Executive Session

Your personal mileage may vary, but for my money, John Landgraf is one of the nicest network heads currently in the game. He’s very low-key, but he’s always ready to give you a quote when you’re looking for one. Today, he offered up the following bits and pieces about the future of FX.

* “Louie” has been renewed for a second season of 13 episodes.

* Ben Garant and Tom Lennon, late of “Reno 911!,” are going to do a pilot for FX called “The USS Alabama.” It’s another partially-scripted, partially-improvised series, and, according to Landgraf, “It takes place in space on the USS Alabama with a crew of spacefarers who might not be too much brighter than the cops in ‘Reno 911!’”

* There are two other pilots in the works as well, the first being “Outlaw Country,” which will star Mary Steenburgen. “Some really talented young actors have joined that cast,” said Landgraf. “That goes into production in, I think, six weeks. It’s a fantastic script. Something we’re really, really excited about.” The other is “Wilfred,” a comedy pilot based on an Australian comedy series, which completed principal photography last week.

* The “Damages” deal done with DirecTV is different from the one that was done with “Friday Night Lights” in that FX will not be offering up the episodes after they’ve run on DirecTV. “The season that has aired, which was the third season of ‘Damages,’ is the last season it will air on FX,” said Landgraf. “For us, we’re also producers on ‘Damages.’ We’ve been co-owners and co-producers through FX Productions, and DirectTV felt very strongly. They were willing to underwrite it, and to a very substantial amount financially, they enabled it to move forward. That was the deal that Sony worked on very aggressively, but they wanted it exclusively, so this was really the best and only way for ‘Damages’ to move forward. So we stepped aside as a network entity, and we’re still involved as a production entity.”

Sons of Anarchy

I don’t know that there’s any series currently on the air that I feel worse about not watching than “Sons of Anarchy.” Everyone tells me it’s fantastic, I have every reason to believe that those people are right, and yet I just haven’t had the time to go back and revisit the show’s first two seasons. But that won’t stop me from bringing you the info that creator Kurt Sutter and his cast provided to us during the show’s panel, of course.

As far as the “big bad” for Season 3, as it were, Sutter says, “We have a couple dual storylines going in Charming and as well as in Belfast, but I guess if you had to pin it down to one specific adversary, I would say that it’s probably the Titus Welliver character, Jimmy O.”

What of the theme of the new season? “I don’t know if there’s one specific overriding theme,” said Sutter. “I think the theme is always about family and Jax sort of defining his role as a father and as a partner and as a son and as a member of this club, and the Abel storyline drives us through pretty much the entire season, and…I don’t want to give anything away in terms of what that means and where that takes us, but, you know, the thing is our seasons, the actual span of time within our seasons is very short. It’s potentially a couple, two or three weeks. So there isn’t a lot of time that passes where you can have a lot of things unfold organically. So it is a very concentrated period of time which I think helps feed, I think, the sense of urgency for the tasks that they have at hand this season.”

Sutter also tackled the question of where Chief Unser would be heading this season. “I think we’ve defined this relationship between Unser and the club as being…you know, it’s not so much that Unser is in Clay’s pocket, it’s that they’ve made this deal a long time ago where they would each would do their part to keep Charming safe,” he said. “I think what happens is that gets turned on its head a little bit this season and the nature of the violence that happens is perhaps what neither the club or Unser had in mind. I think that relationship will be tested in a very heated way this season.”

“I’m in a bit of a pickle is the way the season goes,” clarified Dayton Callie, with a grin.

Maggie Siff, meanwhile, addressed the future of her own character. “Tara’s decided to stay, and she’s decided to be in this relationship and be a part of this family,” she said. “And yet everything sort of just when she makes that decision, everything falls apart. So there’s a kind of chaotic commitment to being there. And it’s been very satisfying as an actor, actually, because it’s a lot more fierce, you know. It feels like she’s taking a stand in the world, and yet the world has completely fallen apart around her, and she has very little to hold onto. It’s just a fierce chaos.”

That’s really all that was said about Season 3, but I’ll close with the decidedly entertaining comments made by Sutter and the cast when they were asked about the dearth of Emmy nods received by the show.

“Can I first say that — and not just to kiss all your asses because we’re out here, but — I so appreciated and it was so important to me to get the TCA nomination for the show and for Katey,” said Sutter. “It was just one of those moments where I said, ‘Okay, I’m not fucking crazy,” you know, that we are actually doing good work, that there is some recognition to that. And, you know, all I’ll say about the Emmys — and clearly I’ve had a very specific opinion – is that every year when the Emmys are announced, the stories that come out…half the stories are about the nominations, and the other half of the stories are about the absurdity of the nominations and the snubs. So to me, perhaps that suggests that the system is somewhat flawed. And that’s all I’ll say.

“I would just say that it’s the reaction of the people,” said Mark Boone Junior. “When I hit the streets, you know, it’s amazing, the reaction. Emmy or no Emmy.

“Yeah,” agreed Tommy Flanagan. “Emmy-shmemmy.”

“Fuck ‘em,” said Ron Perlman.

Charlie Hunnam’s mindset was clearly in line with Perlman’s. “I would just like to say, honestly, and this is kind of controversial, and I’m sure I’ll garner a little bit of disappointment or confusion from colleagues, but I personally was really happy,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to Emmys or awards or any of that shit. I think it’s all a crock of shit. And I think it’s corrupting. And I was happy that we weren’t on the receiving end of a force that could change the dynamic that we have, because I think it’s working, and it’s an environment where we’re able to do good work and feel fulfilled as artists. And all of that crap, I just think, is secondary and completely unimportant…but it does have the potential to ruin a good thing. So like he said, fuck ‘em.

“Fuck ’em,” repeated Perlman.

Katey Sagal, meanwhile, merely shrugged, smiled, and said, “You asked.”

Terriers

There are so many reasons to like this show that it’s hard to know where to begin, but since we’ve got to start somewhere, let’s go with Donal Logue first. If I listed off all of the projects he’s worked on over the years that I’ve loved, we’d be here all day, but just the trio of “The Tao of Steve,” “Grounded for Life,” and “The Knights of Prosperity” are enough to keep him my good graces for the long haul. Put him into a series created by Shawn Ryan (“The Shield”) and Ted Griffin (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Matchstick Men”), and you’ve definitely got my attention, but then you throw into the mix that Logue met his co-star, Michael Raymond-James, when they both appeared on NBC’s late, lamented cop drama, “Life,” and, baby, I am sold.

“Michael did an episode (of ‘Life’), and it was one of those all-night-shoot-til-6-in-the-morning things where by the end of it, it’s, like, ‘I’ve met a new best friend for life,'” said Logue.

“He was walking around carrying a copy of Kerouac’s ‘Big Sur,'” said Raymond-James.

“That’s how we started talking: about Jack Kerouac,” said Logue. “Michael and I became kind of good friends over the course of that night, and then I came in to meet Ted and Shawn and Craig Brewer, who directed the pilot, and was lucky enough to be asked to be part of this thing. So I became part of the casting sessions for the show, and, of course, you know, the really tricky one was who was gonna be Britt, and then I remember going in for the first set of auditions with a bunch of guys sitting around waiting to go in, and I saw Michael, we gave each other a hug. And then…you could see the deflation (in the room). ‘Oh, great, man. They’re fucking best friends! I told you this kind of crap would happen.’ But then when Michael and I did the show, we ended up renting a house together in San Diego, so it was kind of on 24/7 the whole time. I actually think that our friendship and just even the amount of work we did kind of when we weren’t working on the show…I don’t know, it really helped the kind of endeavor we had.”

“My big concern when they told me they were going to live together during the entire shoot…I was, like, ‘Please don’t hate each other by the end,'” said Ryan. “In fact, it seems like it brought you guys closer together. It’s such a great story that these guys would work 13 hours a day. There’s barely a scene in the entire series that doesn’t include at least one of them, and oftentimes both of them. We work them really, really hard, and then for them to sort of drive back to the same house…”

“It really made it a lot better,” said Logue.

“A lot better,” said Raymond-James. “It also helps that we shared an addiction to carne asada burritos.”

“San Diego was fantastic, too, by the way,” Logue added. “And I think it was such a great idea these guys had to go down there, because there’s something about San Diego that is quite different than Los Angeles, and something specifically about Ocean Beach’s community that we shot in, that it’s still this kind of working-class enclave that’s right on the beach that really fought hard against having big, kind of corporate condo development, no-Starbucks-type stuff, and it’s really — it really gave us this kind of foothold to create this universe in.”

Although Logue is ostensibly best known for his work in comedic roles, he explained that it was a career direction that had less to do with personal desire as it did the luck of the draw with what projects proved to be the most successful.

“To be honest, when you’re young and when you watch ‘The Deer Hunter’ for the first time, that’s when you’re, like, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” said Logue. “To be that guy to slap Robert De Niro…? That’s what I meant. But what happens is all of a sudden you have some success in comedy. I ended up doing these weird MTV shorts with my friend improvising this cab driver thing, and then at that point, you’re kind of like, well, that’s what this guy does. And you always want to do everything. I think, though, that I’ve been lucky enough to kind of go back and forth, and there was something about this, though. There was something about that form of comedy that…it’s just difficult. It never really felt like you could just fully commit to just all the kind of colors that you carry with you. I did a pilot for HBO called “1 Percent” that they didn’t end up picking up, but it was a pretty intense and dramatic piece, and there was just something about it that felt really right at that time in life. I feel more comfortable in this milieu.”

“I love doing comedy,” Logue continued. “I think our show’s quite funny in a lot of ways, but I love not feeling this hydraulic pressure that you have to create this kind of comic moment within every scene. You can just play it as it is. This is kind of where I vibrated towards for a while. I don’t know where else it will go, but I feel actually quite blessed that I can actually balance between the two worlds, that I can do ‘Grounded for Life’ and then do ‘Zodiac,’ because I think a lot of really talented actors I know, they end up getting set in a certain category, and no one will ever buy that they can exist outside that category, even though you know full well that they can, but it’s just difficult for people to be able to cross those fences, so I feel pretty blessed that I’ve been able to.”

Although Ryan certainly has a solid history on FX, it wasn’t necessarily where he first envisioned the show ending up.

“When Ted first talked about the idea of doing a PI show, dollar signs started ringing in my head,” he said. “‘Man, I got the guy from ‘Ocean’s Eleven.’ We’re going to be able to go out on the town and sort of sell this PI show, and ABC’s gonna want that. NBC’s gonna want that. We’re going to make a killing.’ He was like, ‘I really want to do it at FX. I don’t really want to do it anywhere else.’ And which was fine by me. But then I said, ‘How is it going to be different? How is it going to be different than the USA stuff? How is it different than that?’ And he went away and came back with these pages that I read, and was like, ‘Oh. That’s how it’s different.’ And so for me, it was the joy sort of accepting the idea of how to do a PI show that isn’t going to seem like it could be anywhere else other than FX.”

Lights Out

I’m not a sports guy and never have been, but for some reason, I still enjoy films and television series about sports. Go figure. Less easily swayed by the genre, however, is my wife, but she nonetheless found herself caught up in the pilot for “Lights Out,” which revolves around a former heavyweight boxer who finds his financial opportunities drying up, leaving him to pursue slightly unscrupulous options to make ends meet and support his family. “It’s kind of like ‘Rocky,'” said my wife, and there were indeed some similarities to the more desperate times in Mr. Balboa’s career, but what’s particularly interesting about “Lights Out” is that, rather than existing in a vacuum, it acknowledges the existence of boxing in popular culture.

