10 Random Things Overheard at the TV Critics Press Tour
PASADENA, CA – Just for the fun of it, here are 10 random things that TV actors, producers and executives have said to writers over the past week here at the semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour.
* Mike Epps from ABC’s Uncle Buck, asked if this new role means he won’t be Uncle Julius any more on Starz’s Survivor’s Remorse: “What happened was, I asked for some more money, and they killed me. That’s usually what happens on TV shows. If you can remember Good Times, that’s what happened to James.”
* Turner Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Kevin Reilly, asked whether he thought about canceling the American Idol when he ran entertainment at Fox: “Yes. It was 59 hours of a schedule. So you have a giant person on this end of a seesaw. No matter what you’re doing on [the other] end, it’s hard to right the ship. There is almost nothing you can do. I really love my Fox experience. A lot of good friends there. I wish them well, but that was the last two years were not a lot of fun.”
* Sir Ian McKellan (left), joining Anthony Hopkins in the upcoming Starz production of the drama The Dresser: “There have been many films, many television, many plays, about what it’s like to be an actor, the backstage story. And, frankly, none of them is any good, with the exception of this one.”
* Chris Meloni (top) from WGN America’s Underground, talking about real-life slavery: “Have you ever seen a cotton plant up close? It’s the most unfriendly, unforgiving thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, it’s worse than a cactus. It is prickly, brown, and scratchy, and you have to pick it up.”
* Adi Hasak, creator of the new NBC cop drama Shades of Blue, on how it originated: “I wrote it as a spec script, and it got to Elaine Goldsmith Thomas. Then at some point Elaine said, ‘You know, Jen would be great for this,’ and I had no idea who she was talking about. I’m not on a first-name basis with Jennifer Lopez.”
* Sharon Horgan of Amazon’s Catastrophe, on why her foot is in a cast: “I was dancing with Leonardo DiCaprio last night, and he had Cuban heels on, and he stood on my toe, but it was worth it.”
* Hugh Laurie from AMC’s The Night Manager, asked whether he would return to the broader comedy of his youth: “When I started out, the tradition that I was working in was of young people mocking old people. It was school boys in class mocking the teacher. It was young people mocking people in power, power they didn’t have, mocking politicians or bishops or judges. Once you get to the age where you are actually the age of a prime minister or a bishop or a judge, it’s all much less funny.”
* Wendie Malick (left) from CBS’s new Rush Hour, asked how she prepared for the role: “I didn’t think that I was going to have to shoot a gun. What made me think that I was going to be excused from that, I’m not sure. I forgot that it’s a police show. We have a wonderful police advisor, Carl, who explained to me that, as I run with a pistol, chasing bad guys, I should be very careful not to prance.”
* Anderson Cooper, on a panel for HBO’s Nothing Left Unsaid with his mother Gloria Vanderbilt, talking about finding old boxes of her things: “One you would open and it would be a box of amazing letters from Howard Hughes, who my mom dated when he was hot. Howard Hughes when he was, like, 35 and my mom was 17, before he was Desert Inn Howard Hughes with the tissues. Then you’d open up another box, and it would be cornflakes from1953 that somehow, in a move, got packed away and my mom has been paying to store all these years.”
* Reza Aslan, host of Ovation’s new talk show Rough Draft, on how he learned English: “By watching CHiPs and Sesame Street. I watched a lot of CHiPs when I was a kid,both in Iran and in the U.S. And for the longest time I thought that all over America’s freeways, cars just sort of flipped over for no reason. And I thought this is the craziest thing I’d ever seen, because it happened in every episode of CHiPs. A car would just suddenly go up and flip over.”