Don't get me wrong: I've worked, over the course of 14 years, with certain actors that are really just not nice as people, so you don't really care what happens to their show. But someone like Rachael Harris, you hope that woman wins an Emmy.
When I turned professional, what I was really aiming for was to be in the top 100, try to hold the top 100 for ten years, and just be in the show, and have a nice career. It's more than I could have ever hoped for. I worked awfully hard for it, but there are other people who worked just as hard and didn't get the breaks. I recognized that I've been lucky and being able to live this life that I wanted since a young age. I really went after it with everything that I have and somehow it worked out.
I have a tradition of working with actors, over and over again. I've worked with Jason Bateman, over and over again. You get to know an actor, and you get a certain trust and a comfort, and you become really good friends, and you feel like you've got a short-hand.
I think that, for a lot of us, the closer we get to showing people who we really are, that's where we feel the most uncomfortable, the most vulnerable. But it's also where the healthiest growth comes from. Like when I can really open myself up to someone and show someone who I really am, it's amazing when it happens.
People are really nice in the world. The majority of every single person I meet is really nice. Some people get excited, and some people freak out when they accidentally run into me, but across the board most people are really nice, so I just like to treat people how they treat me.
I want to affect culture. I want to have my mark on everything. I give examples of people like Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones - those are the people who I look up to. The game wouldn't be the same without them. What happens in the course of 5 years isn't really important to me. I care about what they'll say about me in 50 years.
I really like the director [for Weeds]. I don't know if you've spoken to him yet but he's really, really intelligent. He was just really kind when I met him and nice and really told me why I should play the part...and kind of really didn't argue with him. He's just really, really smart and assembled these really great people. I felt like he really knows how to enlist his intelligence to get you - I don't know - he's really hard to argue with I find.
What's really important is the people, first of all. I like working with people who are kind, above all else. I don't really want to work with someone who will manipulate me. The idea that you must treat actors a certain way in order to get a performance out of them kind of disturbs me, and it's disregarding what we do. Our job is to do our job.
Failure turns into success. It looks like it happens overnight to other people, but it's just one person's determination to get past a certain goal. Everybody thinks it's an overnight success, but it's not. It's something someone has been working very, very hard on, and more than likely, has been too embarrassed to tell anybody. No one really wants to show other people their failures. They want to show their success.
We're shooting bathing suits down here in St. Barts of course, I do get extra self-conscious. But I'm still here. If there were really something wrong with me, then they wouldn't fly me over here to do this kind of thing - and they can use Photoshop and make me look nice.
I'm certainly really rather tall at 6 foot 3, and I've been this way since I was 14, but for years, women who are even 5 foot 10 have come up to me in the street and said, 'Oh, it's so nice to see a woman who is taller than me. I've always felt like a giant.'
It definitely happens more often than you would think when someone comes up and you're like: "He's really attractive and seems really nice," and it just doesn't work if he smells bad.
A lot of people say to me, 'Stay grounded; be humble.' David Schwimmer was just like, 'You need to love what you do.' And I think that's really nice. Just love your work. My family has given me great advice saying, you know, 'Don't work too hard.' And it's really nice to have someone like that - you know that they love you.
One thing that took a while to really adjust to was, you do it for the the art, for the money, for being together and having a good time, but you do it for all those people out there who really care about the show. We are now talking about a show we did over 20 years ago.
When I got into the movie business, working with actors was the one thing I was really weak at. I didn't know what to say to actors. They scared me and intimidated me. The actors that I've worked with who have had a lot of experience, or who I've even grown up watching as a kid, were really scary. I was like, "What am I going to say to this person?" But, I've matured. It's fun. I understand what actors do now.
Serena and I have done some great career planning, and we're playing really at the peak of our tennis right now. I think tennis has been a sport where people play this insane schedule from 14 years old, so of course at 26, it's over. We've really paced ourselves.
One night, I was really beat; we worked really late and went to get food at some takeout place. And I leaned over against this gumball machine, just exhausted, and there was a SpongeBob looking back at me. And it's just, like, 'Oh, brother.'