Desperate Housewives - Season 6 - Behind the scenes

the only mark and action the demands of Desperate Housewives as a series are many we ask people to be able to do very earnest drama some very broad comedy Oh some kind of wicked sly subtle stuff oh look one of the pointer sisters sorry it was uh just a nun being an actor the thing I value probably more than anything is is and I think most actors the ones that I admire value more than anything is the truth how you go about getting to that truth of the moment is various people come at it from all different angles now you're kind of like a human being with this huge library behind you and you know especially when you're working that fast you need to be in tune with what excites you what charges you what is gonna bring something to life I think in a way being an actor on this show is a little bit like a master class in acting you're in college do you know if the odds are now that you'll graduate like zero you you have a new job one that you'll have to quit once the baby comes so I hope you're both happy you've just destroyed your futures for a few minutes of pleasure I think I was allowed an obnoxious kid let me rephrase that I know I was allowed noxious kid and I was the eighth one I first got the bug um in the sixth grade we were reading a book called the witch a black bird pond about the Salem witch trials and we had to turn it into a play my mother thought while you're loud and obnoxious I'm gonna send you off to acting camp um so I went and I loved it and that was when I was 10 and I was hooked my goal in life was to be a pro baseball player I didn't have any and then but by the time I was a sophomore I got hit playing football had a knee injury that prevented me from playing any sport ever again and I had to sort of figure out what I was gonna do with myself it was all very dramatic and I wasn't really that into it and then I had a sixth grade teacher and she was like no you know you'd have to go for you whatever she did and then I was like whoo and then I think everybody feels fabulous I was doing it a community theater production and I I was working with the director who for the first time talk to me about character and about trying to transform yourself too into the character and that is the thing that forever changed my my world it's just such a complicated job you don't think I can handle it no no I think you'd be wonderful great it's settled then Tom you start tomorrow here at Desperate Housewives we don't have the luxury of saying well we get our script on Monday and we're shooting scenes on Wednesday that we have the ability to go ahead and learn those things cuz they're gonna change our writers always writing and rewriting it's so fast you're basically rehearsing on camera and then they yell cut and then that's done you go but that was just a rehearsal we don't have time for anything else all right let's check that my job is as an executive producers to figure out what makes them each individually comfortable and then try to please them as best I can upside it will say that he's brilliant writer so it's a tough mesh of you know having to work last minute and yet be grateful for the writing we all talk about the fact that the lines change and everything and the SU you have to do this on on the on the fly but it's a little easier because they've been living inside the skin of these characters now for six years so there they have a truth that they are working with that I know what this character will do I know how this character thinks I know how far this character will go the better it gets the better the better it is for all of us the better the show is the better the performances are going to be the you know you the better the quality of the the stuff you're gonna get so I'm all for the rewrite and then you know but we've been doing this a long time and it's not that difficult so you have to be sort of well like an athlete well just on your toes ready to go hmm you know there's different kinds of chemistry like with Kyle I was feel that um that in on screen we're both these sort of kind of repressed eccentric odd creatures I think we both look in real life like we're normal sort of you know leading man leading woman but both of us are actually not that we're both terribly quirky and off to the left off center so we kind of fit there's a chemistry there that works on camera and off camera no you stink and you're a here's the difference I can get clean please you gun oh I think the great thing for Marsha about Kyle is that when Kyle started on the show um I think he just makes her so much more comfortable on set he's sort of a rock and I think especially when she has a very difficult scene to play it's just such a relief for her when Kyle is there it's Nick glorious it is I should go to Paterson the part of tom was a little bit more of an afterthought in the casting because we knew he wasn't gonna be irregular and that we ended up with Doug savant who has such brilliant chemistry with Flicka with Felicity um that's what we call our on sad Flicka but playing a married couple I think you have to have some basic uh real affection for the person mm-hmm and respect yeah neither which I have heard ugh which is why she's which is why she is an Emmy award-winning actress and I'm a schlub I read the whole script I read it a couple times it changes a lot I've done um every avenue of preparation possible in other words sometimes you know if I can I learn it ahead of time um as its shifted to sort of a more and more last-minute thing I try to call ahead and say does it look like this is gonna change