Chi McBride: How are you?

Bullz-Eye: I’m good. I hope you saved one of those for Ron Perlman. I remember last time around…

CM: Yeah, you know what, I’ve got a couple with me, so… (Trails off) Is Perl here?

BE: He’s supposed to be.

CM: When he gets here, I’ll make sure he gets one. (Grins and puts his cigar case back in his pocket)

BE: Well, last tour, I talked to Darryl Bell.

CM: Did you?

BE: Yep. We were talking about “Homeboys in Outer Space,” and he said you had a chat with him after you had gone through “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.” He said you just told him, “Look, everyone who is criticizing what you’re doing would take your job from you in two seconds. This is one blip on both of our careers, and we are moving on.”

CM: That’s the way I looked at it, you know what I mean? I knew what I was doing, and I knew what I wasn’t doing, you know? People had to say whatever they had to say about it. You know, everybody thought my career was over but me. I said something that my old, wise aunt always told me: “Boy, this, too, shall pass.”

BE: So how did “Human Target” come on to your radar? Was it pitched to you?

CM: Well, what happened was… (Hesitates) You know, what’s funny about it is, it was the first thing I read during pilot season. But, you know, it was the first thing that I read, and what happened was, there wasn’t anything in it for me. Winston was this British character, and the guy was kind of a nervous Nelly kind of guy. So I told my agent, I said, “Listen, there is nothing in this for me, but if somebody does it right, this could be a good show for somebody. Good luck to them.” And, you know, as time progresses during the pilot season, people’s names get bandied about on all different kinds of projects. And I started hearing that people wanted to talk to me about a variety of things. So one of the meetings that I took was with Jon Steinberg and Peter Johnson, the producer and creator of “Human Target.” So we met and we talked about it, and I said, “Well, I’ve got to tell you: there doesn’t really seem like there is going to be a lot to do for me in this, so I don’t know that I’m that interested. And as far as the British accent…I mean, I can do it, but it just seems to be that for the sake of it.” And he agreed. And I told him, “You know, the way I would want to approach it is that I was a guy who was ex-law enforcement, you know, and there is something about my past on the force that I got into this business.” But I didn’t want to, as an actor, be stuck behind a desk. But I wanted the character to feel like this was his chance to be stuck behind a desk with a nice cushy job, getting plenty of money…and that’s good. And that he would end up going out in the field in a sort of “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” kind of thing. And that’s the attitude that Winston has toward going out in the field, but he goes out there and he definitely shows his skill set. You know, the thing about Winston that you’re going to learn is that his temperament is not what it seems. He’s a guy who doesn’t have an off switch. And that’s one of the other reasons why he wanted to get out of the chasing-guys-down business. So it’s going to be really interesting. And we agreed on all of these things, and they decided that they wanted us to work together. And you know, I’ve got a wonderful relationship with Warner Brothers Television, so they signed off on it, and here I am.

BE: So how would you say that Winston has evolved from the pilot to the first actual episode? Because I know characters usually change a fair amount.

CM: It’s different. And you’ll see just that, about the whole getting back involved, and Winston’s whole involvement in terms of going in to the field. It’s going to be a lot of fun. It takes place on a plane, and it’s really a lot of action. Some good comedy, some great moments, a lot of drama and suspense. I think you’ll like it. In my opinion, it’s better than the pilot.

BE: During the panel, one of the other critics made a comment about how you packed more of a wallop into the one-hour pilot than “Passenger 57” did in its entire run time.

CM: Oh, yeah, man. I mean, it’s pretty intense, but it’s really entertaining, and we had a lot of fun doing it. And I’m just glad to have the opportunity to do this, because, you know, Hollywood is a town and a business where people will only let you do what they think you can do. And so I’ve gotten a chance to showcase a lot of different things and a lot of different characters, and hopefully that will be what helps me continue to survive in this business.

BE: Jackie Earle Haley kind of downplayed how much he actually brought to his character, but…

CM: Jackie kicks ass, man.

BE: (Laughs) Yeah, I think he’s a little humble.

CM: Well, I mean, to the credit of the writers, the writers are very, very good. They come up with some great things. And they allow us to contribute in our own ways. You know, we certainly have conversations about dialogue, about character direction, about things of that nature, but they have given us a really great jumping off place in terms of the story is always really great, the dialogue is bang on, and the action is great. There are minor tweaks, but that’s why you hire people that you really trust. So that when they come up with something, it’s not just a lot of pretentious artist bullshit. So these are good guys to work with, all of them.

BE: So were you aware of the comic book? Not necessarily that familiar with it, but you had heard of it, at least?

CM: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m old enough to remember the Rick Springfield series. (Laughs) Somebody asked me a crazy question today, like, “I heard that there was a rumor that Rick Springfield was supposed to be doing this one.” I was, like, ‘What are you, goofy? The Human Target in a walker?” (Laughs) Do you know what I mean? But I remember that old show, and…that was pretty bad. But we’re the 2.0 version of that, and it will make you forget about that thing.

BE: You landed pretty quickly on your feet after “Pushing Daisies.”

CM: Yeah, I mean, look, man, I’m a pretty fortunate guy as far as TV is concerned. I mean, I’ve been lucky enough to have been afforded some great opportunities to work with some wonderful people who have treated me well. I try to pay them back in kind by doing a good job and knowing my business and showing up on time. And not being a pain in the ass. And if you can do that, you know, people will remember you. I have a wonderful relationship with Warner Brothers. And having worked with people like Barry Sonnenfeld and Don Reo and Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen and a couple of Oscar winning producers, you know, if you give them what it is they need, then they remember you. And I’ve been very fortunate. And I’ve got a pretty good agent and a really good manager too, so that don’t hurt. (Laughs)

BE: So when is “The John Larroquette Show” coming out on DVD?

CM: (Snorts) I wish. I really wish it would.

BE: So do I.

CM: Because it was really good, especially the first two seasons. I really loved it then. I mean, I’m hopeful that at some point it will happen. I don’t know what the holdup is. But, you know, we’ll see. Time will tell. I hope so, though.

BE: It was a nice, quirky sitcom at a time when sitcoms weren’t really that quirky.

CM: Exactly. What’s funny about it is that I think that show might have been a little ahead of its time, you know? You couldn’t have made a “Modern Family” during the time that we were making “The John Larroquette Show.” And “Modern Family” is brilliant. I’m just glad to see TV starting to turn back to its real roots of entertainment and really good writing and really good acting. And, I mean, they’ve got to compete. Networks have to compete, because when you’ve got shows like “Breaking Bad” on AMC, or “Damages” and shows like that on FX and on various cable outlets, people are turning to it, man. And you don’t have to have 15 million people watching “Breaking Bad.” You can get a tenth of that and stay on the air. So they’ve got to compete if they want to continue to have their audience.

BE: What’s your favorite project that you have worked on that didn’t the love that you thought it deserved?

CM: Probably “Daisies,” because I had the most fun on it. Because I really got a chance to do comedy, and I really got a chance to just have a good time. I was really having a good time. I was having a ball when I was playing Emerson. But, you know, I mean, that’s life in show business man. I mean, you just can’t become so emotionally invested in any project, because you just never know what is going to happen, you know?

BE: Yeah.

CM: And the audience is the audience ,and they are going to…my job is to do my job. Their job is to love it or hate it. So there it is, man.

BE: Let me bring it full circle, mostly because I’m a TV geek and I really am curious: with “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,” when you originally got the job…

CM: I loved it. I had a great time doing that, too. I had a lot of fun doing that.

BE: When I talked to Darryl about “Homeboys,” he said that that show was originally a really smart and clever comedy, but then it fell apart almost immediately when the executives wanted to make it a lame “Planet of the Week”-type scenario.

CM: Right.

BE: Was there a time when “Desmond Pfeiffer” was clever and you really thought it had a shot?

CM: I think it was all the way. I think that what happened was this whole thing came up because people get emotional and somebody touched a hot button. Here comes Jesse Jackson, and the next thing you know, you’re in the middle of a fucking circus. So there are guys like that that just wait for opportunities to go and just basically advance their own agenda. So what can you do, you know what I mean? But it is what it is. It’s part of my television career. It didn’t kill my career. so all’s well that ends well.

