I can only speak for myself, and hope people hear my words and see me on television speaking for myself. And, hopefully, they'll be able to make their own judgment. And at the end of the day, I just want my work to speak for itself.
I think the theater work and the on-camera work feed off each other. My theater work has become more simple, and my on-camera work has become more energized or more spontaneous.
I have had it with people who are threatening me and my kids and my family over simply commenting on the law and criminal procedure, and respecting juries. Because they do work hard. They work way harder than I do; and they work way harder than the rest of those people making those peanut gallery comments.
I mostly eat peanut butter sandwiches. Peanut butter and banana, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and potato chips, peanut butter and olives, and peanut butter and marshmallow goo. So sue me, I like peanut butter.
When I stepped back from the gallery I was in a phase where I thought I wasn't going to be making work for a gallery context for a while. People were like, "You should never leave a gallery if you didn't have somewhere else to go," but I wasn't trying to disrespect the gallerists in that way.
I feel that doing theater does give you a good grounding to work on camera. The audience is the lens.
It's funny, 90 percent of what I've done has been television, and I never really wanted to do it that much. I was really interested in film and theater. What's ironic is that when I started doing television, I did a bunch of amazing shows all in a row, starting with The Corner.
Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing.
Whether the theater is 1,000 seats or 500 seats or 200 seats, you have to make sure the person in the back of the theater can hear you and understand you. So there's a lot of articulation and a lot of voice in theater that really just isn't necessary when it comes to dealing with the camera.
Working on camera is a different ballgame in the sense that it's far more intimate work, but the basics and the foundations of being able to create something that isn't necessarily your own instincts - is a character that you have inside your head - whether you're talking about television or film or theater, that still has to be the grounding work.
I know, every fighter knows, you've got to pile up wins in a row. You can't lose two in a row, three in a row and then you hear mentions of losing your job.
I love carrot cake - that's probably my favorite - and I'm obsessed with peanut butter. I eat anything with peanut butter - maybe not carrot cake with peanut butter - but, I think I got this from 'The Parent Trap': Oreos and peanut butter; I like that. And peanut butter and apples, peanut butter and chocolate.
But if you pick up every other magazine, it is the peanut butter diet, or the cabbage soup diet, and then you go to the radio and you hear that you can drink some solution and you will lose weight overnight. It just does not work that way!
My favorite thing to hear from people is, 'I left the theater and couldn't stop thinking about it.' You want your work to have an impact after they leave the theater. It's the equivalent of leaving a musical humming a show tune.
I started in theater. I would liken sitcom work more to theater work than I would, perhaps, to dramatic television. It's so quick. It kind of feels like the pace of a play.
The stigma that used to exist many years ago, that actors from film don't do television, seems to have disappeared. That camera doesn't know it's a TV camera... or even a streaming camera. It's just a camera.