Michael Emerson Quotes

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story's going to end and how it's going to go. But on television nobody knows what's going to happen, even the writers.

The director in TV and the writer and the creator are working very much hand in hand.

I really like writing television, and I like the collaborative writers room feeling. It's ten people, and you're together every day laughing your heads off.

I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television.

TV has gotten perhaps better than your average film script, but at the same time, it's fun to give it all you've got for a few months and produce a story.

In television writing, even if you're running the writers room, it's a writers room.

The writers are the backbone in television, like in film, but eventually, as an actress, I can bring something.

One of the things that I learned in television, and one of the beauties of television, is that, if you have a strong writing staff, they rely on you just as much as you rely on them. They look to me or the other actors to help inspire them to take the character in interesting directions.

Nowadays, kids know how a programme like Merlin is made and how it works. But the show just seems to grow in popularity the more it goes on.

When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he's going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there's one guy: the director. It's different in television.

Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days, he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.

I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

Sometimes it's less about the character and more about the story for me. I'll play a rock in the background if I think the story is fantastic and I can be a part of it somehow. That's what I look for.

In the case of 'Blood Stone,' the producers, EON, Michael Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, David Wilson and Gregg Wilson, had an idea for a story and had a lot of it done. And I came in, worked with them, fleshed it out.

One of those things that I like about TV is that if you get a group of people you like, you can work with these people for months at a time, and you can discover their strengths and weaknesses, and you can use those in the direction where you take the characters.

I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.

A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have.

I feel 'Breaking Bad' - maybe everybody says this about their show - I feel like this show is so special that I don't 'know' that I necessarily really know what it's like to do a regular show.

You always remember the delicacy of the work you do on a new play - the delicacy and the rigor and the courage.

No great television show has ever rested on just one person. They're all about great ensembles and storytelling.

I have to tell you, TV is an incredibly difficult medium. The most challenging show to do is the hour long dramedy. It's a very tricky format.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

I think it's not uncommon for new television shows to spend certainly the first year, but without a doubt, like, the first eight or ten episodes, kind of figuring out what the show is.