“There have been a lot of movies about boxing,” admitted executive producer Warren Leight, “but I don’t know that there have been that many TV shows about it. So when we prepped, we watched, I’d say, dozens of mediocre and maybe a dozen great boxing movies and just tried to understand. And, also, there’s not just great boxing movies. There’s great boxing literature. It’s been one of the places writers have gone to prove themselves in a way. So we tried to draw on all of that, and what the advantage we have is almost every boxing movie – except for ‘Rocky,’ which kind of went on and on and on — it’s a one-off. And to serialize a story about the life of a boxer and what it’s like to try to put food on your family’s table when times have changed, to serialize that story over time really allowed us to open it up. The great challenge was to avoid the cliches and make the world come to life. And, of course, there’s usually some truth to the cliche. I hope and think we pulled it off, but we were aware we were walking where others had walked before.”

Indeed, a member of the cast is one of those who’d done some of that walking: Stacy Keach, who starred as a boxer in John Huston’s “Fat City,” which he described to us as having been released “some years before you were all born.” (He was close: it was only 2 in 1972.)

“Jose Torres was my trainer at the time,” said Keach, “and it was a great eye-opener for me because I had never had this kind of close-hand experience with the boxing community, and my respect for boxers and what they go through in order to perform what they have to perform in the ring just grew enormously. I had no idea what kind of emotional and physical stamina is required in order to sustain the beating that you take when you go into the ring. I was in the best shape of my life in those days, and it was thanks to Jose Torres, mainly, because he drove me. He pushed me, and I think that one of the most important things about successful fighting is the will to win. You’ve got to be able to survive and sustain the tremendous amount of punishment and still come back and do your job.”

So that’s one cast member with boxing street cred. Plus, Holt McCallany – who plays Patrick “Lights” Leary, the aforementioned boxer with financial woes – played a boxing trainer in “Tyson,” and his brother was a former Golden Gloves champion, both of which ought to count for something. In fact, Leight said that he was shocked at how easy it was to find people for the show who could both act and box.

“Actors will always rise to the occasion,” said Leight. “Holt was a gift, and I think Holt is the reason the series was picked up, but Holt has a nemesis in this show played by Billy Brown who plays ‘Death Row’ Reynolds, and that guy is a terrific actor and was not an experienced boxer when the show began but became a terrific boxer. It was an odd experience for us because we stage fights in the course of the season, and to find people with that physical skill set who can deliver emotional truth at the same time would seem to be daunting, but I guess if you can box, you have the nerve to act, and if you can act, you have the nerve to box. It worked out. I think Holt can speak to some of the guys he got in the ring with.”

“Yeah, you know, we definitely wanted guys who were going to be able to deliver on the physical side of things as well,” said McCallany. “Warren was very adept. When I first come in the room to audition, it’s a bit like asking actors, ‘Have you ever ridden a horse?’ A hundred percent of them will say, ‘Of course, I rode horses all my life as a boy. Did I box? Yes, I boxed, yes, back in summer camp when I was 14.’”

“They do all lie to your face telling you they box,” admitted Leight. “And I’m thinking, ‘You’re going to have to go in the ring with Holt!’”

Rescue Me

We weren’t expecting to get a “Rescue Me” panel this tour, and, really, we only just barely got one as it was, since it was thrown into the mix as part of our lunchtime and therefore didn’t last as long as most panels. Don’t worry, though: series co-creator Peter Tolan is a man who knows how to make the most of his time.

“I have nothing really to say,” began Tolan, “except I’m so glad to be here by myself and not with Denis Leary, because he is an attention hog, and the secondhand smoke, really, I’m lucky to be alive, frankly, at this point. It’s been seven seasons…and, of course, ‘The Job,” the show we did before, which was my idea, as was ‘Rescue Me.’ I am really lucky to be
alive. I’m sure there are tumors just waiting to take me pretty much after this lunch.”

The reason for the panel was to give Tolan the chance to discuss the impending final season of “Rescue Me,” which is set to end at approximately the same time as the 10th anniversary of 9/11. He took full advantage of the opportunity, so if you’re a fan of the show, you’re going to love reading this stuff.

“Denis and I had talked about how the series would end,” said Tolan. “Initially, around…let’s say, the fourth season or fifth season…when we had those conversations, they would sometimes go to a dark place where Denis was saying, ‘I think Tommy goes and he gets in a fire, and I think he just sort of sits down in the middle of a room on fire, sits in a chair, and that’s how it ends.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know if that’s going to really work. I don’t think that’s going to work for us.’ Because, obviously, you create a series that lasts this long, there’s gotta be some reason at the end why people watched it. Otherwise, they will feel like they’re maybe watching ‘The Sopranos’ again. I’m just kidding, of course. That was very, in its own way, an inappropriate finale.

“So we kept thinking about that, and we thought about…you know, we thought at one time that he was going to end up with Maura Tierney’s character and find some sort of happiness, and she had a house by the beach, and then one day he sort of takes his clothes off, goes down to the water’s edge, and just keeps swimming out. And that’s the end of the series, like he’s going to commit suicide. That’s probably not going to do it either. And in the end, what we came to right around the time we started the sixth season was something that would justify the reason that people had sort of stuck with the series all that time. And we actually found a hopeful place for that character, and I think sort of a positive message in terms of…the idea of the entire series is will a person succumb to the pressures created by living through a life-changing experience. I mean, is that going to destroy them or are they going to overcome it? And I think at the end Tommy does overcome it.

“You’re actually seeing now, just in terms of where the show is right now, because the fifth episode of the sixth season…the fifth episode was the turning point for everything that happens from this point on. People always wondered if Tommy Gavin was going to hit bottom, and last week was it when he loses his daughter after a night of drinking, the two of them, and that really gave us sort of a starting point almost for the end. So I think all of the episodes, from 605 all the way to 709 follow a really strong line that ends in a very hopeful place. And actually, in a much lighter place than I had imagined. Even in writing it, I thought, ‘Oh, it’s 9/11, and it’s the end of this era for these characters, and it’s gonna be very profound,’ and we wrote a version that was that. But in the end, it didn’t turn out to be there. It turned out to be much lighter, and actually much more life-affirming and about the resiliency of people in the face of a tragedy. So maybe all those things don’t sound like ‘Rescue Me,’ but that’s what it turned out to be.”

This lengthy speech inevitably led to someone asking Tolan if the show’s relatively kinder and gentler conclusion proved creatively problematic for him, given everything that has come before.

“It was not a problem, but it really was a surprise,” he admitted. “The way we wrote the show was there were really only three writers. It was Denis, myself, and Evan Reilly. Those were the only three guys who wrote that show. And many times, especially in the later seasons, you know, the day would come where you’d have pages that you were going to shoot, and we’d go, ‘Are we really going to say this? What’s the quicker way, or what’s the funnier way, or what’s the way that’s a left turn that people won’t expect?’ And I think I went into the finale thinking, oh, this is very important now. If you love the show and you love the characters, you want that thing to be a great experience for you, forgetting about your viewing audience. You want it to be good for you and you want to do right by the characters and the cast and the crew and everybody, really. You wanted to have it be a good experience. And like I said, there was some writing in that finale that was just was a little bit more momentous. You know, it was more like, ‘Look at this moment and the time and how we’ve survived this and how this series is coming to an end.’ And the day came and we threw it out, and what replaced it was much lighter and much more life goes on. And I had a moment. I really had a moment, because I directed the episode, where I was like, ‘Boy, this is so not what we wrote,’ and I went, ‘But it’s right. It’s right. Let’s get off the soapbox and let’s not make a big speech about it.’ It was right, but it was a little daunting in the moment.'”

You’ll be able to see what Tolan is talking about next year, when the nine episodes of the seventh and final season of “Rescue Me” premiere.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Although it’s never been must-see TV for me, “Sunny” is definitely one of those sitcoms I can always count on for a laugh when I need one, so it’s good news that, even though the series is heading into its sixth season, the cast still seems to be enjoying themselves.

“The good news is we actually still like each other,” said Glenn Howerton. “So even though it is a ton of work, we actually enjoy each other’s company throughout the process, for the most part.”

“It seems that our audience is growing at such an accelerated rate for the past few years and so many people are new viewers,” said Rob McElhenney, “and it’s sort of coinciding with us, I think, crescendoing in with our greatest creative season, and feel like, as long as new viewers keep showing up to watch, we’ll keep doing it.”

And how much longer will that be?

GLENN HOWERTON: Ooohhh.
ROB MCELHENNEY: It’s hard to say.
GLENN HOWERTON: Tough to say. We’ll take it year by year.
ROB MCELHENNEY: Yeah.
GLENN HOWERTON: We’ve got at least one more year for sure after this.

As far as what to expect from this season, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard of the Phillies, along with Tom Sizemore, are guest-starring in an episode where the gang dares to go on an adventure outside the city…to the wonderful state of New Jersey!

I have to admit to you, however, that for as funny as “Sunny” is, the panel for the show was somewhat of a letdown. One of my peers commented that it’s amazing just how seriously comedians take their art, and I have to agree: I’d even suggested to my wife that she might want to stick around, figuring it would be non-stop hilarity. It was pleasant enough, but I definitely wouldn’t say it was more than that.

Still, there was a lengthy but interesting discussion that arose from someone asking how the group felt about the fact that, although “Sunny” began as somewhat of an envelope-pushing comedy, it now feels almost tame when compared to a show like, say, FX’s own “Louie.”

“Well, it was never our intention necessarily to push the envelope,” said McElhenney. “Our goal is always to do what’s not being done elsewhere. And something that we’re really proud of and something that I think that the true fans of the show really understand that a lot of people don’t know is that we are not simply just going out and trying to push the envelope for pushing the envelope’s sake. We’re trying to introduce into comedy a part of the national conversation that we hear and see people talking about behind closed doors, but aren’t doing in public. I’ve never seen an episode of any show that deals with gay marriage, and we decided that that was something that we wanted to do. And we’re going to do an episode about that this year. We felt like we could have a very distinct and different take than any other show on television. And sometimes we do dick jokes. And, honestly, I feel like there’s a happy medium in there, and I think that if you do just go out and go for the low-brow or you are just pushing the envelope for pushing the envelope’s sake, that ultimately people are going to get bored with it and they’re going to move on. I think if you are building a foundation of a show that is a part of the national conversation and then you also can bring in some base humor, I think it cannot only appeal to a larger audience, but also can have some sort of setting in real life.”

“Yeah, and has a certain social relevance,” said Howerton. “That’s not to say that all those other FX shows are doing that. I mean, I happen to be a fan of ‘Louie’ also. I mean, I think that show is really smart, and I think it’s really funny. And I think with our show and with that show, if something happens to be shocking or, you know, crossing a line, so to speak, it’s not ever good if it’s just for the sake of crossing the line.

“It’s based in something else that’s smart,” said Kaitlin Olson.

“Also,” added McElhenney, “if you remember, the pilot of ‘The Shield,’ which was done many years before us, a cop kills another cop. I mean, that’s pushing the boundaries…and that’s your main character. And Vic Mackey’s one of the greatest characters in television.”

“But it’s like Rob said: we’re just trying to do something different that we haven’t seen, that we aren’t seeing, something that we would want to watch as viewers,” said Howerton. “And then oftentimes that happens to be something that pushes the limit or crosses a line or whatever it happens to be. But I mean, personally I think that’s just what makes something good.”

“You haven’t seen it before, a lot of times,” said Olson.

“It needs to be surprising,” said Howerton. “It needs to be shocking a little bit. That’s why I watch television, to see something I’ve never seen, to watch something unfold that surprises me and shocks me. And whether it makes me laugh or it makes me cry, that’s what is effective in telling a story, I think. So we’re always coming at it from the standpoint of telling an interesting story that you haven’t seen.”

The League

When I first heard about “The League,” I thought, “I know the cast of this show is funny, but…how much of it am I going to appreciate if I’m not into sports?” It didn’t take very long into the panel for the series before creators Jeff Schaffer and Jackie Marcus Schaffer thoughtfully provided me with an answer to my question.

