NEWSWEEK: Emmy Roundtable
NEWSWEEK: Emmy Roundtable
Newsweek's Annual Emmy Roundtable Brings Together Actors With A Fondness For Morally Ambiguous Characters
Emmy Awards Nominees Dish on Researching Characters and Why Some Turn to Stalking and Getting Terrible Hairdos
NEW YORK, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- To help prepare for his character, "Dexter," star Michael C. Hall stalked people in New York City, "The Office's" Rainn Wilson deliberately designed himself "the worst, least flattering haircut" possible, and "Mad Men's" John Slattery learned to make a drink while smoking. During this Emmy Roundtable, which appears in the September 15 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands September 8), Hall, Wilson, Slattery, Rachel Griffiths ("Brothers and Sisters") and Mary-Louise Parker ("Weeds") spoke candidly with Senior Editor Marc Peyser and Assistant Editor Joshua Alston about drinking, drugs and nudity-and preparing for the awards they could win later this month. These are some of the highlights of that conversation:
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080907/NYSU002 ) On preparing for characters:
Hall: As an actor we're dedicated to simulating behavior, and I guess Dexter has dedicated a lot of his energy to simulating what appears to the world he's in to be authentic human behavior ... Without the tools that most actors enjoy, having like authentic human emotion. There's research you can do, but there has to be an imaginative leap with any character and certainly with this one, unless you're willing to go out and commit felonies ... I was in New York before we shot the pilot and I went out a couple of nights, went to a public place and endowed someone with really reprehensible characteristics and followed them around. [Laughter]
Wilson on where he got the idea for Dwight's hair: I basically stole it straight from the English version. I read that Mackenzie Crook, who played Gareth in the original, went to a really bad barber in Slough, where the show was set, and got a really terrible haircut ... So I just stole it straight from him, kind of designed the worst, least flattering haircut for myself possible ... I spent a lot of time in the mirror with a lot of Dippity-do, kind of playing with it, and I kind of invented the flip-curl thing. My forehead is the size of, like, a cantaloupe, so I frame it with a little pear. It's really preposterous. But it helped my character a lot.
On watching and critiquing their work:
Parker: I watch my show. I feel a sense of responsibility towards it. I took it on to be the lead of it; I want it to be as good as it can be. I don't watch movies that I'm in, because I feel like once they're done, they're out there and I don't really care. But this has a true line ... It's 13 episodes, and you want to know where it's going and you want to be able to follow it.
Hall: I've gotten better at being relatively objective after watching myself, maybe watching "Six Feet Under" over the years ... Every now and then, I'll have an "I look like an alien" flare-up. But they're less severe, and the flare-ups don't last as long.
Slattery: Sometimes I'm relieved. I thought I f---ed something up, and go home, and you feel like s--t. I'm in the shower thinking, "I should've done this. Why did I do that?" And then you watch it and you go, "You know, it's really not that bad."
Parker: When I did that, I came home and asked to shoot it again. Twice ... You know when you get home and go, "Now I get it." And I went the next day and I said, "I understand it now." And God bless them, they let me shoot it again.
Slattery on taking a role no one else thought he should:
I don't think my agent wanted me to do this show, because she thought it was AMC, and they had never done a television show, and it doesn't pay any money and it isn't the lead, but I thought, "I don't care" ... Well, initially I thought it was the lead. And then they informed me that they had that guy. I just knew the writing was so good ... And it turned out to be just as good of a part as he said it would be.
On being nude:
Slattery: It was the first job I've ever gotten in New York, with Nathan Lane. You know, it was a big deal. I remember being on a pay phone standing on Eighth Avenue, being told that I got the job and hanging up and saying, "Holy s--t, I have to take my clothes off." It was embarrassing. My father came to see it, and he was sitting in the front row and you could hear him clearing his throat, slinking down in his chair.
Wilson: I've been naked. Just for a couple of nights as the understudy in the national tour of "Six Degrees of Separation." I played the gay hustler ... Yeah, and I was terrified that I was going to get a boner ... But in fact, quite the opposite happened. [Laughter] It was very cold in the theater and I was very nervous.
On preparing for the Emmy Awards:
Griffiths: I've never had the vibe that I was going to win, so I've never prepared for my four nominations ... I just don't think you put up with an extremely uncomfortable dress if you think you're going to lose. It's like, "If I'm going to lose, make it something comfortable."
Wilson: Last year was my first year, and I was really nervous. I didn't think I was going to be, and then I got in the seats, and then when the announcer is, like, "Up next, after this commercial, the best-supporting-actor comedy award!" Then all of a sudden my heart was just pounding -- I really thought my heart was going to explode and I was going to vomit blood. And then they read Jeremy Piven's name and I was, like, Whew.
On bringing money to the Emmy Awards:
Griffiths: You have to bring your own money to get your own drink [at the Emmy's] ... Last year I was trying to borrow $5 from a man I've never met. I promised I'd send it back to him, and it took so long to get the money to get the beer to calm the nerves. I look up and Sally Field's on the television and I'm, like, "F---!" I go running and bang on the door, like, "You have to let me back in. That's my mother up there!" They said, "I'm sorry, Ma'am, we're in lockout."
(Read entire roundtable discussion at www.Newsweek.com)
Emmy Roundtable: http://www.newsweek.com/id/157583
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Source: Newsweek
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/157583
Profile: International Entertainment
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