For your reading enjoyment, I’ve pulled together a list of 100 of my favorite quotes from the various interviews I conducted for Premium Hollywood, Bullz-Eye, Popdose, and The Virginian-Pilot this year, along with the links to the original pieces where available. As you can see, I had some extremely interesting conversations in 2009. Let us all keep our fingers crossed that I’m able to chat with just as many fascinating individuals in 2010…

1. Pamela Adlon: “In the first season (of ‘Californication’), when we had the threesome with the nipple clamps, I was, like, ‘I don’t get this, I don’t know how you’re gonna do it.’ And then, all of a sudden, there’s a crane with a camera hanging over our heads, and you’re, like, ‘Okayyyyyyy. But how are you gonna sell this? How are you gonna make it work?’ And they ended up shooting it brilliantly, cutting it together, and it just all ended up working without me having to compromise my own personal morals.”

2. Jonathan Ames: “After my first novel, my mother said to me, ‘Why don’t you make your writing more funny? You’re so funny in person.’ Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don’t know, but something about what she said was true. ‘Yes, why don’t I?’ Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I’ve done has a comedic edge to it.”

3. Ed Asner: “I loved journalism until the day my journalism teacher, a man I revered, came by my desk and said, ‘Are you planning on going into journalism?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t.’ I said, ‘Well, why not?’ He said, ‘You can’t make a living.’”

4. Sean Astin: “When somebody brings up a movie (of mine) that I haven’t heard about in a long time, I feel like a 70-year-old pitcher at a bar somewhere, and somebody walks in and says, ‘Oh, my God, I was in St. Louis and I saw you. You pitched a shutout.’ It’s real. I really did do that, because someone today remembers it.”

5. Darryl Bell: “The legend of ‘Homeboys in Outer Space’ has become much more incendiary than the actual show. It’s funny how I usually challenge most people who talk about how much they disliked ‘Homeboys’ to name me five episodes. Most of them can’t, because they just bought into the ‘oh, it’s awful, just the title. Oh, it’s terrible.’ What’s interesting is that I had a great conversation with Chi McBride, who was doing ‘The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,’ which, if you want to talk about in terms of the imagery of what was wrong, that show was much more infamous than ‘Homeboys.’ Yet it’s not remembered in the same way because the title didn’t grab you in the same way. I remember Chi pulled me aside and he was, like, ‘Look, everyone who is criticizing what you’re doing would take your job from you in two seconds. All of them. So all I can tell you is that this is one blip on both of our careers, and we are moving on.’”

6. Adam Campbell: “For some reason, people always pick on the British sensibility, and we always come across as stupid, but remember: we used to run this country!”

7. Nestor Carbonell: “Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not wear make-up, and I do not wear eye-liner. This is something I’ve had to deal with my whole life. I remember I was in college in Boston, I had a commercial agent, and they sent me out for some print commercial stuff. And they called me into the office and said, ‘Look, we called you in to talk to you because we just want you to know that…well, we don’t think you need to wear eyeliner.’ And I’m, like, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, it’s okay, you don’t have to wear it for print ads.’ ‘No, I’m not wearing eyeliner!’ And I kept dabbing my eyes and saying, ‘Look! No eyeliner! I’m not wearing any!’”

8. Elaine Cassidy: “The last two days of shooting (‘Harper’s Island’) was probably the most hardcore, the coldest anyone has ever been. It was like your head was freezing, and my motivation for most scenes was, ‘The minute this scene is over, I’m heading straight over to that heater to get warm.’”

9. Chris Cornell: “I started as a drummer, so I sort of took on singing duties by default. I had sung backgrounds and some lead vocals from behind the drums in different bands that I’d been in, and I’d gotten great responses for the songs I would sing. I really started pursuing the possibility of being a lead singer based on the fact that I was working a full-time restaurant job and then playing gigs at night, hauling drums around. One day, it just dawned on me that, ‘Hey, I could be in a band and be the singer, and it would be a lot easier!’”

10. Bryan Cranston: “When ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy…but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as ‘Malcolm’ was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That’s harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read (‘Breaking Bad’), it was just, ‘Good night, Nurse! I’m going after this sucker!'”

11. David Cross: “I had this sketch group or comedy-show thing that I used to do, and I kind of recruited Sam (Seder) and his friend and partner, Jon Benjamin, to do stuff for that. It was really back in the day when you just had a shitty job that paid the rent, and you spent the bulk of your time just drinking, getting high, playing softball, and putting on these dumb shows. But in a good way.”

12. Richard Curtis: “(Choosing actors is) a very serious business. I was taught this by Mike Newell, who was an obsessive auditioner. I mean, obsessive. And when we were doing low budget movies, he saw it as basically a way of rehearsing the movie. By the time anyone got the part, they’d been in three times, done it, thought it through, and talked it through, so they didn’t need to get any notes when we were shooting it. So trying to find Talulah Riley or particularly trying to find Tom Sturridge (for ‘Pirate Radio’) was a long journey. We must’ve seen 50 or 60 people, everyone between the ages of 20 and 28 in the UK, and you were just looking for that strange moment that’s a bit like love, where suddenly the lines take off rather than fill you with shame and embarrassment.”

13. Andy Dick: “I went to network on a handful of pilots, and going to network is the most stressful situation anybody can ever be in. You’re supposed to be on point, you’re supposed to be at the top of your game, the funniest you can be, in about five minutes, in front of people wearing suits who really don’t care, and they’ve probably already picked their person, but they have to see a handful just to satisfy the process. It’s the most horrible, horrible process known to man. I wouldn’t want anybody to go through it.”

14. Hugh Dillon: “(‘Hard Core Logo’) was really what got me into the whole acting thing, ‘cause I just got to work with such a great director and a great cast. And, y’know, he allowed me to do a lot of stuff. I wrote the ending to that movie. So that movie was really…I just thought, ‘You know, I fucking like acting!’”

15. Chiwetel Ejiofor: “I think that this generation has witnessed, like, incredible change. And I sometimes wonder whether every generation feels that way. You know, maybe they do. The generation before me would have witnessed the end of the Second World War. They would have witnessed the first man on the moon. Do you know what I mean? They would have seen these seismic changes and gone, ‘Does everybody see it like this?’ And then the next generation…I was born in the late 70’s, so I was sort of party to the end of apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Barack Obama. And you sort of feel, like, ‘Wow, this is so much,’ you know? But you really hope that the next generation absolutely does take things that they haven’t seen themselves or with their own eyes, and that they watch programs like this and realize that anything…anything…is achievable.”

16. Antonio Elias: “When I was first on (the ‘Star Trek’) set, doing the walk through with Chris Hemsworth and Faran Tahir, who plays Captain Robau, the first day we were actually filming our dialogue on the bridge set of the ship, the detail on that set was unbelievable. It was just…everything just looked real. I remember we were walking through with JJ (Abrams) and his first AD, and I literally had to stop and was, like, ‘Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m totally nerding out right now. Am I the only one that’s nerding out right now?’ They started laughing, because it was just so cool. It was, like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

17. Nick Frost: “Eight years ago, I was a waiter, and I didn’t have a pot to piss in. And now…? It’s like I said to my wife: I love the fact that, if I was in a restaurant and Steven Spielberg walked in, I could go up to him and say, ‘Hey, mate, how are you?’ I think that’s pretty amazing, actually.”

18. Jim Gaffigan: “I’m kind of a guy who’s missing a little bit of the guy gene. I love steak, but the notion of golfing is the last thing I would want to do. I love women, but I’m also a mama’s boy, and some of my best friends are women. So I’m kinda half guy’s guy.”

19. Corey Glover: “I always thought that the Grammys were, you know, the industry patting itself on the back. There is nothing wrong with that, and I appreciate it for what it is. But, you know, the day after we got this Grammy, I got on a subway and went back to Brooklyn. A Grammy and a token will get you on the subway. I appreciate it, and it’s great, and people look at it and say, ‘Wow, that’s really cool!’ And it is very cool. It’s very interesting, and I love it. But I’ve still got to get to work. In fact, what it means is that I’ve really got to get to work now, because, y’know, most people are expecting things from you that…well, I don’t know what they’re expecting, but whatever it is has got to be better than this piece of brass, you know?”