“The first thing is – and this is one of the challenges of the show – telling someone else about your Fantasy league is like telling them about your dreams: people just don’t care,” said Jeff. “That was an original challenge of the show. But as we started to write the show and we started to shoot the show with these guys, the audience and us loved hanging out with them so much that the Fantasy Football is just a prism through which we see their lives. It’s all really about how they interact with each other.”

“Also, people that do tune in to watch the show, we want to make sure that we don’t disappoint the Fantasy fans as well,” said Jackie. “If we naturally feel like it makes sense to have our characters sort of go “Crimson Tide” and start speaking submarine-talk version of Fantasy, we let them do it, and that we just let it feel natural and hope that the audience enjoys that and catches up and feels like it’s authentic.”

“The other thing about that is it’s Fantasy Football, not Fantasy j’ai lai,” added Jeff. “It’s, like, 30 million people do play Fantasy sports, so while we don’t want to drown people in it, and while it’s not the sort of focus of the show- I think the focus is the dynamics – we’re never afraid of doing it, because I think a lot of people in our audience has said, even if you’ve never been in a Fantasy Football league, ‘Oh, my God. I know someone like that. I know someone who acts that insane on Sundays,’ and I think the other thing that we always say is to enjoy the show, you don’t have to know anything about sports. You don’t have to know anything about Fantasy Football. You just have to have friends that you hate.”

“It’s such a fun world, because really, you know, the language is just part of it,” said Jackie, “but it really is sort of the social structure for so many men and women of how they get together on a regular basis. Jeff used to say that my book club had nothing to do with the book, that basically the book was a coaster.”

“For the wine glass,” said Jeff, with a smirk.

“It’s the same thing in Fantasy sports,” said Jackie. “Yes, people are very passionate about the sports. They’re very passionate about following the games, but they’re as equally passionate about using it as a time to get together and crush one another. So we would like to think we just are giving people an opportunity to sort of see great comedic talent in our cast sort of as an example of the kind of league that either they’re in or find entertaining to watch.”

“And I think for us, the question is, ‘How can we do a show about Fantasy Football?’ Well, we couldn’t believe there hadn’t been one. There are shows about people who make wedding cakes and there are shows about people who drive trucks on icy roads, and I don’t know anybody who drives a truck in the Yukon, but I know a lot of people who just lose their minds every Sunday in the fall.”

Archer

If you’ve watched “Archer,” then you already know that, although it’s animated, it’s definitely not for kids…but just because it has a tendency to be filthy doesn’t mean it can’t be intelligent, too.

“I read about three pages of the pilot for this show and said yes because it was so funny and it was so filthy,” said Aisha Tyler, who voices Lana Kane on the show. “I felt as if the heavens had opened and a pony had fallen into my lap, and then the pony was a script for this show. Do you know what I mean? It’s a dream show for me, and it has that combination of what we used to call when I did talks, sort of ‘the thinky and the stinky.’ It’s an intellectual show, and it’s also really, really dirty, and it’s for grownups. And I think it’s about time that you have a show that’s sophisticated and elegant and smart and referential and also, you know, really saucy and bawdy, and I think, you know, it’s really rare to be surprised by anything in television ever. Ever. So the fact that we get these scripts that are surprising and shocking and wonderful and terrible, and they make you cringe and make you laugh and make you call your friends and go, ‘You have to watch this.’ I’m really, really, really, really proud of it, and I’m not saying this because I’d like to be written more lines.”

“And I invariably have to look up a word or several words in the script because I don’t know what they are,” said Chris Parnell, who voices Cyrill Figgis. “Adam (Reed)’s a lot smarter than I am.”

“You don’t get a lot of farrier jokes in regular TV shows,” said Matt Thompson, executive producer.

“We had a long conversation about the Stuven reference last night at dinner,” said Tyler. “It’s a really smart show. It’s rare that you learn from a show. There’s also referencing statutory rape in a really bold way, and then you learn something, and don’t we all?”

“I think there’s a joke that you guys just recorded,” said Thompson. “There was an argument between the difference between ledger domain and bailiwick.”

“We did,” agreed Tyler.

“And, you know, in the next sentence, it’s like, ‘Hey, you really shouldn’t be raping that 16-year-old girl,'” said Thompson.

“And, boom, magic unfolds immediately afterward,” said Tyler.

Unlike a lot of ostensibly “adult” animated series, “Archer” has and will continue to have an over-arcing storyline.

“God bless it, you know, I love the shows like ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Family Guy’ and stuff, but that’s not this show,” said Thompson. “I hope that you won’t come back a year later and say, ‘I am completely bored by Archer. He’s just doing the same thing over and over again.’ So there has to be change that goes along into it. For example, for Judy’s character, how much further can we go with her getting off on being choked while she’s having sex? Only so much. So it does have to kind of constantly evolve, and what it fits in best with is an over-arcing plot line.”

So what sort of storylines can we expect to see this season?

“There’s a couple,” said Thompson. “One of them is Archer gets an illegitimate baby. And also finding out about Archer’s father. And, lastly, it hasn’t been written yet, but it’s been talked about a greatdeal with the FX executives and such, is a huge love interest for Archer with a femme fatale Russian spy. And as far as Cyril and Lana going, it’s kind of open-ended, you know. Adam is up to the sixth script, kind of playing around with it. Right now, we’re focusing on Cyril having sexual addiction and Lana being completely mad at him and wanting to punch him in the nuts.”

“She’s awesome,” said Tyler.

“One of the cool things about the newseason for us is we have more people in our staff of drawers,” said Thompson, “and stuff has gotten better. So I think it’s actually going to be a better-looking show, and we’re going to be able to see a lot and do a lot more action. The show that we showed at Comic-Con had a third act, which was entirely a snowmobile chase. And this isn’t a large-budget show, and we’re going to have to watch what we’re doing. And I think this season is going to look…well, I think it’s going to look awesome, at least according to me, unless somebody can tell me and hurt my feelings.”

“It looked amazing,” confirmed Tyler.

“It…it wasn’t great,” said H. Jon Benjamin, to much laughter.

To close, I’ll just offer up the cast’s response to being asked to compare their first TCA experience – which took place back in January – to their first Comic-Con experience, which took place last month.

MATT THOMPSON: You guys are a lot more handsome. A lot more handsome.
AISHA TYLER: The first TCA was just Jon and Adam and I. So we talked amongst ourselves on a podium while people ate croissants with chicken salad inside.
H. JON BENJAMIN: Most people left. They didn’t stick around.
AISHA TYLER: And people slowly streamed out, checking their watches.
H. JON BENJAMIN: Yeah.
AISHA TYLER: And then we went to Comic-Con, and there was, like, a thousand nerds crying and screaming, a lady who was pregnant and is naming her baby Archer, right? Stormtroopers who threw money at us and one white lady who looks alarmingly more like Lana than I do. It was awesome. It was great. And it was so nice to watch the show in front of a crowd, because I think the show is hilarious. I mean, I really love this show, and I would watch it even if I wasn’t on it. But, you know, you’re watching it with your friends or whatever. You’re watching it with your husband over and over again and making him pick out your favorite line. To see it in front of a crowd of fans, I think we heard about a third of the jokes because they were laughing so hard that, like, only every third joke landed.
H. JON BENJAMIN: In fairness, there’s at least 300 nerds here.

Well, when he’s right, he’s right.

In a deal not completely unlike the satellite’s move to partner with NBC to save “Friday Night Lights,” DirecTV has announced that it is the new home of the FX drama “Damages.”

DIRECTV and Sony Pictures Television will team up to bring the award-winning DAMAGES, starring Glenn Close and Rose Byrne, back with brand new episodes to be produced early next year and debuting exclusively on DIRECTV. Emmy winner Glenn Close, Emmy nominee Rose Byrne and other principal cast members will return for the new episodes.

Unlike DIRECTV’s current deal for Friday Night Lights, whereby the show airs first on DIRECTV and then on NBC, the new episodes of DAMAGES will air only on DIRECTV. Additionally, DIRECTV will have the rights to air previously produced seasons 1 through 3.

“FX was very proud to have developed one of the best scripted series on television, but, in order to have a future, the show needed DIRECTV and we are thrilled they stepped in,” said John Landgraf, President & General Manager, FX Networks, who also heads FX Productions. “Sony Pictures Television is a great production partner and we at FX Productions are excited for these next two seasons.”

The key thing to note here is that, as it stands, “Damages” will never air on cable television again. DirecTV will be the only place that fans can (legally) see new episodes as they are released. It appears that without such a move, there wouldn’t have been a fourth season.

The third season of the critically-acclaimed drama brought five more Emmy nominations to bring the series total to 19.

Outstanding Comedy Series:

* Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)
* Glee (Fox)
* Modern Family (ABC)
* Nurse Jackie (Showtime)
* The Office (NBC)
* 30 Rock (NBC)

My Pick: “Modern Family.” There’s no question that “Glee” is award-worthy, but not necessarily as a comedy, which is also where “Nurse Jackie” falters in this category. I feel like “The Office” and “30 Rock” coasted in on their past merits this year, but “Curb” got a huge boost from the “Seinfeld” storyline, so it’s the only real competition here. Still, the buzz on “Modern Family” is all over the place. I can’t imagine it won’t bring home the glory.

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series:

* Jim Parsons, “The Big Bang Theory” (CBS)
* Larry David, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (HBO)
* Matthew Morrison, “Glee” (Fox)
* Tony Shalhoub, “Monk” (USA)
* Steve Carell, “The Office” (NBC)
* Alec Baldwin, “30 Rock” (NBC)

My pick: Jim Parsons, “The Big Bang Theory.” And I’m going to keep picking him until he gets the award, dammit.

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series:

* Lea Michele, “Glee” (Fox)
* Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “The New Adventures of Old Christine” (CBS)
* Edie Falco, “Nurse Jackie” (Showtime)
* Amy Poehler, “Parks & Recreation” (NBC)
* Tina Fey, “30 Rock” (NBC)
* Toni Collette, “United States of Tara” (Showtime)

My pick: Lea Michele, “Glee.” All things being equal, I’d much rather see Edie Falco take home the award, but her best work on “Nurse Jackie” comes from her dramatic work on the series, and the same goes for Toni Collette on “United States of Tara.” I can’t see them giving Julia the award, Tina’s had her day in the sun, and I’m not convinced that enough Emmy voters are watching “Parks & Recreation,” which is one thing you definitely can’t say about “Glee.”

Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series:

* Chris Colfer, “Glee” (Fox)
* Neil Patrick Harris, “How I Met Your Mother” (CBS)
* Jesse Tyler Ferguson, “Modern Family” (ABC)
* Eric Stonestreet, “Modern Family” (ABC)
* Ty Burrell, “Modern Family” (ABC)
* Jon Cryer, “Two and a Half Men” (CBS)

My pick: Ty Burrell, “Modern Family.” If Cryer wins, the critics will weep, and while Neil always deserves to win an Emmy, let’s hope he takes one home for his guest spot on “Glee” and shares it with Colfer. Stonestreet and Ferguson are great, but it’s only inevitable that they’ll split the vote, which leaves Burrell as the cast member to beat…and, indeed, the nominee to beat.

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series:

* Jane Lynch, “Glee” (Fox)
* Julie Bowen, “Modern Family” (ABC)
* Sofia Vergara, “Modern Family” (ABC)
* Kristen Wiig, “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
* Jane Krakowski, “30 Rock” (NBC)
* Holland Taylor, “Two and a Half Men” (CBS)

My pick: Jane Lynch, “Glee.” It’s the kind of performance that makes you want to just cut to the chase and give it to her now. With that said, however, I would have no complaints if either Vergara or Krakowski took it home. In particular, I’ve always felt that Krakowski was an MVP on “30 Rock” who doesn’t get nearly as much attention as she’s deserved. (Vergara, meanwhile, does get plenty of attention…and rightfully so. Yowza!) Bowen’s great, but much of her performance involves staring incredulously at Ty Burrell, and Taylor’s a class act, but she’s outclassed here. And don’t even get me started on Kristen Wiig. If you’ve got something to say about her, say it here and here.

