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Pilot season tends to be grueling, because you can be thrown all of these auditions at once - last-minute, always - and you're going on three a day, especially back in the day.

Usually pilot season is very busy, and there are lots of auditions and lots of near misses and rejections. This year, I had two auditions, landed this role and it felt like being home again.

If you go to pilot then you are probably going to go to series. That's my feeling about it.

I was 14 or 15 when I moved to L.A. permanently, but I had been out for pilot season for a few years before that.

With a pilot, there's a lot of information that gets packed into 46 minutes or whatever it is. Usually what happens is that, throughout the season, you get to spend a little more quality time with the characters and get to know them a bit better, whether it's based on circumstance or relationships they've created with other characters.

Pilots, to a large degree, are like salesmen. They have to be confident to be good at their jobs. They have to practice relentlessly and plan out all the scenarios of the things that could happen when they're out there. Nothing is more important than preparation. They are also mighty competitive, both as individuals and as squadrons.

When you accept a role in a pilot, you automatically sign up for five years. You think it's scary to walk down the aisle? Try signing a five-year contract for a show you may not want to be part of down the road.

There's this funny thing with pilots that you have to sign the contract to do the whole job before you're even offered the part. And they make about a million pilots a year, but hardly any of them get turned into series.

I came to L.A. for pilot season, and it was so brutal. So brutal. But still, I just want to be making forward progress. There's lots of ideas about being a superstar. But my idea of being a superstar is just going forward and having new challenges and trying out new things.

I've done a lot of pilots. A lot of shows. You're young and you do a job just because you know someone gave you a job.