Andrew Shaffer Quotes

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.

I think one of the few faults in Dickens is that mostly his lead characters are blanks - who is David Copperfield, who is Oliver Twist? And yet he takes such joy in populating the rest of his novels with these fantastic, grotesque people like Pecksmith and so on.

The villain of any story is often the most compelling character.

Our characters were antiseptic but we weren't. And if you remember what we did on BATMAN, as the scripts were written very funny, we played them very straight.

I played characters with villainous aspect. But out-and-out villain? No.

I don't know why I always get to play these guys who have few redeeming features. But don't knock it. Villains are much more fun.

A lot of the time, a moral compass is all that separates a hero from being a villain; otherwise, the two are very much the same. Both are generally the richest and most complex characters, and they get to have all the fun. I guess it's those types of roles that I ultimately gravitate towards.

In general, I am more interested in the darker characters when I watch or read stories.

Generally speaking, I would say villains are a little more exciting to play, but if you get a flawed hero, then that can almost be just as amazing.

In my career, I've been lucky to do the bad guys that are more interesting, where the audience wants to spend more time with them and get to know them. That's what I'm always looking for and trying to do.

For me, Melania represents America. We're all reluctantly married to Donald Trump now. She is a vehicle to making fun of him. I can't do a Donald Trump impersonation, but I can impersonate her.

I look for characters that are extremely flawed and the anti-hero.

The script of 'Shaapit' was such that the leading man couldn't be shown indulging into anything heroic.

You go back to look over the body of my work, and there are no archetypal villains in my books.

It's curious that apart from the baroque ranting, 'Sarah & Duck' is very similar to 'The Thick Of It' - great characters, excellent writing and lots of humor!

I didn't set out to be a Trump impressionist at all. It wasn't that I wanted to be Trump. It's that I was asking, 'What if Trump was me?'

I always felt like Azula and Long Feng were much more interesting villains and three-dimensional characters than Ozai, who was just sort of a big jerk. Like a really big jerk, but not very complex or human.

I think the tone of mockery Heller finds is a part of Mann's irony, but only a part - a brilliant further touch consists in juxtaposing perspectives so that we're led to wonder whether the mockery itself is the last word.

I definitely think the formula to making my character seem sweet is to let him act like a jerk, give him a redeeming moment, and have a sweet song playing over the background when it happens.

Albert Brooks. Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Larry David. The best comedic actors play broad and real simultaneously, coming across as both larger than life and all too human.

I essay a negative or a positive character depending on whether it's a principle role and how much it drives the movie.

The anti-hero walks the morally gray path and constantly flirts with redemption, and that flirtation is just a blast to write.

A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff - like Warner Brothers cartoons' pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war - and then the overall character appeal.

Each character, be it the antagonist or the protagonist, brings with himself his own personality... and I have tried to stay true to each one of them; each is enjoyable in their own way!

My least favorite joke right now is Donald Trump.