Table Read Quotes

On 'Lab Rats,' I read the script probably three or four times before we ever even do a table read because I want to be completely prepared. And I want to know exactly which beats I have to hit and where I need to make something comical. Some lines need a little more than others do just to get the point across, to get the joke to be funny.

I don't remember what script it was, but at the Monday table read, the [opening] teaser didn't work.We went back and had to think of a new teaser, and [after] four hours, five hours, we weren't landing on anything.And it was probably Glen [Charles] who said, "What are we, cowards?" You had to do it, no matter how long it took.

The first time I saw J.K. Rowling, I was sitting across from her at the 'Fantastic Beasts' table read, and I was just amazed by how wonderful she is in person.

I remember the first reading of the script we had and everybody was sitting around the table. I was very impressed with the level of acting that was in the room, particularly with Jennifer who has so much responsibility.

'Power' usually starts principal photography around mid September, and the first table read is always like one big family reunion. The most common comment we hear is how 'well rested' everyone looks... something that can't be said by the end of the season.

I don't normally get very star struck. However, I was just at a table read for a movie. It was an animated movie where they have all the actors come in and sit around a big table and read the whole script out loud so you can see what's working, what's not working. And this is an animated movie that Paul McCartney is doing and he's producing it. So I got to meet Paul McCartney.

I've done so many other projects where you're in a room with a reader and you're acting your lines out: 'We have to get out of here! Any minute the building will explode!' And then the reader says: "Yes...we have to get... out of here." So it's not easy to be in the moment in that kind of situation. Reading with the entire cast in the room for The Clone Wars makes the experience much more organic and I love that.

When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.

It's exciting to do something like this because usually what happens in theater is that, after the first or second reading of a play, it falls apart completely and the rehearsal process is such that you begin to pick up the pieces and put it back together again.

I've done films where we don't rehearse, and I've done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

I think the first table read I ever did, my hand was vibrating the whole time.

When you go to auditions, pretend you already have the job and you're just presenting - almost like you're at the table read. Don't go in with an air of, 'Please like me,' or, 'Please hire me.' You're like, 'Here's my take on it. Take it or leave it. I've got a lot of other things to do today.'

We get the scripts before the table read, but I don't look at them until we go into the table read. I don't want to know, when I'm playing a moment in the current episode, what's going to happen because it might change how I'm playing that.

Network cable reads are always kind of stressful because it's the first time everyone's read through it out loud.

I don't do a lot of rehearsal. I don't like rehearsals. I rehearse the day or morning. I spend one hour and a half with all the actors, and we go over the scenes, and we change it and change the dialogue, and we do a lot of things to it, but prior to shooting, I don't really rehearse.

I saw the 'Balls of Fury' script, and I was skeptical at first.

When someone pitches a joke for a character that is just perfect, and you can imagine that actor reading that line at your table read or on the set, it's like the sound of a snap snapping into place.

If a movie doesn't even have financing yet, they'll do a table read for it at a casting director's office with actors, for the producer and the writer, just to hear if the movie is working.

I was doing a play out in L.A. 20-some-odd years ago called 'Goose and Tomtom' by David Rabe, and somebody saw it and the next thing I know I'm doing the table read of the film version of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon - one of the great films of our generation.

You know that you're part of a Spielberg production when you've got some aliens involved, but you really know when you're sitting there at a table read, and they say, 'Steven really wanted it this way.'

Sitting down for the actor read when you first get together, it's like the Last Supper because you don't know who will be there for the next read.

What's fun about 'New Girl' is that when we sit down for a table read, we are always in the mind-set of, 'Well, wonder what this is gonna be like!'

'FlashForward' was on the outs when I was approached with 'Happy Endings.' I literally got the script on a Friday, and on Saturday morning I met with David Caspe, Jamie Tarses, and the Russo brothers. I took the role on that Saturday, and on Monday I was doing a table read. It all happened very fast, but it was super exciting.

What I didn't realize is that the writing process for comedies is that you do your table read, and if you aren't funny on that first day during the table read, they take your jokes away and give them to somebody else.