Outstanding Drama Series:

* Breaking Bad (AMC)
* Dexter (Showtime)
* The Good Wife (CBS)
* Lost (ABC)
* Mad Men (AMC)
* True Blood (HBO)

My pick: Breaking Bad. If you need any more explanation about this pick, then just hit up my blog for the series. It clarifies my feelings pretty well.

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series:

* Bryan Cranston, “Breaking Bad” (AMC)
* Michael C. Hall, “Dexter” (Showtime)
* Kyle Chandler, “Friday Night Lights” (DirecTV)
* Hugh Laurie, “House” (Fox)
* Matthew Fox, “Lost” (ABC)
* Jon Hamm, “Mad Men” (AMC)

My pick: Bryan Cranston, “Breaking Bad.” As if there was ever any doubt, right? I said in September Laurie would earn an Emmy nomination based on his performance in the “House” season premiere alone, so it’s nice to see that I was right about that, and I’d probably have to turn in my TCA membership card if I didn’t cheer for Chandler’s nomination just on general principle. Fox’s nod seems more sentimental than anything else, though. It could well prove to be a three-way heat between Hamm, Hall, and Cranston, but I’m sticking with my favorite horse on this one.

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series:

* Kyra Sedgwick, “The Closer” (TNT)
* Glenn Close, “Damages” (FX)
* Connie Britton, “Friday Night Lights” (DirecTV)
* Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife” (CBS)
* Mariska Hargitay, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (NBC)
* January Jones, “Mad Men” (AMC)

My pick: Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife.” But with all due respect to Ms. Margulies, the person who I would’ve voted for didn’t even score a nomination…and, frankly, I’m pissed about it. In fact, I’m calling bullshit on the fact that January Jones received a nod for “Mad Men” while Anna Gunn was left out in the cold for her outstanding work on “Breaking Bad” this season. That’s right, I’m unabashedly calling out Jones as the one who doesn’t belong in this category: sure, she plays the ice queen to perfection, but if you saw her hosting “Saturday Night Live,” then you know that you’re seeing something not terribly far from her default setting. Jones coasted into this nomination via name recognition for the show, plain and simple, and not for her acting.

Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series:

* Aaron Paul, “Breaking Bad” (AMC)
* Martin Short, “Damages” (FX)
* Terry O’Quinn, “Lost” (ABC)
* Michael Emerson, “Lost” (ABC)
* John Slattery, “Mad Men” (AMC)
* Andre Braugher, “Men of a Certain Age” (TNT)

My pick: Terry O’Quinn, “Lost.” This is certifiably the single hardest category for me, because there’s literally no one in the running who I wouldn’t like to see take home the award, but gut feeling is that one of the two “Lost” cast members will end up winning, with O’Quinn being my personal favorite (not that Emerson isn’t great). In a perfect world, though, enough people would have watched the 3rd season of “Damages” to give their votes to Short. Braugher got to play a lot of great family drama, and, well, you know how I feel about “Breaking Bad,” but, seriously, Aaron Paul’s work this year as Jesse worked his way through rehab while dealing with emotional trauma was outstanding. And Slattery…c’mon, the guy makes me grin whenever he walks on camera. There are no losers here.

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series:

* Sharon Gless, “Burn Notice” (USA)
* Rose Byrne, “Damages” (FX)
* Archie Panjabi, “The Good Wife” (CBS)
* Christine Baranski, “The Good Wife” (CBS)
* Christina Hendricks, “Mad Men” (AMC)
* Elisabeth Moss, “Mad Men” (AMC)

My pick: Christina Hendricks, “Mad Men.” I had a lot of trouble picking from my four favorite nominees here, but while Byrne, Baranski, and Moss were all great, Hendricks’ work with Joan’s struggles in her personal and professional lives made her the stand-out for me.

Outstanding Miniseries:

* The Pacific (HBO)
* Masterpiece: Return to Cranford (PBS)

My pick: The Pacific. Sorry, “Cranford,” but betting against “The Pacific” would be like going into a Harlem Globetrotters game and expecting to see them have their asses handed to them by the Washington Generals.

Outstanding Made for Television Movie:

* Masterpiece: Endgame (PBS)
* Georgia O’Keeffe (Lifetime)
* Moonshot (The History Channel)
* The Special Relationship (HBO)
* Temple Grandin (HBO)
* You Don’t Know Jack (HBO)

My pick: Temple Grandin. The competition is pretty fierce here, with the big guns all coming from HBO, but as much as I liked the network’s other two nominees, “Temple” has the edge because of the way director Mick Jackson brought to life the way Grandin sees the world.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie:

* Jeff Bridges, “A Dog Year” (HBO)
* Ian McKellen, “The Prisoner” (AMC)
* Michael Sheen, “The Special Relationship” (HBO)
* Dennis Quaid, “The Special Relationship” (HBO)
* Al Pacino, “You Don’t Know Jack” (HBO)

My pick: Al Pacino, “You Don’t Know Jack.” There were several occasions during the course of the film when I completely forgot that I was watching Pacino, and, man, I can’t think of the last time that happened. It’s good to have you back, Al.

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie:

* Maggie Smith, “Capturing Mary” (HBO)
* Joan Allen, “Georgia O’Keeffe” (Lifetime)
* Dame Judi Dench, “Masterpiece: Return to Cranford” (PBS)
* Hope Davis, “The Special Relationship” (HBO)
* Claire Danes, “Temple Grandin” (HBO)

My pick: Claire Danes, “Temple Grandin.” Yes, yes, we all know what was said in “Tropic Thunder” about performances like these, but the simple fact of the matter is that Danes did an exemplary job of capturing the awkwardness of an autistic woman trying not only to make it in a career dominated by men but, indeed, in society as a whole.

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie:

* Michael Gambon, “Masterpiece: Emma” (PBS)
* Patrick Stewart, “Great Performances: Hamlet” (PBS)
* Jonathan Pryce, “Masterpiece: Return to Cranford” (PBS)
* David Strathairn, “Temple Grandin” (HBO)
* John Goodman, “You Don’t Know Jack” (HBO)

My pick: David Strathairn, “Temple Grandin.” I’ve got nothing but love for the PBS performances, particularly Sir Patrick’s, but Strathairn’s calm performance played wonderfully against what Claire Danes brought to the table as the title character.

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie:

* Kathy Bates, “Alice” (SyFy)
* Julia Ormond, “Temple Grandin” (HBO)
* Catherine O’Hara, “Temple Grandin” (HBO)
* Brenda Vaccaro, “You Don’t Know Jack” (HBO)
* Susan Sarandon, “You Don’t Know Jack” (HBO)

My pick: Brenda Vaccaro, “You Don’t Know Jack.” This was another tough one, as Ormond and O’Hara were both exemplary…as was Sarandon, for that matter…but the brother/sister dynamic between Vaccaro and Al Pacino was too damned wonderful to ignore.

Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series:

* The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
* The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central)
* Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO)
* Saturday Night Live (NBC)
* The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien (NBC)

My pick: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I’d love to hear Conan’s acceptance speech if he won, but I think he’s gotten sufficient just desserts simply by being nominated, so I’d rather the consistently strong work of Stewart and his crew get the Emmy.

Outstanding Reality Program:

* Antiques Roadshow (PBS)
* Dirty Jobs (Discovery Channel)
* Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (ABC)
* Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List (Bravo)
* MythBusters (Discovery Channel)
* Undercover Boss (CBS)

My pick: “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.” It’s probably the least watched show on the list, but that never stopped “The Amazing Race” from winning in the past.

Outstanding Host For A Reality Or Reality-Competition Program

* Phil Keoghan, “The Amazing Race” (CBS)
* Ryan Seacrest, “American Idol” (Fox)
* Tom Bergeron, “Dancing with the Stars” (ABC)
* Heidi Klum, “Project Runway” (Bravo)
* Jeff Probst, “Survivor” (CBS)

My pick: Phil Keoghan, “The Amazing Race.” Believe it or not, this season was the first time I’d ever watched the show. Say, you know, it’s pretty good!

If you saw “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — and I hope you have as its one of the stronger comedies to be made over the last several years — you’ll likely have noticed the strong comic chemistry between British comedy sensation Russell Brand as three-quarters insane, recovering addict rock star Aldous Snow and Jonah Hill (“Superbad“) as a resort waiter and somewhat overly devoted fan of Snow’s. Well, you’re not the only one, and so we have the somewhat slapdash, sometimes brilliant, and ultimately winning new comedy, “Get Him to the Greek,” which once again brings us Brand as Aldous Snow, who, since the events of “Sarah Marshall” has suffered a failed marriage to rocker Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), had a seven-year old son, and removed the “recovering” from his addiction — kind of impressive since “Sarah Marshall” was only two years ago.

Nevertheless, having fallen headlong off the wagon, Snow needs help arriving on-time and semi-cognizant for an important TV appearance, a sound check, and a special comeback performance at L.A.’s Greek Theater. The task falls to ambitious young record company assistant Aaron Green (Hill, playing a different character than in “Sarah Marshall”), a huge fan of Snow’s in a sweet but rocky relationship with his improbably adorable doctor girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss of “Mad Men“). Frequently vomit-stained hijinks ensue as Green and Snow barely survive a number of unfortunate events, including a nearly apocalyptic visit to the set of “The Today Show,” one of the most truly mad Las Vegas sequences in film history, and the kind of freaky three-ways that would make most porn producers blanch. It’s all wrapped up with the sort of good-hearted traditional morality which reminds us that the producer is the Walt Disney of male-centric, R-rated comedies, Judd Apatow.

Since the film was set to premiere with a special screening and live concert at the Greek Theater a few days hence, it made sense to have a bunch of us entertainment-type writers show up for a series of roundtables with Brand and Hill, not to mention writer/director Nicholas Stoller and actress Rose Byrne, whose character has a special gift for singing the most obscene lyrics imaginable with the straightest possible face.

Nicholas Stoller

Director Nicholas Stoller was the first to drop by our table of mostly Internet types. Still in his early 30s and currently working with his “Sarah Marshall” cohort Jason Segel on the screenplay for “The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made,” he’s pretty much what you’d expect from a writer whose come up in the Judd Apatow school. He’s an apparently modest and low-key guy for a film director. Also, as things got going, showed off a fairly killer sense of humor.

So, one of us asked, just what was the germ of “Get Him to the Greek”?

“Russell and Jonah were a great comic team,” said Stoller. “They have great comic chemistry. [I thought] ‘That’s a movie, I don’t know what it is.’ During the shoot of ‘Sarah Marshall.’ I thought of this idea and then, writing a few drafts, realized it would be weird if Russell played a different rock star, so we made it a spin-off.”

How quickly did the wild storyline, both dramatically and geographically “all over the place,” come together? How much improvisation was involved?

“The big movements of this story really locked into place pretty quickly. I knew that I wanted to go to London, New York, Vegas and LA. I knew it needed to end with a threesome,” Stoller said to general chuckling. “There were like a few things I knew very early on — ‘I’m building towards this threesome, how do we get there? Really, every movie should end with a threesome. That’s my comedy theory — it’s in Syd Field’s Screenplay. ”

“So, you’re saying the Muppets movie is going to end that way,” suggested one of the writing weisenheimers.”

“I don’t want to ruin anything, but yeah. It’s pretty intense.”

“A bacon sandwich,” said someone else.

“Go write that down. You don’t mind if I use that” said Stoller, hungry for ideas for the world’s first pornographic puppet movie, but then he decided to get a bit less silly. “By the time we’re shooting, the movie certainly is pretty locked down. The scenes are where they are and a lot of the dialogue is where it is, but then we do a fair amount of improv. There are certain things, like the Vegas fight, which I had to choreograph a few weeks before.”

