Fights with my father were really quite brutal. I would not live his vision. I would not become who he wanted me to be. Everything I did was criticized. I would spend three months drawing something and show him, and he would look up from his paper and just look back down. I got no approval from him for anything I did that was creative.
The first season of a show's always a rollercoaster because nobody knows what they're doing. You gotta rush through the season trying to figure out: What is this show? And who are these characters?
It's kind of interesting when you sign on to a show because you're basically signing on to play a character because you only really see the first episode of the show.
But the character was so successful, that first one, that they wrote him again and he came in right at the end of the first year in a show called THE BOX. I was up for the Emmy for that one too.
When we developed the 'Seinfeld' show, we took a bet on Jerry Seinfeld, who was not a household name. But Jerry had a voice. He was appearing on 'Late Night', on 'The Tonight Show', had some commercials out there, his voice of observational comedy, looking at the world around him, that voice was really starting to come into its own.
I used to take acting so seriously, but after we did the Quest pilot and the show sold, Kurt Russel said, "You know, you work too hard. You'll make yourself sick. You can't work that hard doing a series, because it goes on so long. It's like a baseball season. You've got 162 games. You can't just go all-out the first week or two. You can't maintain that pace." And it's true.
One of the first TV shows that I did was this prank show. And we did a prank where we took a Michael Jackson impersonator and I played his publisher.I was just really good at my job.We were just about to go onto the field to throw out the first pitch just two weeks after 9\11. It was a huge security breach, and we made a lot of cops look really dumb. Producers of the show thought it would be really funny and I didn't think about it because I was a young dumb comedian. So I got arrested and went to jail in the Bronx, and now I can never go back to Yankee Stadium.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!