A Quote by Gretchen Mol
With the television thing you have this lull of time where you're not with the character. And when you get those first pages, you're like, "Who is she again? Huh? Where did we leave off?" Then you show up at the read-through and all of the sudden the voice is there, and you realize that the character is still stewing in you all that time, even in the downtime.
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And then, 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became so important to the character. You realize that the more you read it, if I read the book again today, I'd find 100 other things that I missed last time. It's a constantly changing book.
As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.
The first thing that happens is the cleansing of the former character. I don't think a lot of actors talk about it, but there is usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character played prior to the movie. Then you want to think about what the character represents, and you write down all of the elements about this character and then take the time to find some synchronicity and start breathing the character.
I always view auditions as the first and last time I'll ever do a character, so that's how I like to see the joy in it. Assuming I don't ever book this, I get to play this character this one time and give it my all because I'll never play it again.
I approach things from my feeling first. I have to get a feel for the character. I'll do that through music; I'll do it through what is naturally popping up for me when I read the script. My ideas or whatever the occupation of the character might be.
I liked the way my character, Shane, was first introduced. You get introduced to her through this sexual action, and I thought that was so cool and just kind of summed up what she enjoys and who she is, to a certain extent. She's a complete sexual being and the great thing is that she doesn't apologize for it. It's just who she is. We rarely see women be able to do that on television.
When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.
I got good at trying to throw a voice on a character from the very beginning as opposed to like reading it and sitting with it and mulling over it and stuff like that just try to read what it is and then try to put a funny voice to it like as soon as possible and stuff like that. Once you get laughs with your voice then you can start thinking about, you know the physical characteristics and how they might walk or if they stick out their buck teeth or if they wear an afro and stuff like that. I think like finding the voice of the character helps to like build the wardrobe and everything else.
I've had plenty of friends tell me that their first time doing stand-up, they do well, and then they tank for a while after that. Kind of like the first time you do a drug, you're like, "Huh! This is pretty darn good," and then you spend all your money trying to get the same high.
If you're doing television, you get to be a character for a long time, and the cast around you becomes like family. You get attached to playing that one character, and it's hard leaving them behind.
When you work on a pre-existing character, when you end up getting invited to be part of a legacy character like Superman, I don't feel like it would be true to the character if all I did was go in looking to express my own voice.
The thing I'm writing now, I have various characters, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this couple dies. And they have a daughter. ...I thought, 'OK, we have to do something with the daughter' ... then I realized she's not really their daughter. She has her own story. And she's become the most interesting character. She was this throwaway character that I didn't even conceive of before I started writing her into it, and now she's become very important in this book.
A ghostly side note Soldier boy Miller played a Lucifer-like character in the final two episodes of Joan of Arcadia. Coincidence I do find it strangely poetic, ... that a character who shows up on a show about God to play something kind of satanic winds up in the very last two episodes of that show, and then appears in the show that replaces that show on its exact time and night the following season.
It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening.
I never like to judge the character. I just have to leave my feelings of pity, or fear, about a character - whatever I feel towards the character, I try to leave to one side. It's good to have them, but it doesn't help me. I can't act those things. I just to play the character as truthfully as I can.
There's a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it's a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it.
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