Then it was my turn to ask the question that had been burning a tiny hole in my brain. Though it wasn’t mentioned in the press materials, the premise of “Get Him to the Greek” is remarkably similar to the 1982 comedy, “My Favorite Year,” which starred Peter O’Toole as a drunken, Errol Flynn-inspired film star and Mark-Linn Baker (“Perfect Strangers”) as a young, Mel Brooks-esque gag writer and super-fan charged with getting O’Toole to a live “Your Show of Shows”-style broadcast in a reasonably sober state.

Would Stoller admit there’s a strong similarity? He would.

“I thought of the idea and pitched it and then someone said, ‘that’s a lot like ‘My Favorite Year.” And then I watched [it] and I said, ‘yeah, it is similar. It was a while ago, so it’s fine.’ There’s like three stories to tell. Shakespeare told all of them…but that’s a great movie,” Stoller said. I also pointed out for him that there were no threesomes in “My Favorite Year.”

Then a writer noted that this was Stoller’s second film as a director. Was it easier the second time around?

“In certain ways it was a lot easier because I literally didn’t know how to direct before ‘Sarah Marshall.’ After we finished and the movie had turned out well, Jason said to me, ‘the first week I was pretty nervous. Because I didn’t understand basic things like coverage,” said Stoller, getting a laugh from this film ex-film student by referring to the basic practice of ensuring a scene will cut together by obtaining enough footage during a film shoot.

“I had no business directing that movie, but in terms of the nitty gritty of literally how you make a movie, I understood that well, which is important when you make a movie. This is a lot more challenging. I call the movie ‘Running and Screaming,'” he said, referring to the fact that the movie features a lot of physical comedy and emotional hysteria, not to mention concert footage, fight scenes, and the like.

The next question was one I was going to ask, about the genuinely surprising and very funny cameo in the film by Nobel Prize-winning economist and liberal pundit Paul Krugman. Was this going to be the germ of another spin off?

“Yeah, ‘Get Him to the Economic Summit.’ I’m a huge Paul Krugman fan. I just enjoy his writing,” Stoller said. “I thought it would be funny to populate the film with celebrities, but every kind of celebrity from every walk of life. My brother [Matt Stoller, formerly of MyDD] was in the progressive blogosphere for years and now works for a congressman, so I’ve been aware of Krugman’s work forever.”

Then a question came up about one of the film’s more pleasant surprises, the strong performance of the former P. Diddy, Sean Combs, as thoroughly insane record company executive Sergio Roma, who considers himself a master of the art of the “mindfuck.”

“It’s no mystery to me why he’s a mogul having worked with him now. He came to it with ‘you guys know how to do comedy, I’ll do whatever you want.’ He was really trusting and awesome, just a great guy to work with” Stoller said.

But was he Stoller’s first thought for the role?

“I was thinking of him,” he said. “I thought he’d be really good. With someone like that, who you haven’t seen really do comedy, it was important to see him audition. He came in to audition, which was very cool and just nailed it, he was just hilarious.”

“After the audition, I had already decided that we are casting him. He literally got on his knees and said ‘I’ll do anything for this part.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know how my life has led me to the moment where Sean Combs is on his knees, begging me for something.'”

That was followed by some discussion of the various songs in the movie written by various hands, including Jason Segel. Some of the tunes, especially ‘The Clap’ and ‘Furry Walls,’ are actually quite good in an aptly silly way. Others are deliberately awful, including the hilariously condescending, career-decimating ethno-disaster, “African Child.”

“I was just trying to think of the worst song of all time. The words ‘African child’ popped into my head,” Stoller said. “These guys, Dan Bern and Mike Viola, who are singer-songwriters in their own right and wrote songs for ‘Walk Hard‘…took it and really had a field day with it and really delivered a terrible song.”

That led to a discussion of things that didn’t make it into the film, including a hilarious-sounding but sacrilegious musical moment with Rose Byrne/Jackie Q as the Virgin Mary and Russell Brand/Aldous Snow as the Baby Jesus. “They make out,” Stoller said, saying they chose not to “poke the religious beehive” with that one.

Then there was a moment left out for reasons having to do more with technical matters than taste. Lighting, and the relative size of objects was one of the many issues that flummoxed Stoller and ace Director of Photography Robert Yeoman as they attempted to put together an “anal cavity cam” suggested by Jonah Hill for the sequence in which Hill/Green is forced to rectally secure Brand/Snow’s heroin as they board an airline flight.

Then, suddenly, I had the floor. I was mightily impressed by the Las Vegas sequence, which builds to a truly impressive comic crescendo of insanity. How much, if any, improvisation went into scene? Stoller thanked me for the compliment and went into some detail.

“That was very figured out. I knew I wanted this thing to explode,” Stoller said. “The movie is structured like a bender and I wanted Vegas to be the part where it’s just not fun for the characters, and it just goes out of control. A big inspiration for that scene is the firecracker scene in ‘Boogie Nights.’ I don’t think our sequence is necessarily as tense, but just to have it building and building,” Stoller said.

“Everything that happens in the suite I graphed out with Jeff Dashnaw, whose my stunt coordinator and whose done a lot of Tarantino movies. There’s this stunt guy named Nash Edgarton, whose a friend of mine and helped kind of explain to me some of the concepts of how you do a stunt sequence,” said Stoller, explaining how carefully the scene was staged, a necessity to prevent injuries — though some dialogue and comic ideas actually were improvised or written on the spot. Stoller pointed out a moment involving Aldous Snow’s ne’er do well father and the increasingly insane Sergio Roma.

“That led to one one the best directions I’ve ever given. There’s a moment where Sean Combs takes the lava lamp to bash over Colm Meany’s head and everyone’s supposed to be so messed up. I kept telling him to do it ‘more Scooby Doo,'” said Stoller showing us a cartoonish face and posture that, yes, really looked like something from the Hanna-Barbara Saturday morning staple.

Russell Brand

If Stoller was low-key and funny, Russell Brand was the very much same person he appears to be everywhere — hilarious and considerably less low key. Already a hugely famous and controversial comic in England, known for overcoming addictions to, among other things, heroin and ludicrous amounts of sex, Brand has been able to combine sobriety with comedy and controversy quite nicely, and has recently done something almost normal by becoming engaged to singer Katy Perry.

So, how does Brand feel about doing publicity tours?

“It’s quite nice. It’s like a dinner party where I get too much attention.” Getting a big laugh so start things off, he segued into why he’s got mixed feelings about actual dinner parties. “You see, because my job is showing off, socializing I just consider to be more work. It’s just some work, ‘it’s that thing where I have to talk, isn’t it?…You can listen as well, I like that.”

Someone asked him about preparing for shows like Jay Leno. The producers, of course, expect a certain amount of planning to make sure there’s “content” but Brand looks at the process differently. “Me, I get very adrenalized and scared before a performance and I think that energy, that ‘fight or flight’ energy, is translated into neurological activity that I can then translate into anecdotes.”

Was he concerned that playing a very off-the-wagon addict might trigger something negative?

“No, I didn’t think I would relapse,” Brand said. “Its interesting, actually, because the props person who gave me pretend cocaine to take in one scene, which I don’t think was in the movie, was himself 21 years clean. I asked him ‘what is this?, ‘and he goes ‘it’s organic matter.’ That’s the sort of thing you would read on a Nestle label. ‘What is this ‘organic matter’?’ ‘Oh, nothing, we just killed some kids.’ ‘What?!'”

Brand continued on a more serious note, getting progressively more intense. “I am in a daily program of recovery and everything, so, one day at a time, I’m alright,” Brand said. “Its more the emotional stuff, when you get all angry or shout at people. Your body don’t know that you are not serious. Apparently you can tell your brain any old information and it will just respond to it. That’s that power of positive thinking which some people say is just mumbo jumbo, and perhaps they are correct, but apparently if you fill your head with positiva, it will all be alright.”

Brand went on to discuss how being so open about his many issues has been a bit of godsend, making him more or less scandal proof in terms of his personal life. “It transposes those things from being stuff that makes you sad to stuff that makes you laugh. There are some stories I tell on stage, and they’re funny, but, in the words of Morrissey, ‘I can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.'”

Next came a question about deleted scenes. Was there anything that he missed being in the finished cut of “Greek,” particularly that one sacrilegious bit?

“Ah, yes. ‘I am Jesus. Welcome to the Church of Me,” Brand started, getting a big laugh, but then he actually made a bit of sense about the filmmaking process. “When I was younger, if I had to make something of myself to send to TV stations, I would always make them too long. Because I was vain. I would think all of it’s brilliant. But now I think it’s good to be succinct.”

“Because I’m actually genuinely pleased with the film, I think they have done a good job. I would have done it really different and made me much more funny. They made me dead sad in loads of it, but they seem to know what they are doing better than I do, I hope. We will see if the film is a hit. Otherwise, I am going back and edit it and doing the Russell Brand version which is different shots of me just looking out of windows.”

Then someone asked a question about the fact that working in a collaborative medium like film gives him less control than as a stand-up.

“As you say, as a stand-up comedian you have this sort of absolute authority and once you are up on a stage you can just go nuts and I have done so lots of times. Sometimes you can get in trouble. When I was a drug addict, I got really badly beaten up on several occasions cause I would just think, ‘I could say this now. It’s what I believe.’ And sometimes I know I was right about what I saying. I was definitely, definitely right about the nature of consciousness and the nature of culpability. I was saying that we are socially culpable for each other and you can’t demonize certain individuals — even the most extreme criminals — we have to take social responsibility. People don’t want them kind of ideas in a comedy club. They just beat you up.”

“I was saying that we have to take responsibility for the notion of pedophilia, but I was unable to articulate it in the way that people thought was acceptable, and their response was much more to do this to my leg,” the comedian said, rolling up a pants leg and showing us an impressive scar.

“I got really badly beaten up and thrown through a door. Luckily, I was on quite a lot of heroin that day, it didn’t hurt. What was interesting was the blood which goes to the beat of your heart, pulsing literally. Then I went to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh is a good place to get heroin. I got to these kids and asked them to get me some heroin. I give them 40 quid up front…never pay upfront. Probably anywhere. There are very few places where you can make advance heroin payments.”

Yes, Brand is that kind of interview. Even knowing that, I was impressed by the response when I asked about an incident I had read about involving him and British comic and talk show host Jonathan Ross making a prank phone call to a cast member of a classic television show. It seemed to me that it would not be as big of a deal if it happened here in the States.

Brand had some thoughts on the matter. “This is a difficult question for me to answer…no, it’s not difficult, it’s just complicated. Here it is. That prank phone call, it was not the nature of the phone call itself; it was the nature of the sociological structure of the country where I am from. We have a thing called the BBC. The BBC is publicly funded. The privately owned media want to destroy the BBC because it is brilliant.”

“They don’t like me or Jonathan Ross at The Daily Mail, a powerful [Rupert Murdoch-owned] newspaper in the United Kingdom. They don’t like us because we are both from working class backgrounds. [Ross is actually the son of a well-known actress and television host.] I am a former drug addict and instead of dying I’ve gone on and fucked everyone and made loads of money. It’s confusing for their message. Plus I am innately anti-establishment in my behavior and stunts, so they want to destroy me.”

“The thing that was wrong that we did is we left a rude message on an elderly man’s [comic actor Andrew Sachs] phone, but in my head he was still the character he played in the sitcom 30 years ago. I didn’t think of the reality. He played the character of Manuel in the program called ‘Fawlty Towers’ which I loved.”

“I just saw this man in a white waiter’s jacket holding this silver thing. That’s who I thought I was leaving an answering message for. I had sex with this dance troop, and one of that dance troop was the granddaughter of this man. I was explaining that on the radio, actually in quite a funny way. We phoned up and ended leaving this message. It was very silly and juvenile but actually funny. So the newspapers, as you know as journalists, are dying, people don’t read newspapers anymore. People get news from other sources, so newspapers need to campaign,” Russell said.

