Amy Sherman-Palladino Quotes

'Big Bang' is very tightly scripted. Because we shoot in front of a live audience, it's basically like doing a filmed piece of theatre, really.

Sitcoms are like summer stock. You put it up in three days, and then you do it in front of an audience, so it's a really great transition from theatre into camera work.

When I did 'Scrubs', we were able to always do one as scripted, and then we got to play a little bit and do some stuff. I thought that was pretty loose, but then coming on 'Happy Endings,' it's even looser.

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.

All we did in Alabama was have a read through with the script, but there was, 'No, well, it needs more. You've got to do this, Albert. You've got to do that, Jessica.' It didn't feel like that at all.

I really enjoyed multicamera comedy. You film in front of a live audience, and it's kind of the best of both worlds. It's like doing a one-act play every week, but if you screw your lines up, you get to do it over.

In the year and a half I was on SNL, I never saw anybody ad lib anything. For a very good reason - the director cut according to the script. So, if you ad libbed, you'd be off mike and off camera.

An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

Television moves fast, and you don't have the indulgences you have when you're shooting movies of so many takes because there are tight deadlines.

In TV, you're always confused because you legitimately don't know what you're doing the next week.

In TV, you usually don't get a chance to fix anything. It's always easier to cancel something than fix it.

Theater is a lot more interactive, more of a cohesive unit. With television, it can be a different director every episode.

It's very rare to have rehearsal time on a television show: You get scripts, you show up, and you do it.

I kind of went into soap opera with 'General Hospital' in the '80s. It's like theater because every day it's a new script, which really doesn't have a beginning, middle or end like a play or a movie script. So you have to be on your toes and bring it every day. And you have to be spontaneous, which is really how I like to work.

In my experience in series TV, if you have a good crew and a great cast, it's going to be a great group - similar to the theater where it's a bunch of people who are really talented and go to work each day and challenge each other, and if you are lucky enough to get a hit then it's five or six or seven years of this kind of work.

I use a method approach to all my sitcom work.

I think that if you're improvising on TV, it's a great way to help the dialogue between actors and writers.

I guess I'm used to TV where we don't really rehearse. You block it out, and then you just start shooting.

In television, you make an hour-long episode every seven days; we used to make 'Party Down' in four days per episode. It's quick and with independent movies is the same: you gotta keep moving. It's very similar.

Sitcoms are more like stage drama than anything else on film - more than a one-hour and certainly more than a movie. You get a script on Monday. You rehearse all week. And on Friday, you're on.

Wu-Tang has only done, like, three rehearsals throughout our whole career.

Mork, played by Robin Williams, was my introduction to improv, and my first real peek behind the curtain of television production; I had seen Williams riffing on 'The Tonight Show' and soon put it together that certain scenes with Mork were not scripted.

When I was working on 'Deadwood', it was understood that the script was a work in progress, and when we got to set, everyone would kind of work on it together.

If you miss something in the theater, you are working through it; you'll get it tomorrow. It's easy to forgive yourself in the theater. On television, you do one shot. All you've done rehearsal-wise is be blocked. There is all this pressure to get it right then.

I've been doing theater for a long time, so that's something I understand. I'm such a babe in the woods when it comes to TV and film. I'm still learning. It's exciting.