20. Bobcat Goldthwait: “Kurt (Cobain) was a fan of my standup, which was pretty weird. I know when people hear that, it’s kind of like finding out that Jimi Hendrix really liked Buddy Hackett, but he interviewed me at a college radio station before they broke and did Bleach. And then, like, about two years later, I was opening for Nirvana at these huge sports arenas.”

21. Elliott Gould: “Groucho Marx, in his later days, gave me the best review I’ve ever had and probably will ever have. I changed a light bulb over his bed, and when I came off of his bed with the used one after putting the new one in, Groucho said, ‘That’s the best acting I’ve ever seen you do.’”

22. David S. Goyer: “You know, we didn’t intend to have so many British people (in ‘FlashForward.’) Basically, it was who came through the door first. We cast Joe Fiennes first. We decided we wanted him to be American. I had seen him play American before a number of times, I knew he could do a pretty good American accent. So we decided, alright, he’s American. I’m ashamed to say that Sonya Walger…I didn’t actually realize that the actress in ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ was the same actress as in ‘Lost’ – I thought they were two different actresses – but her accent was quite good in ‘Tell Me You Love Me,’ so that happened. When Jack Davenport and Dominic Monaghan came along, we cast Sonya and Joe first, they said, ‘What about playing American?’ And I said, ‘You’re too late, our quota has already been filled.’”

23. Javier Grillo-Marxuach: “ABC Family wanted a Latino lead in (‘The Middleman.’) They thought that, because I’m Latino, it would be a great match. It’s funny because when Kate Juergens, who is the senior VP of ABC Family, called me with that suggestion, I was, like, ‘Absolutely not.’ She was, like, ‘Wait a minute, but you’re Latino. Don’t you want to put Latinos on TV?’ ‘Well, I do, but I don’t want to make this character into a stereotype. I don’t want there to be necessarily be salsa music playing whenever she gets on the screen and stuff like that.’”

24. Greg Grunberg: “I never root for a failure. I learned that when we were on ‘Felicity.’ There was a show that failed on the lot, and suddenly all of this food showed up on our set. I was, like, ‘What is this?’ And they said, ‘Oh, they cancelled this other show right before their lunch.’ And I said, ‘Throw that food away! We don’t want to touch that food! There’s no way I’m eating it!’ So I never root for anybody, because it could happen to you in two seconds.”

25. Sammy Hagar: “I would be happy to try to do a record with Van Halen. But they’ve only done one record since I left the band. They did one record, the Gary Cherone thing, and that’s it. What the fuck is the problem? You know, don’t blame me. Don’t be pointing at me and saying, ‘Fucking Hagar, fucking Hagar.’ I’m here, brother!”

26. Daryl Hall: “(‘She’s Gone’) was well-played in the R&B scene, and then ‘Sara Smile,’ which was on the silver album (Hall and Oates), was the third single released, and that broke in the R&B community, too. So our first success was on black radio – which was sort of natural, given our background – and then we crossed over onto pop radio. So that’s really how we came in: very much through the back door.”

27. Harry Hamlin: “I loved playing (Aaron Echols on ‘Veronica Mars.’) I was really sad when I got my head blown off, but…that seems to happen to me. I seem to be murdered on all of these shows. But, okay, as long as the checks don’t bounce, I’m all right with that. Besides, when Aaron Echols was killed, as I recall, he’d just had sex with a beautiful young girl, he was smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking a rare, 18-year-old brandy, and watching himself on television. If you gotta go, I think that’s probably the way to go.”

28. Dhani Harrison: “We were sitting around one day, and (Alex Rigopolos) just said to me, ‘Do you think they would ever go for a Beatle (‘Rock Star’) game?’ ‘It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?’ I said to him. Actually, I think I said, ‘It would be amazing because I could kick your ass at ‘I Am the Walrus’ while dressed as a wizard in Shea Stadium.’”

29. Lance Henriksen: “We’d be doing these really dark, dark metaphoric stories (on ‘Millennium’), and occasionally it would come in on you, because you do long hours to begin with, so you’re tired at the end of the day, working into the night. A couple of times, I went, ‘I’ve got to see the sun; I’ve got to go to Hawaii and lay on a beach, man, this is burning me!’”

30. Brian Henson: One of the criticisms of “Farscape” when we were on the air was that it was hard to catch up, that if you missed a few episodes and then tuned in, you might feel lost, and that might get you a little angry. That’s really why getting this show as a box set is a science fiction fan’s dream: because they really Aeryn’t episodes. You start at the beginning, and you’re gonna watch an 80-hour movie…and there’s no other 80-hour movie on the market!

31. Susanna Hoffs: “To anyone who’s trying to be an artist, in any medium, it’s a very odd and lonely and nerve-wracking and scary process when you let anybody see what you’re working on. You have to learn to listen to your instincts. Absorb other people’s advice, opinions, or whatever it may be from the outside world, but at the end of the day, you have to be true to whatever it is that you’re trying to say in that work.”

32. Michael Ironside: “One of the young production assistants (on ‘Terminator: Salvation’) stepped over to my chair and said, ‘Mr. Ironside, are you any relation to the Ironside who was in ‘Top Gun’?’ And I said, ‘I am, yes.’ And she grinned and said, ‘I knew it! Talent must run in your family!’ And she walked away. And all of the producers and directors kind of looked at me uncertainly, and I said, ‘What are you guys so uncomfortable for? That’s an incredible compliment. I do look like the father of that guy, for Christ’s sake!’”

33. Howard Jones: “There are, broadly speaking, 2 parts to my audience. The first group are the fans that are actively engaged with my output for the whole 26 years, and the second a more general or casual audience that only knows the ’80s work. I don’t find this a problem. I’m happy to have an audience that knows me at all!”

34. Chris Kattan: “With the Roxbury guys (on ‘Saturday Night Live’), I think the breaking point was when Stallone came on and wanted to do the sketch just because. And we’re, like, ‘Well, now we’ve got to create a story, so, what, are we bopping our heads with Rocky? What are we doing?’”

35. Phil Keaggy: “I think people are starting to get used to the idea thati t was impossible that Jimi Hendrix could ever have heard me and would never have said anything about a guy who, at the time, was only nineteen years old. We actually recorded our first album at Electric Lady Studios two weeks after his unfortunate death, so I just can’t imagine how he could’ve heard me. I think it’s just a rumor that someone’s kept alive, and it must be titillating enough to keep an interest there. But it’s just a strange, ironic sort of thing. I’ll never be in the category of Jimi Hendrix, and I couldn’t understand him saying something like that, anyway, even after all these years.”

36. Lisa Lackey: “Often they would come to me (on ‘Rude Awakening’) and say, ‘Uh, you know, we just can’t really hear your accent. Can you be just a little bit more Australian?’ And I was, like, ‘No!’ I mean, how do you be ‘more Australian’? I wasn’t born in the back of the Outback. I was born in Sydney, I grew up in a city, I moved to the farm when I was bit older…I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘mate’ in my entire life!”

37. Zane Lamprey: “I think a lot of the charm of (‘Three Sheets’) is in its honesty and its candor. I do my best to never try to be cool or look good, because I think that endears me to the fans of the show, so if by making myself vulnerable or self-deprecating or whatever, then…I just feel like it makes the show more enjoyable and more relatable. So therefore I’m going to be myself. If I don’t know what something is or if it tastes like crap, I’m going to say it. If I drink too much, you’re going to know about it, and if I pay the price the next morning, I’m going to be honest about it.”

38. Stephen Lang: “I was relatively buff (before ‘Avatar’), because I was working in a tanktop half the time on stage, anyway, but I just went kind of into hyperdrive after that and really worked to beat that old body into shape, to get that carcass where…I didn’t want to be looking at it and see anything hanging where it shouldn’t be hanging.”

