Julie Benz Quotes

The original plan was that James Wan would direct the pilot [of MacGyver ] but it didn't work out, and then it did, which is great. I'm a huge fan.

I'd done a pilot [of Townies] with Caroline Rhea [Pride & Joy] that didn't go anywhere.

Helen Hunt is terrific, and I got to do a couple of guest spots with Helen and Paul Reiser on 'Mad About You.'

I did a pilot for Anything But Love in 1988 that didn't sell.

I'm always down to do a sitcom. I did 'That '80s Show' back in the day and that was a really great experience.

I really loved when I started doing '70s Show,' though I had never acted before, so it was a great training ground being on a sitcom.

I did a pilot for Nickelodeon that didn't end up going to series.

Writing pilots is such a specific thing. It's not even really writing TV shows. A pilot is its own beast.

The director of the [Grimm] pilot called me in. I had worked on a pilot called Love Bites with him, and the producers I worked on with on Hot In Cleveland, so they knew me from comedic worlds, and they wanted someone who could be light too. Because it is pretty heavy.

When Veronica Mars was canceled, the following season of pilots for The CW had been announced, and one was Gossip Girl. I read it, and I knew I was sort of old to play any of the kids. I called Dawn Ostroff -- who was the head of The CW at the time -- and said, 'Hey, I did so much narration on Veronica Mars, can I narrate this show? And she said, 'Hey, that's a very good idea.' They knew I had a younger voice, they liked me and they knew I'd show up for work, and I guess that was all I really needed. It was so clear to me how sassy and catty she needed to be.

I did a pilot for HBO, called One Percent, that they didn't end up picking up, but it was a pretty intense and dramatic piece.

In the '97 pilot season [of Will & Grace ], I got the male lead on The Jenny McCarthy Show.

The Daily Show writers are incredibly smart and very well plugged-in but occasionally they would need me for certain specific things, and I'd be like, 'Yeah, I completely know how to do that; I can solve that problem,and then I'd be like, 'Mom?

Television is very different than working on film. With films, you get to develop a set of characters, and then, at the end of the film, you have to throw them away.

I mean, I'm the tag of the [ Big Bang Theory ] show! That was one of the easiest jobs I've ever had.

I also really loved the friendship between these two women, and watching these two very different women working in this gritty male environment. That was really the reason that I wanted to be a part of it. And, I went in and met with the producer and the director that did the pilot, Mike Robin, and read with them. And then, I did a read with Angie Harmon, who was already cast. From the moment we read together, it just clicked. It was as easy as that.

I've been asked to direct pilots for a lot of shows.

When I was only in the first episode of Orange Is The New Black, I'm thinking by lunchtime I'm ready for my contract, like, "What's up?" I finally just spoke up and said, "What's the deal? This is the first episode. I'd love to be on your show." And they said, "Oh, Lori, we filmed out of order, we already filmed the whole season two." So I had to wait six whole months to come back again.

It's always bittersweet when you have a show that you own, that's against you. It's against one of our favorite comedies for NBC. And yes, that's part of the business model. House was on the Fox network for a number of years and was such a great business for the NBC-owned studio. That's part of what we're also trying to build. Hopefully, Mindy will help do that for us.

I didn't expect NBC would be at all thrilled about me, because the year before the West Wing I had rejected a pilot at the last minute and got them very upset. I ended up not coming to the casting - in fact it happened four different times because I just wasn't convinced that I wanted to do television.

So, I can live with people saying, "I didn't like it." But I can't live with people saying, "There just seems to be no plan here," 'cause there is a plan. And a lot of people fall into that, where they don't know what their show is yet. Their pilot gets picked up, and they have to figure it out. I would hate to be in that situation.

I was just in a few episodes the first season [ of Empire]. They didn't kill me, but I haven't been back in season two or three. I don't know if they have plans for me or not. But I enjoyed working on it. And I think it's a really talented group of actors and, boy, very enterprising to try and shoot those every week, you know, with musical numbers and all that stuff.

[Townies] was a huge cast. It was a bit ungainly, I think with 12 regular characters they had to keep writing for.

Arrested Development never felt safe. Even the first season, we did thirteen episodes, and we thought we'd never do a back nine. So I never thought in a million years we'd get to make three seasons. I was happy we got that far. I thought it was really good, and I'm really proud of it. I don't think we made a bad episode.

Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, he offered me a lot of comedy series but I told him I'd already been the best comedy series around, "The Odd Couple," and so when he saw that I did Quincy he called my agent and said, Jack turns me down? All my good series and he ends up playing an undertaker." And this was the HEAD of ABC series.