A Quote by Colin Morgan

The big difference I think between tv and stage is definitely the immediate buzz that you get. And that's not just as an actor, as an audience member you're getting the chance to have this kind of two-way process where the actors and the audience are experiencing the same thing. With tv you often have to wait months and months down the line to actually get the pay-off. Whereas with theatre it's a very immediate thing.
The first thing I say when people ask what's the difference [between doing TV and film], is that film has an ending and TV doesn't. When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there. And in television, it can't end. You need the audience to return the next week. It kind of shifts the drive of the story. But I find that more as a writer than as a director.
I've always loved theatre because it's so immediate. The challenge of it is that, career wise, it's easier to get traction in the industry if you do film and TV because the audience is larger, and because the work can be seen for a longer period of time. I did solid work in a series of regional and Off-Broadway shows, but the work I did on TV or film will have a longer life with a larger audience (and with services like Netflix). Ultimately, there's something intimate about TV, because the storytelling and the actors come home with the viewer. It can be powerful because of that.
The stage is bigger than life. There you are projecting to an audience. In television, you're drawing the camera in to you. And with TV, there isn't that immediate feedback from an audience. You do hours and hours of taping and never get that response.
I got on stage and I went, "Oh wow. No stage fright." I couldn't do public speaking, and I couldn't play the piano in front of people, but I could act. I found that being on stage, I felt, "This is home." I felt an immediate right thing, and the exchange between the audience and the actors on stage was so fulfilling. I just went, "That is the conversation I want to have."
The theatre for me is much more satisfying as an actor because you are working in front of a living, breathing, throbbing, gasping, laughing and hopefully applauding audience. And the immediate connection you get with that audience is very satisfying.
TV and film for me are not as exciting as the live stand-up show and getting the immediate reaction of the crowd. TV is a lot of hurry up and wait for your shot and less immediate reaction from people.
From a very young age, I wanted to get up on stage whenever I went to the theatre - the actors just seemed to be having so much fun. One of my worries about theatre, in fact, is that the actors are quite often having more fun than the audience.
I didn't want people to wait six months to get the clothes, I wanted a very immediate, real feel to it. You see it one night, the next morning you can go and buy the same outfit!
I actually think film and TV are sort of the same thing now. To me they're all motion pictures. There's a camera, a script, other actors and a director. Doing a sitcom is a little different. It's kind of a hybrid, half movie, half play, presented in a proscenium fashion - the camera's on one side of the line, the set on the other, the audience sitting behind the cameras.
Sometimes improv doesn't work on TV because the audience had heard the thing that was shouted and they're very much alive, the audience in the room - they're alive in that moment. Whereas the audience sat at home on the sofa, it feels like it's part of a party that they haven't been invited to.
TV acting is so extremely intimate, because of the peculiar involvement of the viewer with the completion or "closing" of the TV image, that the actor must achieve a great degree of spontaneous casualness that would be irrelevant in movie and lost on the stage. For the audience participates in the inner life of the TV actor as fully as in the outer life of the movie star. Technically, TV tends to be a close-up medium. The close-up that in the movie is used for shock is, on TV, a quite casual thing.
Immediate, simultaneous connection between the audience and a performer is crucial to me. It's why I do what I do. Other things, like recording, are satisfying, but they're not the same. I love the connection I get with the audience when I'm sitting behind that piano.
There are times as an actor when you don't work for two months, sometimes three or sometimes six, and the only thing that's going to keep you sane is if you give back and live your life. I've definitely gone through that. It's like, 'Okay, I'm out of work for two months.' That's two months I can paint.
There's something really cool about TV. TV, you get the luxury of having the same people around. It is such a blessing when you get a TV job. You really have a chance to get to make, like, work friends. I think TV is one of the few mediums where I've had the opportunity to get to know my crew members.
There's something about that relationship between actor and audience. Whether you get it on Broadway or in a fine local playhouse, there's no greater drug. Every time I get to do TV, film and a play in the same year, it's my dream come true.
In a way, 'Lost,' or maybe TV in general, is a kind of a contract between the writers and the viewers. And the actors - of course we have a great deal to do with it - but where the drama's made, sort of where the meeting of minds is, is between those two parties: writers and audience.
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