39. Wallace Langham: “(William Petersen’s last day on ‘CSI’) was a really tough day to shoot for all the usual reasons, but, sadly, my father was passing away…and, actually, after we had finished filming, I got the call that he had died. It wasn’t a surprise, but…you know, I knew that would be the day, oddly enough. Once I got the call where they said, ‘Okay, you’re going to be shooting on the 10th,’ I just had a feeling. I thought, ‘Okay, the irony of life has always served me well,’ and true to form, it was a very heavy day on all levels.”

40. Lucy Lawless: “I haven’t actually used the merkin yet (on ‘Spartacus: Blood and Sand.’) It’s still a virgin merkin. I haven’t actually done anything that is quite full frontal nudity, though there are some men sort of wandering around in the altogether. They’re always going to baths, the Romans draping one another down with oil and stuff. It’s just a fact, so we show it. One of the gladiators is gay, and there was no taboo on homosexuality in those days, so we allow it. There’s no stigma attached to it. We don’t demonize or play it up or make him mince around with a bow around his neck. He’s a great big manly gladiator and he happens to be in this relationship with a gorgeous young man. It just shows you how we’re not in Wyoming now.”

41. Bill Lawrence: “My kids aren’t allowed to watch (‘Cougar Town’). That’s crazy talk! My God, they’re barely allowed to watch ‘Scrubs’! And even then, only certain ones. I let them watch that damned musical, and they sang ‘Everything Comes Down To Poo’ for six months.”

42. David Lewis: “There’s that scene in ‘Harper’s Island’ where Cameron (Mink) is tied up and sort of hanging from a beam, and I was kind of groping her, and I’m, like, ‘What can I do here?’ And she’s, ‘You can do whatever you want, it’s all cool, we’re acting.’ So I’m groping away, but the producer comes over and says, ‘Um, you gotta do less groping.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah.’ And, meanwhile, people are getting cut in half and having their heads chopping off. But I can’t put my hands near her breasts, because you can’t have that on TV. But impaling someone with a whaling harpoon? That’s okay.”

43. Damon Lindelof: “Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion (on ‘Lost’) allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, ‘Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?’”

44. Joe Lo Truglio: “The internet may have saved the State reunion…and any future State collaborations, considering we’re about as big as the Waltons and half of us are on one side of the country and the other half is on the other. E-mail is really the only possible way for us to communicate…and it’s a little bit easier. because we’re not all in the same room.”

45. Dolph Lundgren: “(Filming in Russia) was a nightmare. It was really bad. But then it kind of resolved itself. We were shooting in Red Square, which is always the toughest location, I suppose, outside of the Kremlin. You can get fined in Russia, but we had the permits and everything, and we came in with our actors and crew from Bulgaria…and then we lost the permits the night before, and the only time we could do anything was on the weekend. Everybody was ready to shoot themselves. The producers were, like, ‘What? What?!? You’ve got to be kidding me!’ We could’ve turned into instant alcoholics.”

46. Rod Lurie: “A reckoning is coming on the state of the internet journalism, because right now, the way it’s set up, there is so much room for libel to squeak through that you’re going to see…they’re going to rewrite the rule book on journalism very soon. They have to, because the bloggers are getting away with so much rumor-mongering about public officials and even private figures because they don’t have editors and they don’t have fact checkers and they don’t have lawyers. There is going to be a price to pay somewhere down the line.”

47. Jennifer Lynch: “(‘Eraserhead’) may seem like a dark film, but my father and I watch it, and all we do is laugh. It was Disneyland everyday on the set. That’s when I fell in love with film.”

48. Ken Marino: “I’m assuming that there’ll be a new group of people who’ve never seen ‘The State,’ and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about this, I’m looking forward to seeing it.’ And then they’ll watch it (on DVD) and be, like, ‘Who the fuck…? What is this? What are they making fun of? Who is that?’”

49. James McEachin: “I got an interview to come and do (‘Play Misty for Me’), and…Clint Eastwood wasn’t really that much at the time. You know, he wasn’t the Eastwood that he grew up to be, so to speak. I walked into the office and the door was opened, so I just sat down and started reading and looking at some things, and all of a sudden this guy comes through the door and says, ‘Hey, man, how are you doing?’ We struck up this conversation and we started talking. ‘What are you here for?’ ‘Well, I’m going to interview for this movie.’ And we just continued with the conversation, and I really didn’t know it was Clint I was talking to, to be honest with you. A few minutes later, (producer) Bob Daley showed up and said, ‘What are you doing in here?’ And Clint said, ‘Hey, leave the guy. We’re talking. Can’t you see we’re talking?’”

50. Duff McKagan: “Playing in (the Neurotic Outsiders) with John Taylor was great. A lot of pussy every time we played a gig. So many chicks. It was, like, ‘Wow, John, really? So this is what it was like, huh?’ And there would be like a couple guys with mohawks and a guy with, like, a jean jacket coming in to see me and Jonesy!”

51. Ian McKellen: “I’ve played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn’t a very helpful attitude to have if you’re about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.”

52. Colm Meaney: “I do go back to Ireland, and I’ll probably be doing a film in Ireland in January, and I guess that kind of keeps me classified as ‘the Irish actor,’ but the last four or five projects that I’ve been in are either American or English, so I don’t feel terribly trapped in that. But sometimes, yeah, you would like to not be called ‘the Irish actor.’ You’d prefer to just be called ‘the actor.’”

53. Jonny Lee Miller: “I think Danny Boyle’s got it in his head that we all still look too young (to do a ‘Trainspotting’ sequel.) But, I mean, I don’t look like anyone I play, anyways, so I don’t really know where that comes from. Because, you know, you change yourself for the roles. I’m actually not Scottish, either!”

54. Katie Morgan: “There’s lots of things I never did (in porn). Like, I never did do the butt. And I had rules of no more than two at a time, on account of things that I do and don’t do. Ya can’t leave people standing around bored! So, yeah, all sorts of stuff. I was actually quite picky!”

55. Kevin Nealon: “Me and Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey wrote a script called ‘Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma,’ and it was going to be co-produced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was going to co-star in it. We had a deal with Sony, we got paid to write it, and it was a musical, but it never got made because…I think Arnold kind of backed out at the last minute because he was getting cold feet because ;The Last Action Hero’ had come out, where he was parodying himself. But it was a really funny script, and I wish it could’ve seen the light, because I think it would’ve done really well.”

56. Kyle Newman: “I think everybody should see (‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’) to realize how bad something can be. There are some cool things in there, but it’s two hours long, and you could probably cut it down to about two minutes and twelve seconds of cool material. The animated Boba Fett sequence is great, and there’s some cool stuff, but overall, the whole format of a variety show in the ‘Star Wars’ universe is just a train wreck.”

57. John Noble: “Because I was so heavily pumped to get (an Emmy nomination) this year, you try not to think about it, but it starts to permeate into your thinking. It was actually quite a relief when it didn’t happen, because I’ve been in the business for so long that you kind of grow aware what goes on, so I went, ‘Oh, no? Okay, back to work.’”

58. John Oates: “I haven’t had a mustache for 20 years and people actually still talk about it! But I kind of understand it on the level that the mustache is back in vogue, you know. It’s back in style, and there is a lot of talk about it. My mustache took on this iconic kind of symbol of the era, of those decades in a way. Of course I didn’t carry the ‘stache torch singlehandedly…”

59. Chris O’Dowd: “I actually fly back to London this weekend to start learning how to ride a horse (for ‘Gulliver’s Travels’), so that’s going to be interesting. I’m fucking shitting myself. And I’m a big guy; I’m, like, 6′ 4″, so I have no idea what size this fucking horse is going to be. So I’ve decided on day one, I’m just going to let him know who’s boss. Which will consist of me quietly whispering into his ear, ‘Mr. Horse, you are the boss.’”

