A Quote by Shelley Long
I'd spent ten years in London, writing and performing my own comedy shows. They gave me the Cheers [scenes], and I thought it was the springboard for chatting about the show, because in England, that's what you do. So I walk in, and I'm looking around, and Jimmy Burrows said, "What are you looking at? You're not here to have a conversation; you're here to audition."
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But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.
There are always those Gossip Girl walk-and-talk scenes where you're walking and just talking about life and death. You're having a serious conversation, looking someone in the eye, but everywhere around you, it's literally a circus.
There are always those 'Gossip Girl' walk-and-talk scenes where you're walking and just talking about life and death. You're having a serious conversation, looking someone in the eye, but everywhere around you, it's literally a circus.
My partner after Fred Freeman was Jerry Belson. And Jerry Belson, after I was doing so well writing situation comedy, said, this is not good enough. We got to create our own shows. I said, but we're very happy doing this. No, no, no, you got to get your own show. So he made me - and he and I created our own shows. And we actually - everything we created failed. "Hey, Landlord" was our first show - 99th in the ratings. But imagine this - it's a great reflection on the years.
I never thought of myself as being that good looking, I was an actor, people saw me on television, and then they start to think you're good looking because of that presentation. I was no better looking before the show, than after - and before the TV show I couldn't get a date to save my life. So what changed? Did I suddenly become more good looking? No. I got lucky, I got a TV show. That's what happened.
Also, having grown up in England, you walk around London, you're passing relics that are a thousand years old - the wall of London is a thousand years old. You don't talk about it, it's part of your everyday life. The idea that people are in these environments and talking about the past and what happened, it's irrelevant. It's all about living and in this world it was about surviving.
I had no interest in being an actress what so ever, and when I was about 14 or 15, I was signed to a company in England. They owned a children's TV show which they put me in as a singer, and I was on the show for three years, and I left the show when I was 18 and started looking for a record contract.
But the great thing about shows now is since we've been doing (Comedy Death Ray), they have lightened up on their booking policies a bit more and are booking somebody who isn't famous and who hasn't been around ten years. It's great to see people who've done our show - the first big show they've ever done - now they can play around town.
I feel like you have to go looking for spoilers. I'm not on social media, so I will watch a show that was on ten years ago, and clearly I could find out every single piece of information about that show, but I'm not trying to spoil myself. You definitely participate in your own spoiling.
I have to say that my background in comedy, of performing live, has been such a great foundation for what we do now on camera. I really value having that kind of experience. Because when you're doing comedy shows you're writing your own material and trying it out on people and you know people find funny and don't.
Comedy people are always present because they're always looking for the funniest version of whatever the line is. Sometimes theater people, where scripts are sacrosanct, aren't quite as present in scenes. That's a massive generalization, but in my experience, I find that comedy people are great to improvise with and to do scenes with because they're there.
There is something about the vocal quality of the actors who can really do it. Jim Burrows, the great sitcom director who directed Will & Grace and Cheers, when an actor comes in to audition for him, he never looks at them. He just listens. Because funny is funny. You can be fooled by the eye, but if your performance is funny to the ear, it will be funny.
I went to high school in Indianapolis I learned how to walk around looking tough because everybody had to do that. I go out there occasionally and they're still doing it, walking around looking very tough because something might happen.
In comedy, looking back is more important than looking around at your contemporaries because they are too much influenced by the same time period as you are.
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.
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