I think cable TV in the United States is amazing right now. It's reinvented television, really. What's going on in the States with some of these cable shows like 'Breaking Bad' and 'Mad Men' is amazing stuff.
There's no better place to do a longform project than HBO. I loved the creative teams I got a chance to work with.
I signed up for 'Brothers & Sisters' because I think it's a really great show. I like my character, and I'm really interested in what he has to do every day - and this cast is so spectacular. I really wanted to work with this particular group of people.
I don't get grumpy at a 'Strictly' level, you understand. We're just making a television show - the person I'm dancing with can't dance; they're doing their best, and we're not going to win the World Championships.
Sometimes when I'm reading a script, I can't quite believe that this is going on television alongside cereal commercials.
I think my own strengths are in television production.
HBO spends almost a month perfecting an episode. They shoot at the same speed that you would shoot a major motion picture, and they give you all of the things that you need to succeed. They really do support their artists.
People think "The Office" was improvised, but it's all on the page. We do that because what we found is that in the early days of "The Office," we went in with it sort of 80 percent scripted and we did some things and then we improv'd and we did - you know, and it gets a laugh on the floor because it's the first time they've heard it.
I do want to get more involved with clothing, TV shows, movies.
We want to make the best television possible. We should be drawing on the entire available pool of storytellers and directors, and we should be expanding that pool and trying to hire the very, very, very best people. That's our job.
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we'd go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father's televised service for 17 years.
My most frequent collaborators at S.N.L. are the incredibly gifted writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider!
The thing that made 'M*A*S*H' so good was the fact that we did have those relationships off-camera and took them on-camera.
I do love TV as a medium.
There's always a concern over budget with film too but people are more extravagant when they're making a feature. In television everything's tight, everything's paired down and it's just a question of making it look expensive.
I grew up in the '50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn't exist anymore.
TV is all about hair. And then skin. And then clothing. And then it's about your voice. And finally the report, what you're actually saying. And 99 times out of 100, it never gets past the hair.
The first thing I did for TV was a pilot for CBS.
When you're doing 22 shows on network television, the writers are going on vapors towards the end and, as an actor, you're just trashed by the end.
When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.
I was hired as an assistant at 'SNL' in 2002.
I've been lucky enough that in the U.K., I've done shows that have aired once a week. I make a show there that runs seasonally, and we make one episode a week, and that is great - the value of time. You can really think and finesse what you want to do.
What I do know is how difficult it is in this industry to get a show on the air. There's so many different stages: getting a script bought by the network, then getting a pilot made and having that pilot go to series, and then, when that series gets on the air, having people watch it.
I am the lead on NBC's 'Siberia,' and I loved that experience.
If someone said, 'Sit down and write a 'Community' episode,' I would be panicked.