60. Ed O’Neill: “I used to say things like, ‘My name’s not Al (Bundy), you know?’ Not to the press, but to fans. ‘My name is actually Ed.’ I’d find myself saying that, and I’d think, ‘Who do you think they think you are? They only know you from that!’ And finally I just got…I don’t know, I guess a switch went on for me, and I realized, ‘This was the greatest job that you’ve ever had in your life. Why are you acting like an asshole?’ So from that minute on, I kind of…well, I hate the word ’embraced,’ but I just kind of went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ ‘So you’re Al, right?’ ‘Yep!'”

61. Patton Oswalt: “I think most comedians go through that (period), where you have to change or evolve. You don’t want to just keep doing variations on the same themes. And, besides, it would look kinda creepy for a guy my age to be doing stuff that, like, a 20-year-old would do. ‘Yeah, this is bullshit!’ It’s, like, ‘Really? You don’t have bigger concerns at this point in your life?'”

62. Aaron Paul: “I have had viewers that come up to me, and they’re, like, “You know, we used to watch (‘Breaking Bad’) as a family, and once the melted body came falling through the ceiling, my mom was just, like, ‘I can’t watch this show anymore. This is just way too disturbing for me.’ So it’s not for everybody.”

63. Jim Parsons: “(Wil Wheaton) was so fun to have on the set, and he was such a good guy, just in general. He seemed to be completely okay with the fact that his entire name became a mantra of vengeful hate. That didn’t seem to bother him.”

64. Andy Partridge: “I don’t like people turning up and A) wanting to stare at me, B) wanting to play me their music, C) wanting to be my best friend. You see, I just…I’m very private, and I hate all that. I usually try and be pleasant to them, but inside I’m going, ‘Fuck off and die! Fuck off and die!’”

65. Ron Perlman: “I like doing voiceover work. I just like it in general, because you’re constantly working on a very first-instinct level. You show up, you get in front of the microphone, you look at the lines, you say the lines, and then you move on. You work on a really primal level, is what I’m saying. You don’t have to shave. You don’t even have to wear pants. But, uh, that wasn’t your question.”

66. Danny Pudi: “You know, you’re just sitting with Chevy, then you’re doing a scene with him and acting, and all of a sudden you go, ‘Omigod, that’s Chevy Chase!’ And then you’ve got to keep acting. ‘Danny, your lines? Your lines…? You’ve got to keep going!’ ‘Oh, sorry, sorry!'”

67. Gordon Ramsay: “Chefs aren’t very good at sleeping. Guy Savoy said to me 20 years ago, when I was in his kitchen and said, ‘Sorry, Chef, I’m a little bit tired,’ he said, ‘Tired? How many hours sleep did you have last night?’ I said, ‘Six.’ He said, ‘Fucking way too much.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Think about it: the average person sleeps for eight hours a day, so when you get to sixty years of age, that means you would’ve slept for twenty years. Does that scare you?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘So shut the fuck up, sleep four hours a night, get to sixty, and only have slept for ten years of your life!’”

68. Dileep Rao: “I think my beard (in ‘Drag Me To Hell’) is getting a better IMDb rating than I am.”

69. Francis Reader: “There’s a certain period in your life, I think, where if music is something that you’re passionate about and it’s something that gives you a thrill…what you feel about the music in a critical way doesn’t come into it. If I hear anything from, like, the year 1979 or 1980, when I was first just getting knocked over by music, reading the charts every week and taking the radio to school, it doesn’t matter what the record is or if it’s the craziest comedy record or whatever. It just gives me such a thrill of nostalgia that I can’t not like it and can’t not enjoy that moment.”

70. Andy Richter: “I never try to think that (a show is too smart for the average viewer), just because I think you put yourself in the position where you go, ‘Well, I tried to do something smart and funny, and I guess they want dumb shit, so I’ll try and write dumb shit.’ You just have to do the best job you can. Otherwise, it’s just too soul-deadening.”

71. Talulah Riley: “It was (Nick Frost’s) first-ever bedroom scene and my first-ever bedroom scene…not that we were actually doing much, but we did have to lie sort of semi-nude under the sheets. And he was incredibly sort of vibrant and outgoing, but then he suddenly got very, like, ‘I’m engaged and I’m getting married!’ And I was, ‘Okay, that’s good. I just won’t be touching you, then!'”

72. Robbie Rist: “Sometimes people will bring up these odd things that I did a one-off from. Like, I did a ‘Knight Rider,’ and I’ll get an E-mail from a ‘Knight Rider’ fan who says, ‘Look what I did to my car!’ And I don’t know if you know about this, but there is a sub-cult of ‘Knight Rider’ fan who trick out their cars to look like KITT. I’m, like, ‘Really? Isn’t there anything else you can do? Do you make that much money? Because I have projects I’d like to get off the ground, so how about you don’t make KITT and you give it to me?'”

73. Krysten Ritter: “It was just a little weird coming into the seventh season (of ‘Gilmore Girls’), where everyone is already set in their ways and their dynamics, and you sort of feel like you’re coming into a party late. So I was just, like, ‘Ugh! How do I make friends?’ It’s like high school dynamics!”

74. Joan Rivers: “The only good thing about age is that I get out there and…I say I’m working better than I ever worked. That started about seven years ago in Edinburgh. I just said, ‘Oh, what, am I going to censor myself?’ I’ve been fired, I’ve been broke, I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve had to go to court to get my name back, I’ve been publicly humiliated. Screw all you. Now I’m going to tell you what I really think about Jennifer Aniston, that little miss boo-hoo. So, no, I don’t censor myself at all now. But, you know, ‘fuck’ is in the vernacular now. It was good enough for Shakespeare. When Jane Fonda can say ‘cunt,’ it’s over. It’s done.”

75. Saul Rubinek: “I have a very good recollection of working on ‘Death Ship.’ We called it ‘Death Shit.’ I was glad I was killed off quickly. But you’ve got to remember that it was my second movie. I think I had done one movie before that. I was thrilled. You know: no mortgage, no kids. I was just thrilled to travel down to Alabama. We were in Southern Alabama, and all I remember was that, as I was leaving the production trailer, I saw all of my fellow cast members in the water. And there was a production report saying that under no circumstances should the actors be in this water, it’s polluted, and you will have to be hospitalized. But apparently nobody had told the actors. And that’s when I began to understand something about the nature of independent movies.”

76. Vik Sahay: “(Playing with Jeffster at Comic-Con) was absolutely the scariest thing I have ever done. I literally skipped over the ‘what a great moment’ to ‘oh, my God, I can’t believe I have to do this.’ And when I was up there, the people were, like, “Oh, my God,” and they were all screaming and stuff. But I didn’t hear a thing. I was just in my own little bubble of horror and panic, utterly, utterly blanched with terror.”

77. Rob Schneider: “Carsey-Werner cared more about power and control than they cared about comedy, so I’m glad I got the fuck out (‘Men Behaving Badly’) after a season and a half. I would never work for those people again. I would rather do any other menial job than to ever work for that company again. Totally. That’s one the reasons I never want to do television in America: because I had such a horrible experience with Carsey-Werner. It was a really funny show, and they talked me into it by saying, ‘We’re gonna make it just like the British show.’ And then they fucking lied to me. Fucking bunch of liars. And then on top of that, they watered it down, so it was more like ‘Men Apologizing For Trying To Behave Badly.’ That’s what they should’ve called the show.”

78. Campbell Scott: “I’m 47, I have gray hair, and yet people still come up to me on the street who are in their twenties, who weren’t even born when ‘Singles’ was made…well, they were pretty tiny, anyway…and they say, ‘Oh, I love that movie ‘Singles.’’ And I always say, ‘How old are you?’”

79. Amy Sedaris: “I don’t really consider myself to be a comedian. I mean, it’s not like I’m sitting around writing jokes or anything. I just like dressing up and pretending to be other people.”

80. Paul Shaffer: “Some ten years ago, I got a book deal and tried to do it. I wrote three stories up, and I just never had time to go back to it. So this time, when I was re-introduced to David Ritz, who is the A-list celebrity biographer, just a couple of years ago, he said, ‘If you ever want to do a book’… I thought, ‘Well, that’s the way to do it: do it with somebody, and that way, he has the responsibility of turning it in on time.’”

