I think there's something fun about television where, as an actor, when you read the script each week, it's like how the audience experiences watching the show each week.
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.
This show [Timeless] is absolutely epic. I simply can't believe the production value for the episodes. Each episode is creating a new world. I just can't think of another television show that trumps the Hindenburg to the 1970s week to week.
We had all week to rehearse. An audience would come in at the end of the week and we'd our little show. Most of the ad- libbing happened during the week on the show.
I think there's something beautifully old fashioned about waiting all week then sitting down and watching something on television together. I'm generation box set, accustomed to binging on multiple episodes at a time, which is fun but quite a solitary pursuit because you do it alone.
The thing about our movies is, we write thirty drafts. That's a very detailed script. Which means that if you try to crank it out week to week in television, it's impossible.
My favorite is doing the television show, as a variety show, every week. If the show wasn't that great one week, we could always come back and apologize, you know?
I think it's important for me, for my crew and for the audience to bring something new to each show. I have friends who have done the same act, word for word for word, for 20 years. I have a problem with that. I think the audience should see something new in each show.
I'd just love to have an audience and it's the most fun in the world to get a new script every week and have the audience come in, and work with those actors.
You put this face on television, week in, week out, they'd stop me and they'd say, 'Hey, Roy, how are you doing?' They'd know who I was, what I was, what I looked like, and what I did - all from seeing and hearing it at the same time on television.
Id just love to have an audience and its the most fun in the world to get a new script every week and have the audience come in, and work with those actors.
On Sundays, I like to plan how I want to exit the week and what are the key things I need to get done that week. I list them, and then I do check-ins on them each morning.
I love to have the people watching [The Office ] just because it's fun to have people watching, but our fans are so dedicated, so smart and so cool for the most part. We don't have these fans that overwhelm you if they see you on the street. They're like, 'Love the show', or 'What an idiot. You should have said something to her last week.' I'm like, 'I know.'
The television business is based on managed dissatisfaction. You're watching a great television show you're really wrapped up in? You might get 50 minutes of watching a week and then 18,000 minutes of waiting until the next episode comes along.
It's much more fun, I think, to watch something physical than just heads talking to each other. I like watching people fall down and push each other.
Death remains about the one certain fact in the lives of each one of us, and there will be suffering, sorrow, and sadness next week as there was last week.
People are out of their home on a Saturday night or they're at the movies or they're at dinner and a lot of the people who flip on the television are doing just that. They may have never seen your show before and you can't count on to your audience to be there week in and week out.