Television's so quick, and there's so many other fun elements to it, but you don't get such good scripts and the time to really make much more three dimensional characters.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I love the long-form format of television. I love being able to develop a character, over a long period of time.
Television is a lot of fun. It's faster-paced. The schedule is really desirable, I guess. But as far as films go, and I've only done a couple; film is like a definitive beginning, middle and end. You know your character's arch.
One of those things that I like about TV is that if you get a group of people you like, you can work with these people for months at a time, and you can discover their strengths and weaknesses, and you can use those in the direction where you take the characters.
With film, you read the whole script three or four times, and you really have a solid blueprint of who your character is. Whereas in television, that blueprint is constantly changing and adapting, and sometimes you have to take a risk.
When you're doing characters from famous novels, you have a responsibility as an actor to make it what the writer intended. And then you add and expand from there to create a three-dimensional performance.
There is nothing like being able to develop a three-dimensional character over a long period of time. Sometimes you aren't able to fully portray a character because you only have a couple of scenes to do it in, and you don't get the full life and background of that character.
Television is fantastic because you get to follow a group of characters over time, and their stories can enrich and surprise you. And you get to work with a group of people over time as well, which can be very satisfying with the right group.
I like the idea of a TV show. You take time to get to know your characters. You can introduce a lot of characters. You don't need your three-action set pieces that you usually need for movies.
I think that because television is shot on a really fast schedule, and it gets piped into your home on a smaller screen, it's much more about character and dialogue in a lot of cases than the movies are.
TV is a different animal these days. You can bring together really smart writing and directing, in-depth character development and really meaty political and emotional stories.