81. Craig Singer: “As filmmakers, we all kind of borrow and steal. I don’t think it’s an intentional tribute, but you’re influenced by things that you’ve seen, and a lot of times it’s about where you wish films had taken you. So you’re using your imagination to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if…’ Or, you know, ‘I’ve never really kind of seen this executed quite in this way before.’ So you try to keep it fresh, and if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.”

82. Kevin Smith: “It’s not like someday my kid’s gonna be standing over my grave, and somebody’s gonna hang her a folded flag and say, ‘You know what? This is ‘cause he did 24 hours straight on Twitter.’ But it’s just one of those little personal victories, like, ‘I wonder if I can do this.’ And I did it. A stupid goal, but I accomplished it. Life’s all about…for me, at least…having very stupid achievable goals. That way, you always feel like a winner.”

83. Rich Sommer: “(‘Mad Men’) was my final audition of the pilot season. It had been three miserable, horrible months where I had zero callbacks, zero positive reception, one of those pilot seasons that makes you pretty sure you are never going to be an actor and never want to be an actor. And then that happened.”

84. Jon Stewart: “I think, in general, most of the people who come on (‘The Daily Show’) are relatively sophisticated media professionals. There’s not a lot of, ‘Wait a minute, how did you get access to comments I made three years ago?’ They’ve been around the block, so you don’t often get people who walk away angry. Now, you do get people who walk out oblivious. Rob Blagojevich came on, and…look, he’s either been the victim of one of the greatest travesties of justice to a political figure or he’s a sociopath, because he’s just out there going, ‘I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything!’ But I don’t normally hear people say, ‘That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!’ They’re pretty hip to the game.”

85. Dean Stockwell: “I’ve got categories of jobs, and one of the categories is ‘money jobs.’ If one of those comes along and I have to make a living, even if I don’t like the script that much, I’ll do it and just try to stay above water, which I’m able to do most of the time. I try not to sink with the ship.”

86. Tom Sturridge: “You know that scene at the beginning (of ‘Pirate Radio’) where I take The Count a cup of tea in the studio, and he shakes my hand, gives me a hug, and slaps me on the arse? That’s genuinely the first time Tom Sturridge met Philip Seymour Hoffman. Literally, I’d hadn’t seen him or exchanged words with him before. Richard just called me on set and said, ‘Take him a cup of tea.’ So that’s what I did. And the smile of delight as he slaps me on the arse is purely mine.”

87. Kurt Sutter: “The great thing about having a serialized drama (like ‘Sons of Anarchy’) is that I’m allowed to bring up events and circumstances that have happened in the past in other episodes to show that this kind of violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It has ramifications. It has repercussions. Whether it’s a week from now or five years from now, you know it will play out. Nothing is ever tied up into a perfect knot.”

88. Matthew Sweet: “I never cared about covers. I really only wanted to do new songs of mine, always. I went straight to writing and had this kind of empty hole. I remember one time I was standing with Brendan O’Brien, maybe during The Thorns, and he can play, like, any song in all of rock history on any instrument. He’s a complete hot dog with that kind of thing. He was playing something, and he said, ‘Come on, play along,’ and I was, like, ‘I don’t know how to play that.’ ‘Oh, come on, what are you talking about? Quit fucking faking it!’ He thought I really knew them, but I really just don’t know that many songs.”

89. Amanda Tapping: “It’s just so much fun making (‘Stargate’) that, as long as they keep asking, I’ll keep doing it. It really is one of those dream gigs. It sounds hokey as hell, but it really is just so much fun. Samantha will be rolling through the Stargate in her wheelchair, going, ‘Where’s my gun, dammit?’”

90. Alan Thicke: “The key to writing for Richard (Pryor) was to just push his buttons and then know when to push the buttons on your cassette recorder. You’d get him started, then surreptitiously start recording when he got inspired and started walking around the room and improvising in character. Then you’d get it all transcribed and take credit for it.”

91. Lea Thompson: “My kids can’t watch (‘Howard the Duck’). By the time I get in bed with the duck, they are, like, ‘Turn it off, mom. You in bed with a duck is just pretty much a deal breaker.’”

92. Sam Trammell: “Most of the time when people have to get naked, it’s for a sex scene or it’s post-coital, and they’re in a bedroom and it’s kind of a closed set. But with Sam (on ‘True Blood’), it always seems to be because he’s turning back into himself from being an animal, so I’m always outside. Like, way out. Like, out for everybody to see.”

93. David Wain: “Everyone who went to college and especially people working in media seem to know at least one person from Shaker Heights. There’s just something about that place that made people go to the coast.”

94. Dave Wakeling: “If you look at the history of IRS (Records), you can see there’s a certain point right about the time when ‘Tenderness’ came out, just before, where all of a sudden songs on IRS were starting to enter the top 40. And I think that they’d had enough success with the college charts and the independent charts that they could now afford to enter the top-40 lottery game. There had been jokes running around IRS that the only way you could get a top-40 hit on IRS was if you had a vagina. Miles (Copeland) liked his girl groups!”

95. George Wallace: “When (Jerry Seinfeld’s) first child was born and we had the bris, and I was honored to hold one of the baby’s legs, which is supposed to be for the daddy and the granddaddy. I said, ‘Whenever I walk into that house, that boy looks at me like, ‘I know you from somewhere.’”

96. Patrick Warburton: “You know, my mother actually thinks my soul is in peril for being on (‘Family Guy’), and after I watched last Sunday’s episode, I thought, ‘Geez, maybe she’s right.’ You know my rationalization is that it is just absurd, crazy humor, and…what the fuck. It is a deplorable show. It’s horrible.”

97. Carl Weathers: “(‘Rocky’) was so simple and, at the same time, such a complicated movie in a way, and a feat that John Avildsen pulled off, to shoot a movie in so few days with so little money that looked so much bigger than it actually was. The right people came together at the right time…and it worked. It just worked. And nobody thought that movie was going to be what it was. In all honesty, *I* thought it was going to be huge, but I was so young, naïve, and inexperienced that that doesn’t mean very much.”

98. George Wendt: “It’s maybe every third person now (who calls out ‘Norm!’ when they see me). It used to be every other person. It’s faded a bit, but not too much. They’re always going to remember me that way. I decided a long time ago that if I’m going to let this make me crazy, I’m going to be certifiable, so I just roll with it.”

99. “Weird Al” Yankovic: “If Michael Jackson hadn’t given his blessing (for ‘Eat It’), it’s hard to say the direction my life would’ve taken. If my second album hadn’t done well, that might’ve been it for me. But with Michael Jackson signing off and giving me his support…I mean, I’ve been able to ride that for quite some time.”

100. Andrew Zimmern: “The single greatest pleasure that I have in doing (‘Bizarre Foods’) is when I meet families with 6, 7, 8-year-olds, or teenagers, who say, ‘It’s something the whole family can watch, and it lets us show our younger children that one man’s ‘weird’ is another man’s ‘wonderful,’ and we all kind of live in the same place.’ It’s just the best part of my day.”

Bullz-Eye: First off, you two seem to be almost a ringer on the show. You’re not even husband and wife yet!

Darryl Bell: That is a good way to put it, Will. We are the ringers. That’s probably caused the most frequently asked questions, like, “You guys are the only couple who is not married, you’re the only ones without kids, so what are you doing here in a show called ‘Househusbands’?” The short answer to that has been Marilyn Wilson. Marilyn’s a good friend, produced Temp’s talk show. Marilyn and I have been out, pitched shows’ and tried to sell other things. We’ve worked together in that capacity. It was her assurances that we’re trying to do something that’s fun and not trying to ambush anyone or be mean spirited. “Come be a part of this, because we think you guys are hilarious.” Apparently, the more that I have even talked to other friends, they are, like, “Oh, we’ve been saying for years that you guys should have your own reality series, because you are just funny.” It just happened to come in this format. I don’t know that we would have agreed to have done this for anyone else. So, there you go.

BE: It makes it a little hard for me to ask, “Is it weird being a ‘Househusband’?”

