I almost did a show called 'Celebrity Splash.' It was a high diving competition show that only ran one season because of all the injuries. I can't even enter the water without holding my nose, but I was between jobs and the money was tempting.
I had to create a children's show, because we wanted the money - and it was, interestingly enough, the first project at the Angel Island theatre space. We did the show, an adaptation of Grimm's Fairy Tales. It was hardcore Grimm - nothing was sanitized - and it was called 'The Mary-Arrchie Kid's Show.' It was well-received, and so I applied to do it through Urban Gateways in Chicago.
I left 'Saturday Night Live' without a film to go to, and I'd filmed 'Old School' while I was in my last season of the show, and that hadn't come out yet. I was a free agent, in a way, but I knew it was time to leave the show and test the water.
I am the most proud of is the show called Cracker and I think it only lasted a season or two. It was with a gentleman named Robert Pastorelli who has since passed away, but it was based on an English television show that was really popular.
I called my show 'Power' because, for me, the whole series is about the way my main character, Ghost, is power-less over his circumstances, even though he has almost endless access to money and guns.
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?
I am a Tony voter; it is an honor that I take seriously. Each season, I enter the process with a degree of enthusiasm and optimism, which dissipates as I slowly plow through show after show.
I am a creator of TV shows. 'Lifestyle' ran for 14 years... that was pleasurable. We also had 'Runaway' for eight years. We did two years of a show called 'The Start of Something Big', and we did a network series called 'Fame, Fortune and Romance.'
I did a live late-night talk show called 'Creation Nation' with friends of mine. I had a sidekick and a band, and I wrote the whole thing. And it had the form of a late-night talk show, but we did it on stage because no one was giving me a TV show at the time.
I was one of the only girls in my high school that didn't get [a nose job]. And if anybody needed it, I probably did... I'm proud to be on a positive show and to be a voice for girls and say, 'You don't need to look like everybody else. Love who you are.'
We show some more complicated cases. We show problems with fillers that were injected into the nose and the complications that caused. We show dog bites to the nose and the face and the reconstruction. There are some interesting stories, but they're more of learning lessons.
I ran into my old friend Michael Kenneth Williams, who I worked with on a show called 'The Philanthropist' for NBC. He was going to be doing this show called 'Hap and Leonard.' He was playing Leonard, and they were looking for somebody to play Hap.
We hoped to get a TV show, and we almost did, but 'The State' beat us out for this MTV show. So because they were there, and 'SNL' and 'Kids in the Hall' were there, we thought, 'Let's go try to do what Python did, and instead, let's make movies.'
I was under contract with Walt Disney at the time. I was co-starring in my second season of a show called, Texas John Slaughter. The Andy Griffith Show hired me to play Thelma Lou. I only worked when they called me. I would do an episode in two days and I got paid $500. After all the federal, state and local taxes were taken out and then my agent's commission I only got $200 some dollars per episode.
There's a show on Comedy Central that I love called 'Nathan for You,' which is kind of a reality show, almost a prank show, where this guy Nathan Fielder goes around helping struggling businesses. He's so hilarious and so awkward.
Standups have all the talk shows, but you never see a sketch group on a talk show. Even on so-called variety shows, if you do see a sketch group or character, it's written specifically for that variety show and usually written around the host of the show or a celebrity.
Why does an iPhone cost only a couple hundred dollars? Because, as the stage performer Mike Daisey depicted in an arresting one-man show called 'The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,' Apple's shiniest products are made by a shadowy company in China called Foxconn.