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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writers are not always right however, but then again, I've been on shows where the actors have complete control and change everything and it's terrible.
TV writing is tricky to navigate because you have so many different personalities - the actors, multiple producers.
I feel terrible for directors of TV because all the episodes have to look the same. They make a great series for five or six years, and then when it's canceled, they can't break out on their own.
I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know; they just don't have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.
When you get to the end of a TV series, you feel totally out of sorts as an actor. You feel unfit; your voice box has collapsed on you because you've spent all day muttering into a microphone that's two inches from your head, and you feel desperate to spread your wings and do a bit of real thesping.
It is hard to be an actor on a TV show, because you don't know what's coming and you sort of find out very last minute sort of what's happening.
A film has a beginning, middle, and an end. There is a certain amount of time that you have to embody these people. You know the entire story arch. But on TV, you have to let your guard down. You don't know how long the show is going to last. There is this excitement that comes with developing a character long-term.
I just don't know that a TV show demands a movie ending.
When you first get out of doing a show for a long time where you played a teenager, casting directors and producers all still look at you as being the character that you played for so long.
There's sort of a very symbiotic thing that happens on good TV shows with great writers, which is that they start to sort of embrace who the actors are and try to make the roles more specific to what they bring and what they can do.