DB: And I don’t know what that means for me, anyway, only from the standpoint that people ask me that because I’m on this show. But in terms of work-wise, it’s just like…even in the series, when Tempest was coming back from on location, shooting the film, I was going on location to shoot this show for TV One. That’s really the nature of our relationship. You know, it’s rare that we’ll both be doing something at the same time, but we’re always in this cyclical gig that is being a working actor in Hollywood. That’s just how our lives have operated. I was just saying in another interview, when Brad is off shooting a movie, Angelina isn’t always shooting one. She’s somewhere with the kids. Or when Angelina’s shooting and Brad is somewhere…? That’s just the way it works.

BE: So what kind of husbandly responsibilities do you have? I mean, do you chip in, doing the dishes or whatever when she’s not there?

DB: I mean, I can’t really call it husbandly duties. Our house is not a pigsty, but I can say that some of that is attributed to the housekeeper. You know what I mean? That helps out a lot. I can only say that when I think of that…when anything breaks, like most men, it’s, like, “Darryl, come fix it,” you know? I get that. But as a regular responsibility, that’s not me.

BE: Is there anything you do that would typically be considered a gender-specific thing, something that one would normally expect a wife to do?

DB: For us, no. For us, I guess that’s what has been so good: we have talked about not having an ego about anything. She likes to cook, so she has cooked for me, but I’ve cooked for her, you know? So from a relationship standpoint of view, I can’t say that…we don’t have any specifically defined roles, other than, as many men will find the case, she wanted pets and yet somehow they are my responsibility. You know how that works out.

BE: Hey, I feed our cat.

DB: Exactly, exactly. And what man asks for a cat? That’s just not the way it works. I want a Neapolitan Mastiff, but the reason I don’t have one is because she wanted a cat.

BE: Sure, that seems fair.

DB: That’s a whole different relationship kind of issue, you know what I mean? It’s not specific to the show, but that’s how it worked out.

BE: So is there any interaction with you two and the other couples? Because I literally just got a copy of the screener, so I haven’t seen the show to know.

DB: As actual couples, we don’t get together until the end, but there’s a lot of interaction between the other guys. We get together to do the “man cave” segments together. And we all went on specific outings together. I spent time with Billy, Charlie and Danny spent time together, and Grant and Billy, so individually we did things together that we also shared in that respect. And then we all talked about that, and that was fun. The interactions between us…we all like each other, you know, so it was fun to hang out with each other and get to know each other a little bit.

BE: Did you know any of them beforehand?

DB: No. I’m not sure if anyone else did, but we got to know each other through this. That was really it. I certainly can say that we are now linked together forever. (Laughs) So that’s not a bad thing, they are a good group of guys.

BE: So how much acting do you do nowadays?

DB: Often. All the time. The only reason I’m here is because I had to have another pilot audition moved just to be here. That’s one of the interesting things about the life of an actor, is oftentimes the work we do, you can’t always see, you know? For a pilot that was shot but didn’t get aired, or auditions you’ve got to go on, and development meetings and all this sort of thing. That’s part of the job. You know, when I listen to Ron Howard talk about how “this is a film that was ten years in the making,” I’m, like, well, during those ten years, even though he does a film every couple of years, in between it’s about working on what the next one will be. That’s the life of an actor. When you look at the television landscape now, there isn’t a whole lot of television that you go, “That’s great,” you know? Even film-wise. Look, some of our biggest film stars now are doing television. Kyra Sedgwick is on TV; Laurence Fishburne is on TV; Glenn Close is on TV; Jeff Goldblum is on TV. A lot of our film actors are doing television and doing great work on TV. But with the industry so fractured with all of the channels now, it’s just that finding good work and a good project for you has become increasingly difficult. You’d think it would be easier, but it actually has become more difficult. So what can you do? Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’m getting ready to shoot a new pilot for a talk comedy genre show next week. So we’ll see how that works out.

BE: Is that for TV One?

DB: TV One is the other project. This isn’t necessarily for TV One, although they are one of the folks that we have talked to about it. But we’ll see what happens.

BE: I want to ask you about a couple of other things you have done.

DB: Yeah.

BE: How did you get involved with “School Daze”?

DB: I was a student, came home for the weekend, saw Spike Lee at a screening of “She’s Gotta Have It,” I asked him for a part in his next film, and I got it.

BE: Wow, it was that easy?

DB: That is the abbreviated version, but that is basically what happened. “She’s Gotta Have It” was playing on 68th and Broadway in Manhattan. I ended up there as a result of a fight with my girlfriend at the time. Because I was at Syracuse…I left school to drive down to where she lived in Brooklyn, which was in the deepest part of Brooklyn, and she wanted to go see “She’s Gotta Have It.” I’m, like, “It’s only playing in Manhattan. It took me four hours to get here, and now we’ve got to drive another hour to get it?” And so it led to this big fight. Needless to say, she won and we were on our way to Manhattan to go see “She’s Gotta Have It.” When I got there, Spike was outside selling t-shirts. I asked, “How much are the t-shirts?” They said, “Ten bucks.” I said, “Well, that’s too expensive for a t-shirt,” and they said, “Well, what would you like?” “A part in his next movie.” “Go ask him.” So I did. I told him they were too expensive, and he said, “Are you an actor?” I said, “Well, sometimes.” He said, “You either act or you don’t.” I said, “I do.” Spike gave me his address, told me to send him a picture and a resume. I didn’t have an agent, wasn’t acting. I was an economics major on my way to work for my father’s brokerage firm in New York. And I got back to school, got a friend of mine who was a photography major to take head shots for me, sent them to Spike, got an audition and booked it. So I left school to go do “School Daze,” and after “School Daze,” the movie wrapped up in May, which is when I should have graduated. Instead of going to summer school, I had planned to come to Los Angeles for the summer. I came to L.A., my first month here I witnessed a freeway shooting, I was in an earthquake and caught the chickenpox. So there you go, that was my introduction.

BE: Welcome to California.

DB: Yes, exactly. And then right after that, in August, September…you know, right for pilot season in 1987, which was the regular television cycle at the time…they were casting for “A Different World.” And I never looked back.

BE: Nor should you have.

DB: I’ve been fortunate. I have been very lucky.

BE: You know, I have to ask about “Homeboys in Outer Space.”

DB: Yeah, go.

BE: When they first pitched you the show, how did they pitch it to you?

DB: The original script for “Homeboys” was very clever. And it was satirical and it was funny, because one of the biggest fans of “Homeboys” was Roseanne Barr. I remember talking to Roseanne, she came up to me and said, “You know, the problem with ‘Homeboys’ is that they went cartoonish. It should have been satirical like ‘In Living Color,’ then it would have been great.” That was the original plan, but as often happens, shows take on a life of their own. Once we got started, we did one episode where we went to the planet of whatever, and there was a network executive who said, “That’s the show!” And the next thing you know, we were going to “The Planet of…” every week, and the comedy would ensue. What’s interesting is that I remember when I was concerned about it, I called Dr. Cosby to ask him, “What do you think?” He said, “It’s not the worst thing on television, but it does remind me of bad Saturday morning cartoons.” I’m like, okay, well, if that’s the worst thing about it. Now, the legend of “Homeboys” has become much more incendiary than the actual show. It’s funny how I usually challenge most people who talk about how much they disliked “Homeboys” to name me five episodes. Most of them can’t, because they just bought into the “oh, it’s awful, just the title. Oh, it’s terrible.” What’s interesting is that I had a great conversation with Chi McBride, who was doing “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,” which was infinitely…if you want to talk about in terms of the imagery of what was wrong, that show was much more infamous than “Homeboys.” Yet it’s not remembered in the same way because the title didn’t grab you in the same way. I remember Chi pulled me aside and he was, like, “Look, everyone who is criticizing what you’re doing would take your job from you in two seconds. All of them. So all I can tell you is that this is one blip on both of our careers, and we are moving on.” And, look, Chi has moved on, as have I. I want to say that right after “Homeboys” went off…I can’t remember if that’s when I was doing Diane English pilot or if that was another pilot with Carol Burnett, and neither of those ended up making it to air, but what I’m saying is that those are the people I was working with right after, you know what I mean? “Homeboys” has never been an impediment to my career or my ability to work. It’s just been the topic that everyone loves to rehash in terms of “we just think it was terrible, it was awful” and so forth.

