When you go in and guest-star on a TV show, they already have their family - everybody pretty much knows everybody, and everyone sort of has that base already formed.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think being a guest star on an ongoing TV show can be a nightmare, and I've done it a lot. You're walking into this family who's very comfortable where they are, and you have to jump on the train and be artificially comfortable. That's a very hard thing to do.
Whenever you do a show, there are happy reunions of people; it's very familial.
When you're a guest star on a movie or a TV show, I always say it's like being invited to a family reunion, but it's not your family. So you don't belong - they're being nice to you, but you don't fit in completely; you don't know everybody's story. You don't have a history.
If you're doing television, you get to be a character for a long time, and the cast around you becomes like family. You get attached to playing that one character, and it's hard leaving them behind.
I don't understand that, because I think that what people like most about the show is that they recognize themselves in the characters and their problems, so the more believable the family is, the more we can draw the audience in.
When I meet viewers in person, it always seems to be entire family units.
I think, with TV, you create kind of a family to work with.
So many reality shows are scripted and create this fake drama, and it's a bunch of bull. We wanted to do something real and something wholesome and something that's focused on positive family values.
One of the tricky things about running a TV show is that you just never know how good the guest stars you cast on a weekly basis, how good they're going to be in the episode. Sometimes they surprise you in good ways and sometimes they surprise you in disappointing ways.
When you're a regular on your show, that's your family. When people come in and out, it doesn't mean that you don't embrace them, but they have to leave.