can I start to get to work on it she really likes to you know start well in advance of the season here she she wants to know what am i doing next year what am i playing and she wants to be thinking about it over hiatus which is great there have been scenes that are particularly difficult or they don't make sense in the moment where Doug and I have gone okay well let's improv the moment before right or let's improv what what happened the moment after this is actually pretty funny because Felicity loves to improv for a scene trying to kind of get into the starting moments and I hate it when actors improv cuz usually I've come down to a rehearsal and I don't have much time so when they're improving I'm like okay now you're rehearsing someone else's words so that those things are not just imagined that they're real and we really know what it looked like and felt like when you're when we're relating that way I let them do it because it's important to their process it's something they feel they need so recently I think in the next-to-last episode she was improving something and I just like made an excuse like oh I have to go get some cuz I just it drives me crazy to watch improv and Felicity caught me she's like oh you hate it when we improvin him like no I just have to answer a phone call and action what are you doing what's going on and not even dressed what is that what is that what's going on I wasn't thinking about what was happening I was so responding to you know Kyle the other days doing what he was doing that that character that you know yeah I was completely off my gender whatever wines or anything I just got swept into it she was amazing in that scene but she really she really rehearsed that once the cameras rolling it didn't feel that that way at all it felt completely spontaneous and and great he's a tough scene to write and I think it was a tough scene for them to play it was very emotional it went from just funny to really raw emotion please roll me over please help me off the toilet please please please if you don't evolve as a person if you don't evolve as a character then it's not very fun I mean we want to see our characters grow and change in me challenges I think probably all of us have grown a bit over the years you know we've been forced to grow we take big risks every year um you know we've kind of all learned a little bit about ourselves oh you actually know the day wow you're really into this well someone has to be I'm not telling anybody until we're absolutely sure everything's okay really are you sure that's the only reason you're not telling them for me aha moments don't come in the kind of revelation of oh that's who you are or oh that's who we are they come in the unfolding of a scene if you're actually in the moment okay I know since you're using a cell phone you know what century it is but just to clarify you don't have to keep checking with Tom I made plenty of decisions around here I noticed I just prefer to treat the guy with a little respect it's much more of an internal discovery than an intellectual one so there have been times where I've been surprised that wow that moment brought us closer or oh my gosh that moment makes me want to kill you or that moment I realize I'm the bad guy in this scene this isn't about winning and I just fired you so you can go home no I promised Tom I do this and I'm doing the scene where Tom goes to Roy and says you know he's up on my wife you know and it's my job to take care of her and don't you worry about me in relationship to her was one of my favorite scenes we did this year she grew up without her dad her mom was a drinker so she had to be responsible for everyone wow that's rough in that scene we get really what we've been trying to act for six years from the writers gave it give us this dialog where we have a deeper understanding of the Lynette and Tom relationship and through Tom's point of view it left her with this constant fear that everything could suddenly fall apart and that's why she needs to control everything of course she can't nobody can but she can control me if I let her so I do because it makes her feel safe you know I got many many compliments about that from all over is because it made America go oh okay we don't have to worry about Tom you know he's got it under control and that's one of the things that's coolest about this show is that you see the couples that have been together now for years and we can still find little moments of surprising truth about them it's easy to be vulnerable and have a real relationship with you when I look into your eyes or we you know it when when we have to have the imposed reality as actors of we're dealing with the loss of a child or something profound things that are profound we don't take them as they're just little acting things and so that allows us to do our best work in it and that's been the whole basis for this relationship for me is just that we can look at each other have that vulnerability share that moment together and it's real you know it's interesting we're so close we're so close on set we're so tied we're so I mean I know everything about Doug's life he knows everything about mine you know it's kind of everything everything we've never been to each other's house isn't that weird I thought about that the other day that's weird good story homework on the end No you

Channel: DoubleD

Views: 127,550

Keywords: Desperate Housewives - Season 6 - Behind the scenes, Desperate Housewives, Season 6, Behind the scenes, Desperate, Housewives

Id: luozjiV62Z4

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2013