BE: Well, I’m a “Star Trek” guy, and James Doohan was on there, so that alone made me at least want to tune in and check it out.

DB: James Doohan was on there, and so was George Takei. And…oh, why can’t I say Adam’s name? Um…Adam West?

BE: Right.

DB: Adam West was on there, and so was…oh, I can’t tell you the other gentleman’s name, but he was Gomez from “The Addams Family”.

BE: John Astin.

DB: John Astin. Thank you. John Astin, who was just the sweetest guy. But, I mean, Adam West was cool, too.

BE: In other words, it had sci-fi street cred.

DB: It did. That’s what I’m saying. That was the whole point…and James Doohan was the sweetest guy. Oh, he was just so wonderful to us. But…I want to say it was a UPN show, but I believe either Paramount or the Roddenberry estate was unhappy that we were satirizing Scotty as a character. So then James Doohan came out of the show, and when James Doohan came out, I was, like, “Oh, no.” That was one of the things that was so good about the show, that you had actually got him to have fun with this role. And I thought that’s the way this show was going to be portrayed. It’s one of the things that to me was interesting about what “Homeboys” could have been. Because whenever people talk about the future, if you look at some of the best futuristic movies, from “2001: A Space Odyssey” and all the others, generally African Americans aren’t there. I mean, it’s like we don’t make it to the future, except in the “Star Trek” series. Those are the few places. I had the privilege of meeting Nichelle Nichols at the NBC 75th Anniversary, and she was just like a queen. She was so regal and so wonderful; she was terrific. Just being able to say to her “thank you for being one of the pioneers that opened doors for me to be able to do what I do” was terrific. You say you’re a Trekkie, right?

BE: Oh, yeah.

DB: Interestingly enough, someone was saying to me that it has been long rumored in folklore that she and William Shatner’s kiss was the first interracial kiss on television. But, actually, no, that’s not true. It was Sammy Davis, Jr. and someone else in an earlier picture. And then they said that their kiss wasn’t even the first interracial kiss on “Star Trek.” It was when Captain Kirk kissed the Asian actress who was the warrior and the tear could make you fall in love….? Their kiss was the first quote, unquote interracial kiss. I was, like, “Look at that, I learned something.” And I even made you go “wow,” I think.

BE: You are correct. I did not know that.

DB: They were, like, “Yeah, that actually preceded that.” But I still like giving “Star Trek” credit, just because it sounds good. (Laughs)

BE: What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved? I guess you can include pilots in that, given that you’ve worked with some big names in pilots.

DB: Wow! Wow, that’s interesting, and I will tell you that it’s a toss-up. I would say in one sense, it would be the pilot I did with Jim Burrows, which we all thought was terrific, but it just happened to come at a time when reality TV…how’s this for irony? Reality TV was just starting to take off, and I want to say that it was “Meet the Parents,” “Average Joe,” “The Apprentice,” and I think they were about to do “Average Jane.” I think that was coming up, and all of them were taking up our blocks in NBC lineup. Additionally, they had already agreed and dropped $55 million on the Siegfried and Roy animated series.

BE: Oh, “Father of the Pride.”

DB: Yeah, “Father of the Pride” was coming up. So they had all of these things they had already committed to that I guess they didn’t they know would be successful before the upfronts. But by the time they had already renewed them for a second season, the window for available space for television wasn’t good. They had ordered, like, 24 pilots, and this was like Jim Burrows, Larry Wilmore, who had gotten an Emmy for “Bernie Mac,” and Henry Winkler was in a part. We even got a day off filming the pilot, which never happens, but it was because it was so tight. And it didn’t get picked up. So I was disappointed in that. But the other answer to your question would be “A Different World.” Dr. Cosby always said that our show was the goose that kept laying the golden eggs, but they never wanted to credit the goose. They always wanted to say that we were a show that was a beneficiary of our time slot. Notwithstanding the fact that I think in our third season, we beat “Cosby.” They also never wanted to give, I think, Debbie (Allen), Susan (Fales-Hill), and the writing staff credit for being as funny and topical as they were with the shows that still hold up now on AIDS, war, racism, and all the things that we did. We’re still one of the 50 highest rated shows in television history.

BE: Wow.

DB: It’s been in syndication for 17 years. We’re only the second show in television history to debut at the number two spot, behind “Bewitched.” I could go on, I’m good with the numbers. You know, everyone in the cast was always, like, “If you want to know the details, you’ve got to ask Darryl,” because I remember all that. So that would be the only other thing. People tend to look at our show, some people, under the umbrella of “Cosby” success and don’t give the people who put in a lot of good, hard work and were really good at what they do, for our show. But, you know, for what that show didn’t get in terms of that kind of recognition, to have shared the stage with Whoopi Goldberg, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll…I mean, it paid dividends in so many other ways. It was the best.

BE: Do you still talk to Kadeem Hardison and Jasmine Guy, or at least keep up with them?

DB: Yep. I saw Jasmine in New Orleans last week. I was hosting a symposium on Hollywood, and Jasmine was there choreographing a number. Kadeem just texted me ten minutes ago. Let’s see, I’ll see Debbie probably sometime this weekend, she’s doing something at the dance academy. I usually call her about “So You Think You Can Dance” all the time. Dawnn (Lewis) and I were at a function together not too long ago. So yeah, we don’t all get to see each other collectively, but we do still see each other from time to time, and it’s always love.

BE: And I should close with one more about your current show.

DB: Go ahead.

BE: So what are your expectations of “Househusbands of Hollywood”? Are you going in with concerns about them being too invasive, or…?

DB: You know, I really don’t know. I can’t say that I have any expectations. I’m curious to see what will happen. If I’m to judge by most of the questions we have gotten so far, I think the challenge is going to be for people to be able to get past the title, to see what the show is really about. And if that happens, that could be fun. And we’ll see where it goes from there. So it will be interesting to see what happens. So my expectations are that we will either change some minds and be really successful, or something that I haven’t conceived of will be the answer. (Laughs) One or the other, right?

My reason for being interested in the series is simple: I’m a full-time work-at-home dad with a 4-year-old daughter. Granted, she doesn’t tend to spend her days with me, thanks to her wonderful nana as well as an awesome caregiver named Janice whom she visits a few days a week, but, hey, I’m still home all day. As such, I have to figure that I’m going to see a certain amount of myself in this show.

Here’s a quick roll call of the Househusbands:

* Billy Ashley (former outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox, married to makeup artist Lisa Ashley)
* Danny Barclay (aspiring actor, married to attorney Katherine Barclay)
* Darryl Bell (arguably best known for playing Ron on “A Different World,” dating Tempestt Bledsoe, late of “The Cosby Show”)
* Charlie Mattera (ex-convict turned actor / screenwriter, married to a psychologist)
* Grant Reynolds (former USMC sniper, married to Gillian Reynolds of “Good Day L.A.” and “Fox NFL Sunday”)

Basically, we get to see the respective home lives of these guys, then we see them all meet up together during what’s referred to as the “man cave” segment of the show. Yes, it’s obviously the flip-side of all of the “Housewives” shows that have been shoved down your throat, but, dammit, isn’t it about time we got to see the husband’s side of thing?

I’ll offer up a quote from each of the guys about their experiences on the show, so you can perhaps get an idea of what to expect:

Danny Barclay – “I think reality TV exposes the flaws in a relationship, but it also exposes what works. And I know, for Katherine and I, I almost feel like we have a stronger marriage after this first season has wrapped.”

Grant Reynolds – “Kids like routine. Every time I deviated from the routine, I saw sour results, but when I kept to it, I was, like, ‘Holy cow, this is a really happy little kid here I have here.’ So I kept the routine going, and then I would fight with my wife a little bit about it. Wives don’t like routines.”

Billy Ashley – “If (Lisa) decides to get up in the morning before I’ve gotten the whole regimen started and working, it’s just blown, because she becomes such a distraction to the kids. ‘You guys, get up, finish your food. Finish your food. