Sitcoms are like summer stock. You put it up in three days, and then you do it in front of an audience, so it's a really great transition from theatre into camera work.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm ridiculously fortunate to get a chance to experience the sitcom world. The schedule is extremely easy, and you get fed as an artist because you're not only working on a project, but you get to work with cameras, and you get the audience there.
When you're doing a single-camera show, it's more buying into a level of reality. I think a sitcom, a four-camera show, doesn't require that so much. I think with a film show, you just need the characters to grow.
Doing a sitcom is like doing a play - you rehearse for three or four days, and then you shoot what you rehearsed on Friday night in front of an audience. An hour-long drama is like shooting a movie. You're shooting 13-14 hour days. The endurance itself is different.
I started in theater. I would liken sitcom work more to theater work than I would, perhaps, to dramatic television. It's so quick. It kind of feels like the pace of a play.
On a television show, you basically make a movie a week. Movies take three months - it's crazy. They're so slow, it's like vacation to me.
In television, a sitcom is probably the closest thing to what it's like working in the theater.
Sitcoms are usually given short shrift by the acting profession, but it's quite an amazing job.
You know, it's nice on a sitcom to have an audience there, but there's still a wall of cameras between you and them.
Sitcoms are incredibly limiting. When you do a sitcom and it becomes a signature part for you, it's harder to do something else; but if you do a drama, you can get lost in it and have a role to do other things.
It takes a week to do a sitcom in Hollywood. I do a show a day in my studio, three or four shows a week.