“It was a perfect storm. The Daily Mail don’t like Ross earning so much money and me, they don’t like what I represent. They don’t like that he’s an old style comedian attacked by sort of younger folk. It became this big conglomerate of lunacy. To be honest, I found it amazing. It was like a sociological experiment. I like it. If the news begins ‘the main news: comedian Russell Brand…’ I think, ‘good, yeah, that is the main news. It’s about time.’ I’m narcissistic. I’m working on it. I recognize that the self is a kind of construct and it’s going to dissipate into nothing, isn’t it? If you take it too seriously, you’re fucked.”

But wasn’t he just really succeeding in what he had set out to do?

“I think a bit I am. As I remember, I used to be a penniless junkie. Now I am not. Something is going right. I’m happy with it.”

Things finally moved along to the more quotidian matter of his next big projects, which includes writing a book. (Which he considers boring, hard work.) The upcoming CGI animated super-villain comedy, “Despicable Me,” “I Hop,” (starring Brand as the Easter Bunny), and even Julie Taymor’s already shot, transgendered version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” with Helen Mirren. He’s also starring in an upcoming remake of the 1981 comedy, “Arthur,” which starred Dudley Moore as a sweet-natured multimillionaire drunk falling for a waitress played by Liza Minnelli. Brand will be costarring with, again, none other than Helen Mirren, who will be doing a variation on the tart-tongued Butler played to stentorian perfection in the original by John Gielgud.

With all that going on, is he interested in branching out dramatically?

“I do not yet because, to be honest with you, the best comics actors ever — Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams — the biggest proper movie stars, it’s not like they go, ‘and this week he’s a French hunchback.’ You want him to be doing stuff where you recognize him — at first, anyway. This is my first significant part in a movie, first lead role, so let’s see if this works and then ‘Arthur.’ I think I’ll stay within that palette. I can act, you know. I went to drama school and I can pretend to have a different voice, a different height, a different head — all these things are possible, they’re not hard. It’s just this is the best thing to do at the moment.”

Rose Byrne

Australian-born Rose Byrne is best known for her role on FX’s “Damages,” which pairs the attractive, round-faced actress with  Glenn Close, as well as films like “28 Weeks Later” and “Troy.” A solid talent, she is more than able to keep up with Brand on screen. In person, however, she was all too aware of the impossibility of following Brand. We can’t all be half-crazed forces of nature. Some of us are simply hard-working and talented professionals like Byrne. And you need people like that to keep a project like “Get Him to the Greek” from going completely bonkers.

So, just how did she keep her portrayal of the Courtney Love/Grace Slick/Madonna-like Jackie Q from getting too cartoony?

“That’s kind of where Nick would come in. Nick definitely set the tone. I agree, it’s easy to just turn it into an SNL skit or something like that, and that’s definitely where [producer] Rodney Rothman, Nick and Judd [Apatow] too [helped]. That very fine line of making it just the right tone,” Byrne said.

How did a traditional actress like her adjust to the amount of improvisation involved in many of her scenes, most of them on the phone, with Brand?

“I’ve done my share of acting classes in school and so on and so forth. It’s fun. It’s different. And Russell’s intimidating in his improv. You just met him, he’s amazing. He’s so erudite and bright and quick. And the thing with Jackie is that she has the upper-hand in the relationship, so I just always had to make sure that I was winning the argument or whatever it was.”

And what about Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, who turns up in the film as Jackie’s new boyfriend, Lars Ulrich?

“He’s such a good guy. Such a good sport. He’s not an actor, clearly, and immediately Russell starts making fun of him.’ Are you a hobby from ‘The Hobbit’? He really rolled with the punches.”

Byrne also had some insights, between praising director Stoller and co-star Brand, into how working on a Judd Apatow film is different from working on others. “It’s very collaborative, the way Judd Apatow works. Once you get cast then its, ‘Let’s create the character together. ‘What do you want to do?’ and ‘Who is she?’ Sort of like a think tank. Films aren’t always like that, really ever.”

She also discussed the fact that “Get Him to the Greek” is most definitely her professional singing debut. Apparently she was never asked if she could actually sing and, at a certain point, she requested singing lessons. She found singing hard but fun, and a special challenge was getting through the lyrics of songs like “Super Tight,” “Ring Around My Rosey,” and “Pound Me in the Buttocks” without laughing. “Ride me, inside me, it’s super tight” she sang earnestly for us, nicely in tune and describing her singing teacher saying “‘Come on Rose, come on, sell it to me!'”

Did she ever feel a bit uncomfortable with this kind of insanity?

“Jackie’s like 150 percent or nothing. If you’re doing a character like this, if you see even a glimmer of hesitation, it’s not gonna work. She’s the female version of Aldous Snow, is really what Jackie Q is, I think,” Byrne said. “Judd’s films often get criticized because the females aren’t as stand-up as the men. I think Jackie defies all of that. She’s just as ballsy as the guys and just as feisty and narcissistic and just as kind of foul-mouthed and all that stuff. It’ll be interesting to see how she’s received.”

Jonah Hill

A young comic actor and writer whose career is ready to take a new turn this summer with the appearance of “Greek” and a buzz-heavy title role in the upcoming comedy from indie favorites, the Duplass Brothers, “Cyrus.” The movie features Hill as the overly-dependent adult son none too pleased about the burgeoning relationship between his mother (Marisa Tomei) and her new boyfriend (John C. Reilly). The film has already caused a mini-stir with a humorously blunt t-shirt. It was also discussed, prior to having a title, right here on PH during my interview with the movie’s co-director, Mark Duplass.

An unashamed nerd, through and through, the “Superbad” star actually recognized one of the other bloggers at the table, CHUD‘s Devin Faraci, for his appearance in Jamie Kennedy’s docu-comedy “Heckler.” Hill immediately declared sitting down with us, in all seriousness, the highlight of his day and focused his attention for most of the rest of his visit on the end of the table where Faraci was. If there was a way to politely get his attention on the other side of the table, I wasn’t able to figure it out. Still, assuming you can get Hill’s attention, he’s definitely got something to say.

So, how did he approach the role of being a “babysitter to a mad man?” How did he wrap his head around that?

“I don’t know. I watched ‘My Favorite Year’ a lot,” Hill said, generating a knowing nod from me that no one saw. “I watched ‘Midnight Run’ a lot and ‘Almost Famous‘ and those were the three movies I would watch a lot to prepare.”

“A big correlation to me was I thought about what if I were 18 and with one of my heroes. I would often replace Aldous Snow in my head with Bill Murray or Martin Scorsese or someone like that and imagined what it would be like as a young guy, and being able to ask them any question you wanted or just to be in awe of them,” Hill said.

The movie is kind of the ultimate fantasy in that way. Who hasn’t fantasized about going on the road for 72 hours with your favorite rock star?”

That led to the natural question about who Hill’s favorite rock musicians are and the answer was Neil Young and, perhaps, Jay-Z. Hill likes to keep things diverse. Somehow, famed art music composer Philip Glass got a mention as well.

How does Hill feeling about being on the promotional treadmill?

“Honestly, it’s been great,” he said. “‘Cyrus’ and ‘Get Him to the Greek,’ between those two films I literally cannot be more proud of them. It’s such a delight and blessing when a movie actually turns out good. I’m sure I’ll be sitting in front of you guys one day with just a shitty, shitty movie and have to smile through a bunch of lies,” said Hill, getting a big laugh with some movie business honesty.

“It’s a joy to be able to go out and talk about them because you’re saying, ‘Hey, I worked hard on this and it actually turned out good.’ I’m super lucky to have this job, I tell you guys every time. I’m super appreciative of that. It’s fun. It’s a good group of people. It’s been tiring but it’s been super enjoyable.”

The next question came around to the topic of typecasting. Will “Cyrus” and “Greek,” which will be coming out a couple of weeks apart, free him from from forever being the “foul-mouthed, wacky slacker kid”?

“I’ve only starred in one other movie, that was ‘Superbad.’ I’m a foulmouthed, loudmouthed, obnoxious, horny teenager in that movie, which is completely appropriate for that movie. And I think the misconception is, because that’s the only movie I’ve stared in, that’s what I’m like as a human being. Probably fortunately, that’s not the case. Since then, I’ve done a lot of cameos and side characters. I’ve probably been written off as one type of thing,” Hill said.

“I understand that completely. It totally makes sense and I’d probably do the same thing. But the truth is, judge me on this year, and judge me on next year, because between ‘Cyrus’ and this movie, I think both characters are completely unrecognizable from my character in ‘Superbad’ or ‘Knocked Up,” said Hill.

“I chose not to out of respect and appreciation for my career, which I value. And, next year, the same thing doing ‘Moneyball,’ which is a straight-up drama with Brad Pitt and myself and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And then, ‘The Sitter,’ with David Gordon Green which is like an R-rated, fucked up, ‘Adventures in Babysitting’ type movie…all four characters will be unrecognizable from each other and I’m really prideful of that. I hope that didn’t sound dickish,” he said. “I’m super excited to take people’s expectations and change them.”

The next question expanded on the topic of turning down roles in movies which are, shall we say, of low quality — with Hill merrily suggesting such titles as “Boner Party 5” and “Titty School 6,” while more soberly assessing the reality that his career as a star “could be over tomorrow.”

“I looked at all the careers of the people I loved and respected. I looked at them and they didn’t do a good movie and immediately do a shitty movie. I don’t need to be super rich or super famous. That’s not why I did this. I would have probably gone into finance out of college if that’s what I wanted to do. I really care about this stuff. I’m lucky enough to not have to take any movie just to pay the rent, so there’s no need to be greedy, just do something if it’s going to be good, and I really put a lot of meticulous thought into these decisions.”

Hill went on to explain the fact that he’s also co-writing screenplays gives more options to exercise his workaholic tendencies and work on his career without being forced to act in whichever movie he’s currently being offered. That naturally led to some of his upcoming projects as a co-writer, including the comedy “The Adventurer’s Handbook,” currently set to costar Hill, Jason Segel, and Wes Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman, as well as a film version of “21 Jump Street,” the teen-friendly 80s cop show about young police officers infiltrating high schools to fight crime, which ran from 1987 to 1991 and launched the career of Johnny Depp and, to a vastly lesser extent, Peter DeLuise and Richard Greico.

Though it’s a project that has, not surprisingly, elicited some knee-jerk web criticism, Hill is high on the project and thinks he may have found his directorial collaborators. “Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who directed ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs‘ had an amazing take on the movie,” Hill said, as someone mentioned that preliminary research for the film has been going on at high school proms, which is interesting.

“The best thing that movie has going for it is that people’s expectations for it are so low that our movie’s already so much better than what shit-talkers on the Internet think it is,” Hill said. “That’s the best thing you can have. People think your movie sucks and then it turns out being pretty awesome,” which Hill admitted had been his reaction to Lord and Miller’s “Cloudy” before he actually saw it and loved it.

While Hill didn’t want to say too much about the movie or the character he might be playing, he did want to give us a glimpse into the overall approach. “We want to make a really funny, grounded high school movie with action set pieces in it. To me, that’s really cool. When they asked me to remake it, I initially went, ‘Fuck that. I’m not doing that. It’s stupid.’ Then I thought about it. I watched the show again and revisited it,” he said. “To me, there’s a real ‘Back to the Future’ element in that you get to go back and relive a very important time period in your life, and that’s what I found fascinating. And then, the big idea that I had, which [screenwriter] Mike Bacall and I cracked, which was — so, these guys are cops in their mid-20s, and they’ve gained all of this confidence since high school. Then, they go back to high school and they immediately revert back to insecure high school students again.”

“It’s not a spoof of the show, it’s honestly not. It’s not a spoof of the 80s,” but he allowed that he might have a different attitude if he wasn’t privy to what he was planning. “If I didn’t now about it, I would talk shit about it, like people on the Internet do. In my opinion, that’s the best thing we have going for us.”

