A Quote by Maria Semple

One reason I find all this character growth and narrative swerving so exhilarating is because I never got to do it when I wrote for TV. Our characters needed to remain consistent from week to week.

Maria Semple

Quote Topics

Because Character Characters Consistent Exhilarating Find Got Growth Narrative Needed Never Our Reason Remain TV Week Wrote

Quote Author

Maria Semple
American - Novelist
Born: May 21, 1964

If you're on a TV show, you never know what's going to happen week to week with your character.

Kerry Bishe

When you do a TV show, the cumulative intimacy you develop with the audience through your characters is pretty profound. It may be the most profound storytelling there is, because the character gets to live and roll around in the audience's mind week after week.

Howard Gordon

I never wanted to do a regular sitcom, because I'd be incredibly bored doing the same character week in, week out. But the beauty of 'The Simpsons' is that it's 15, 16, 17 characters. It's the variety that keeps it interesting. And hey, they're all my children.

Harry Shearer

Well, it was very interesting to play a character and stretch it over such a long time - 12 episodes. I had never done a TV show before, so week to week it was unclear what we would be asked to do.

Nick Stahl

I'm trying to find a character that's my age and I can sustain week after week. I'd like to do a series.

William Devane

WrestleMania is a week-long series of events, and the logistics of executing that week along with the week leading into it and the week after it are extraordinarily difficult in our own back yard.

Triple H

You have to be like a sponge and use what you can and how it relates because TV is fluid. Things change on a week-to-week basis. Those are the things that I do with every character. If I'm involved in a boxing movie, I go see fights and learn about boxing. It's part of what we do.

Jimmy Smits

I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.

Michael Caine

People have to respond to the characters and respond to the situations that they're in. That said, it still has to be a compelling narrative that drives along and keeps people coming back week after week. So really, with any successful show you could name, there has to be a mysterious blend of both of those.

Adam Rayner

One week you may be an actor, and the next week you had to be nimble enough to be a TV host. And the week after that, you might have to do some stand-up or be in an improv company or write and sing a song somewhere.

Alan Thicke

The minute you're offered another option, you're like, "You mean, I can watch this every week, if I want to, or twice this week, if I need to, and not next week, if I don't have time?" I didn't even realize it was something we wanted or needed, which is where all great innovations come from.

Tom Riley

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.

Hugh Jackman

I like the challenge, week in, week out, of trying to play good, consistent footy.

Sonny Bill Williams

The thing that people should remember, is that back in the day, because wrestling does not have a season, every week is a week of first run TV. In the territories that I worked in, specifically, we never had a rerun. So those shows that aired, aired one time to their constituency.

Jim Ross

Once you buy into a television show, there doesn't have to be resolution from week to week. You can develop characters and storylines and react to the audience, so you get more of a serialized version of storytelling where you can go much deeper into each character. It's more like a novel.