Bullz-Eye: Hello?

Megyn Price: (Sounding startled) Hello. Uh, hi, is this Will?

BE: Yes, it is.

MP: Oh, hi, it’s Megyn Price calling. (Laughs) I’m sorry, you sound exactly like my husband. I’m just, like, “Oh, crap, I called the wrong number!

BE: I’m sorry to have totally freaked you out.

MP: You did, you totally freaked me out. But it’s okay…and I’m sorry I’m a little bit late. I was being killed by a small woman who’s training me.

BE: (Laughs) Well, that’s quite alright. At least you have a good excuse.

MP: I’m training for another triathlon, and this crazy woman is trying to make me croak or throw up in the middle of the day.

BE: Awesome. Well, hopefully this’ll be at least a little less stressful, then.

MP: And I pay her for that, too, by the way.

BE: Even better.

MP: It’s very messed up. Can you hear me okay on these headphones? ‘Cause that’s what I’m using.

BE: Yeah, you’re fine.

MP: Okay, good.

BE: You and I actually have chatted in the past, at least slightly, in the past. I was at the TCA tour, standing next to you and Drew Carey for a little bit.

MP: Oh, yes, of course. Oh, I totally know who you are. Yes!

BE: I’m looking forward to the new season. I’ve been a fan of the show since the beginning.

MP: Well, that’s very sweet of you.

BE: I talked to Patrick (Warburton) at the beginning of last season, so I wanted to spread the wealth. So what can we expect from this season? It looks like, from the press photo that I saw, that you’ve formally added a new cast member.

MP: Well, I don’t know what the press is sending out, but, yes, Adhir Kalyan has joined the cast, who played David Spade’s assistant, Timmy, and he’s just the greatest addition to our cast. They’re like an old married couple, those two…and, sadly, they’re like that in real life as well. So that’s one change which I think is a good change, because it sort of makes David part of a couple. (Laughs). You know, I feel like every year I’ve said, “It’s the best it’s ever been,” and then this year…I mean, they’ve tweaked our writing staff again, and every season it’s just sharper and sharper. And this is…it’s so odd to me, because I’ve done a lot of series…I mean, I’ve been on series for years at a time…and it always works so that the first day of our work week the script is rough, and by the end of the week the script is tight, and this year…I swear, the first day of the week, it’s almost the exact same script as it is by the end of the week. It is so good. The writers have…I mean, they have totally figured out our voices and where all of the relationships are at their best, you know? They’ve really figured out what works and what doesn’t work. And it is such a joy to go to work. It’s, like, there’s no stress; it’s just all funny, all the time. I’m just never stressed that the script isn’t going to work out or that it’s going to be difficult to do the show. It’s always easy because it’s so well written now. It’s unbelievably fun. I feel like we’re in our tenth season because it’s just so smooth, you know?

BE: Well, you and Patrick had an instant chemistry from day one, I thought.

MP: I am so married to him, it’s ridiculous. It’s retarded. I was on jury duty and I called him. Like, I was feeling sad and out of sorts, and I called Patrick from my house. What? Not that my own marriage isn’t wonderful, because it is, but it’s, like, Patrick’s a different kind of husband. He’s a big, tough, burly husband.

BE: When I talked to him, he said that we would know “Rules of Engagement” had officially jumped the shark if the two of you ever got pregnant on the show.

MP: Oh, God, every time we read even hints of that, we’re, like, “That can’t happen.” It’s not going to happen. Our writers have addressed it this season. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this, but…they hinted that I’m getting a surrogate. That’s how much they don’t want us to be pregnant. It might be the first sitcom ever with a surrogate. It’s crazy. Yeah, I’m, like, “Forget it, dude, I’m not wearing the fat suit.” I’m not doing it. We’re not going to have a baby. It wouldn’t work.

BE: Well, that answers my question of how the dynamic is going to change this season.

MP: Yeah, well, I’ll tell you what: those writers, any time they get access to a computer and they get to write a script, it’s nudity, nudity, nudity. It’s their favorite thing. I swear, there was a script where the writers actually, after we read the script out loud, they came to me with that look, like, “Are you going to hit me? Are you going to hit me?” There’s so much nudity. I’m, like, “You guys, I’m not 16. What are we doing with all of these nude things?” They’re, like, “What? We like it. We think you look good.” Okay, so I’m naked on camera all the time. It’s terrible.

BE: Hey, you were the one who just told me you were working out, so it seems like you’re going to be set.

MP: I know, right? As the wardrobe girls said, “You know, those guys would have written it whether you were working out or not, so you’re just lucky that you’re actually in good shape.”

BE: So who would you say is the person that you get to work with the least within the ensemble that you would like to work with more?

MP: Oliver (Hudson). We’re great friends in real life, and our kids are the same age and we hang out. And every time we come to work, we’re, like, “Hey, why don’t we ever get to be in scenes together?” Then Oliver says, “there would be too much chemistry. They just wouldn’t believe that we’re only neighbors.” (Laughs) It’s our joke. Yeah. He’s the one. I’m never in scenes with Oliver, and he’s one of my favorite people. I can’t say he’s my favorite because, you know, that would sound bad.

BE: Well, sure.

MP: But he’s my favorite person that I work with, and we never have scenes together.

BE: Will there be more Audrey / Jennifer episodes?

MP: You know it’s strange, because I feel like the dynamic with the women and the men separately is much better than the women together. Like, I feel like when Audrey and Jennifer are in the same room, we’re kind of, like, “Yeah, I know, me, too.” You know, there’s not a lot of conflict with those two. I mean, occasionally there is, but I feel like the conflict which is more funny to watch comes from the male characters with the female characters. There’s such a disconnect between the logic. II feel like when Jennifer and Audrey are in the same room, it’s just, “Yeah, I know.” You know what I mean? There’s not a lot of conflict, so I don’t really like those scenes as much as I thought I would. I mean, I love Bianca (Kajlich), I think that we are very good friends, but I feel like those characters are written to be buddies rather than to have, you know, sort of a snipey relationship. Like, the guys have a snipey relationship amongst themselves, but I like the girl/guy things better. Also, when we’re in a group, I think that’s always really fun. When we have diner scenes where it’s all of us, that’s always the most fun… (Laughs)…jamming us all into those booths and then all of us attacking each other.

BE: I love the episodes when Audrey and Russell team up, particularly the episode where we find out that he loves musicals.

MP: Absolutely. I think that was probably my favorite episode to shoot. There’s another one this season that, again, it’s so brilliantly written. It’s written like a play, in that everything happens kind of on two different sides of the stage. It’s, like, there’s rapid fire lying…it’s between Jeff and Audrey, of course. We’re lying to each other for no personal gain…just, you know, lying because that’s how they are. (Laughs) And it snowballs and it is just quick, quick cuts. And David is, I think the funniest he has ever been in his entire life. I mean, to the point where we had to do so many retakes from all of us cracking up. And it’s basically Jeff lies about going to a bachelor party that was canceled. And I know that he’s lied, and then I lie about something else that was canceled, and he knows that I’m lying. And we all kind of know the other one is lying, but we never give it up. Up to the end, with this insane…me smoking four cigarettes at the same time, trying to prove that someone who smokes had been in the room. It’s insanity. And it is so fun and silly and…I feel like it is old school Broadway, the kind that doesn’t even exist anymore, you know? But it’s been so much fun, I can’t even believe it’s my job, you know? That they pay me to show up.

BE: Now that Adhir is going to be in the cast also, is he going to be interacting more with other characters besides just David?

MP: Yeah, actually, Adhir and I got to do a really fun episode last year that was…he and I were in a car, and it was, like, this very tightly shot scene where it seems like it’s entirely sexual and…it’s not. I don’t mean at all what he thinks I mean. It’s another case of just brilliant writing. He is such a good actor. You know, he’s a crazy actor. I’m sure we’re going to see him in a Merchant Ivory film in between sitcoms. He’s so specific in what he does, and he has this whole method that he uses. He’s really a fascinating guy.

BE: So who can we expect for guest stars? I read somewhere that Jaime Pressly was popping up.

MP: She is. Once again we hearken back to the old surrogate idea. It’s frightening. Alan Ruck shows up as our marital counselor, which was so fun. He’s, again, just such a historically hilarious actor. I mean, he’s iconic. He walks in the room and everyone’s, like, “Oh, my God, it’s Cameron from ‘Ferris Bueller’! Oh, my God!” (Laughs) So, yeah, he shows up, and…I’m trying to remember all of our other guest stars. I feel like they did so much with our core cast that we really got to explore that group a lot. I go back to my office which, again, involves me getting in trouble and a lot of nudity. Beth Littleford came back, and so did Susan Yeagley, who played the funny girl in my office from last season. But I’m trying to think if we had any other guest stars…

BE: Did anyone’s parents or siblings return?

MP: No, and that makes me sad. I’m dying to see who my mother is. I keep hearing it thrown around that it’s going to be Oliver’s actual mom, that it’s going to be Goldie Hawn who’s going to play my mom.

BE: Oh, wow.

MP: Which to me would be a dream come true, because she has to be my favorite actress, really, of my whole life. I mean, really, it was a little weird when I met her. I’m, like, “Oh, my God!” (Laughs) I think my first movie in the theater was “Foul Play,” and, I mean, my mother raised me from the time I was four years old watching Goldie Hawn. So, yeah, I would love for her to play my mom. That would be great.

BE: I wanted to ask you about a couple of other sitcoms you have been on. First off, I’m a huge fan of “Grounded For Life.”

MP: Oh, thank you! Me, too, actually. I don’t think I realized how funny it was until I watched it in rerun.

BE: I’ve always described it to people as being almost like a “Memento” of sitcoms, because of the structure.

MP: Oh, yeah, completely.

BE: That must have been somewhat hellish to film as a result, though, because of the structure.

MP: The funniest thing about that crazy show is that I had…well, they didn’t cast me until 15 minutes before the first table read because they thought I was too young. So they kept saying, “She’s too you, she’s too young,” and then they kept saying, “But she’s funny!” “But she’s too young, she’s too young.” So whatever, I was only ten years older than my 16 year old daughter on the show, you know, whatever. It’s TV, it’s magic. (Laughs) So I was cast…literally, they called me up, I was in my pajamas, playing the piano, and they said, “Get in your car and come over here; you got the job.” What? What? Okay, so I show up and that day is when they say, “Well, tomorrow morning you have a six AM call, and we’re starting the shooting for the…” I said, “Wait, no, no, no. This is a sitcom. We don’t do film shooting. What are you talking about?” I had no idea. So, yeah, we shot film two or three days a week, and then we also shot a full audience show, where they would play back everything that we had shot on film earlier. So, yeah, it was crazy. It was so fun, but it was nuts.

BE: Has there ever been any talk of bringing any of the cast members of “Grounded” on for guest appearances on “Rules of Engagement”?

MP: We have talked about Kevin Corrigan, who I actually got to have lunch with last week, he’s shooting a movie in L.A. And I think Kevin has to be beaten over the head and dragged into Los Angeles, because he’s really a New York guy. And, you know, Donal Logue is always working. He’s in Vancouver right now shooting something. So it’s kind of rough to get my peeps back. Although I have pitched a couple of times Richard Riehle, who played the father-in-law from “Grounded.” He had worked with Tom Hertz, our creator, on another show. He’s such a fantastic actor. So I pitched him to play my dad, it just hasn’t come up yet, that I’ve had any parents. But that was such a joy, to do that, to do “Grounded” because, I mean, as actors, we’re such great actors. It was just so incredibly fun. And talk about being married, I mean, Donal and I were basically married for five years. (Laughs)

BE: I’m also the proud owner of “LateLine: The Complete series.”

MP: Are you really?

BE: I am, yeah.

MP: You know that show almost made me quit acting?

BE: Really? I liked it.

MP: No, I mean, when they canceled that show.

BE: Oh, okay. That I can believe.

MP: Oh, I just said forget it. It made no sense to me. I really have a hard time even talking about the show without getting weepy. I still think it’s great. One of my best friends is the creator of that show. It was so brilliantly done. I think it was so ahead of its time, too.

BE: I loved it. I mean, going in, I obviously loved Al Franken, but I’d been a big Miguel Ferrer ever since I had seen him on “Twin Peaks”.

MP: Who’s also one of my dear, dear friends. It was just such an amazing experience, too, to shoot that. And we shot it in New York. Yeah, it was incredible, and it was incredibly exciting, too, to work with…I mean, talk about great actors. I think Robert Foxworth is a legend; Miguel is a legend. You know, Al is hysterically Al. I mean, everyone from that show has just gone on to just work, work, work. Oh, that’s so sweet that you have that. I love that you have the complete series!

BE: Well, keep in mind that I am a TV critic. But, still, I actually paid money for that set (Laughs)

MP: Well, yeah, but you’re a TV critic. That means a lot.

BE: Well, thanks. But, y’know, then again, you were also in “Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.”

MP: (Laughs) Well, that’s how I got out of doing another sitcom that they wanted me to do. I didn’t want to do this other sitcom when they kept offering me more money, and it was getting ugly. So I was, like, “I’m going to do a movie.” And I’m telling you, Larry the Cable Guy, that guy, he is the greatest human being. I mean, I know his comedy is a little rough and whatever, but he is such a great guy! That was, again, such a joy. We shot in Florida, in August. It couldn’t have been more disgusting, and I couldn’t have had more fun. (Laughs) I really just couldn’t have had more fun. Those people were just great people.

BE: Oh, yeah, he’s one of those guys…I mean, I would not begin to claim that I’m a fan of his comedy, but from what I’ve read, he definitely seems like a heck of a nice guy.

MP: Do you know…there was this show that he did in, heck, I can’t remember, some city in Florida, that we all went to when we were shooting. And he stayed after…he did a two and a half hour show, and then he stayed for three hours after his show signing autographs and taking pictures with fans. Who does that? He sold out a stadium and then hung around for three hours afterwards, just so his fans could say “hi.” I mean, he’s such a nice guy. He’s over and above the call of duty, that guy. He’s so not a star, you know? Meanwhile, we’re all making jokes about, “Can I have the ten million dollars? That wouldn’t hurt ya, right? Can I have a check?” (Laughs) “Can I have a plane? Hey, Dan, can I have a plane?” (Writer’s note: Larry the Cable Guy’s real name is Dan Whitney.)

BE: Well, obviously, I mentioned talking to you at the TCA tour when you were talking to Drew. Had you been friends with him since you appeared on his show? It was a small role, I guess, but…

MP: He’s another guy who…I mean, I’m telling you, since day one, that guy…I had a tiny role on his show, and he treated me like I was his long lost sister, you know? He was just…all of those guys on that show, Ryan (Stiles) and Diedrich (Bader), they were just so kind. And it was, again, such a fun set to work on. And that was my first sitcom, really. I mean that was, like, I just got that role, it was just “Waitress.” There was nothing else to it. But, yeah, he’s such a great guy. Drew is also a guy who I think is so genuine. And, I mean, you know that from talking to him.

BE: Oh, yeah, definitely.

MP: He’s so what you see is what you get. I just love that. I think I’ve been really lucky, too, in my career, because I have worked pretty much nonstop since I started. And I really never worked with jerks, you know? I’ve really always worked with great people, and I don’t know if that’s because I choose well or if I’m just a regular girl and I’m not really attracted to divas, but I really have been so lucky. No one wants to hear those stories, though. They always want to hear the diva stories.

BE: Well, I will wrap up here by telling you that, by standing around that conversation between you and Drew, it resulted in me hearing the greatest anecdote of the entire press tour.

MP: (Excitedly) What? What was it?

BE: Your story about going to see “Footloose” The Musical” with David Cross. Oh, my God, I’ve told that story to more people than I can count.

MP: (Laughs) Oh, that’s hilarious. I’m going to tell him that. Oh, that was funny. I forgot I told that story.

“David Cross and I decided that we were going to go to ‘Footloose,’ because we were, like, ‘It’s gonna be so bad that it’s gonna be fun!’ So we’re sitting in the theater, and we decided at intermission that we were just gonna do shots. We were, like, ‘It’s gonna get better, because now we’re all drunk!’ So we go back in and we sit down, and these boys in front of us, who were, like, fifteen and were clearly there under duress from their mother, turn around and say to David, ‘Hey, you’re in ‘Mr. Show.’ We thought you were cool.’ And he was so bummed for the longest time! He was, like, ‘No, no, if you’ll just let me explain…! I’m here ironically!’”

BE: Oh, man, I laughed so hard. Actually, I do have one more I wanted to ask you. What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved?

MP: Well “LateLine”, obviously.

BE: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. I thought it might fall back to that, but it’s kind of stock question of mine.

MP: It has to be “LateLine,” because I really feel, in all honesty, “LateLine” is one of those shows that could have gone on for ten years, easily. You know? It felt to me like one of those shows that was topical without being too self-aware. You can watch the reruns now and you don’t go, “Oh, wow…” You know, like, people referencing IM’ing or something. It doesn’t feel dated to me when I watch it. It still feels current. And it’s kind of one of those hybrid shows that didn’t know where it belonged and it got caught up in politics. I think it got canceled kind of through no fault of its own. There was a big change in execs at the network and, you know, the new guy doesn’t want the old guys stuff. It seemed like such a waste to cancel that show, because it was so brilliant.

BE: I know that you mentioned that there was a sitcom that you didn’t want to do, which led to “Larry the Cable Guy.” But has there ever been a pilot that you did that didn’t get picked up that you still can’t believe didn’t get picked up?

MP: No. You know, that’s the weirdest piece of trivia about me: I have never done a pilot that did not get picked up.

BE: That’s pretty impressive.

MP: Including one that I did that I didn’t do the series for. But the pilot still got picked up to series. Isn’t that crazy?

BE: What was that, just out of curiosity?

MP: The Freddy Prinze, Jr. pilot. Bruce Helford created it, and he’s the one who gave me my first job on “Drew Carey.” I was actually in New York, doing theater, and Bruce Helford called up and said, “We can’t cast this role, will you do it? Will you just do the pilot? Because you’re the pilot Buddha. Every pilot you do gets picked up. Will you help me get my pilot picked up?” And I said, “Absolutely.” So I came back on and shot it, and the pilot got picked up, but I was not signed on to do the series. And that was right after “Grounded for Life,” too. That was when I kind of needed a little bit of a break after that. But, yeah, I’ve never done a pilot that didn’t get picked up. So when pilot season comes around, there are casting directors who say, “Please, please. She’s the pilot Buddha. Please, just play a receptionist and then the pilot will get picked up.”

BE: I’m so honored to have spoken with the pilot Buddha.

MP: (Laughs) The pilot Buddha, yeah. I don’t know, it seems like a wild suspect claim to fame, but it is true. Yeah, I know lots of people who say, “Oh, whatever, just do the pilot.” I never just do the pilot. If I do a show, it’s because I think it’s a good show, you know? And the reason I did “Rules of Engagement” was it was Patrick; it was Tom Hertz, who I knew was the creator and is a great director; it was Adam Sandler’s project. You know, there were reasons. I don’t just take work for no reason. Which is probably why I don’t work all of the time, because I don’t like to just do garbage. I like to do stuff that makes me proud.

BE: Makes sense. Well, it’s been awesome actually speaking to you directly, as opposed to sharing a conversation.

MP: And as opposed to you telling my stories when I’m not around! (Laughs)

BE: (Laughs) Exactly.

MP: I love telling that one because it’s so good at David’s expense.

BE: Oh, man, but it’s so funny.

MP: (Laughs) Yeah, it really is.

BE: All right, well, maybe I’ll see you at the next press tour.

MP: Oh, I hope so! So let’s go over all the important stuff again before we go. (Laughs) On March 1, we’re coming back. Now, do they give you all the screeners?

BE: They do, and I’ve seen the first two episodes.

MP: I’m looking forward to seeing them myself! (Laughs) I’m telling you…and, again, I’m sure everyone says this, but…it is our best season we’ve ever done. It gets better and better. And now I’ve hyped it too much, so now you’ll be disappointed. (Laughs)

BE: I’m now officially afraid to watch.

MP: Hey, can I ask you a question?

BE: Sure.

MP: What’s your favorite show on TV?

BE: Let’s see, my favorite show at the moment…? Well, the obvious answer for a sitcom is going to be “Modern Family” or “Community,” but having just seen the opening two episodes, “Damages” is currently my favorite drama.

MP: Oh, really?

BE: Yep. I’ve just seen the first two episodes of the new season, and it’s, like, out of the box, I’m ready to tune in for the rest of the season.

MP: All right. Good to know, because I’m not…see, I never have time to watch TV, so I’ll TiVo. But I don’t even know what to TiVo, so I always…I have a friend who has totally opposite taste than mine and is always telling me what to watch, and I don’t like “Ugly Betty,” and, ah, whatever.

BE: Well, have you watched “Damages” at all?

MP: No. I haven’t at all.

BE: Well this is the third season, but usually they do a really nice recap before hand.

MP: I have Netflix, so I can do that.

BE: Okay, excellent. Yeah, you definitely should check it out. I mean, the whole run of the show is great. I’m actually revisiting season two right now because it just came out on DVD. But the new season, they’ve got Martin Short and Lily Tomlin doing dramatic stuff, and…

MP: Oh, my God, I love Lily Tomlin so much. I can’t even describe it. Did you see her on Kathy Griffin’s show? On “The D-List”?

BE: I did not.

MP: Oh, it is one of the best episodes on television, I’m telling you. Kathy Griffin goes like backstage with Lily Tomlin, and Lily Tomlin is just genius. By the way, I saw her live three years ago, and you would think…Lily Tomlin’s what, pushing 70?

BE: Got to be, yeah.

MP: Yeah, it would be like watching Phyllis Diller or Bette Midler or whatever. Lily Tomlin is unbelievable live. She’s unbelievable. Her jokes are crazy sharp. I mean, I’m sure she’s writing some and she has good writers, but she’s brilliant on stage. Even at whatever age she is, she’s just fantastic.

BE: Oh, and she’s obviously really quick too because they had the panel for “Damages,” and she was there by satellite. It was something like 11:00 in the morning, and you could see her titling a glass every once in awhile, so one of the critics was, like, “Uh, Lily, are you drinking wine this early?” She’s, like, “Oh, no, this is water. But I stopped drinking wine just a little bit ago.”

MP: Uh-huh, yeah. That was her the whole Kathy Griffin show. She’s drinking wine through the whole thing, and she’s absolutely hysterical. Talk about quick, man, she’s quicker than Kathy Griffin. I mean, she’s unreal. Yeah, she’s fantastic. We used to take pilates from the same woman and, I swear, I would bribe the pilates teacher to book me right after Lilly just so I could hang out with her for a few minutes. She studied for about seven minutes of her hour session, by the way. She would just gab and talk. (Laughs) Alright, that’s all the glamour that I have, so it’s over!

BE: (Laughs) But to answer your question, yes, absolutely, “Damages” I 100% recommend.

MP: Alright, I’m putting that on my list, because I need something good. I’m bored of TV, and I know it’s just because I don’t know the right things to watch. Cool, man, thank you!

BE: No problem. Well, again, thanks for chatting with me, and like I said, hopefully I’ll see you come this summer at the TCA tour.

MP: Absolutely. I will see you…or you should seek me out, because I’m probably easier to find.

BE: Given that crowd, yeah, probably. Alright, thanks a lot Megyn. I appreciate it.

MP: Alright, take care!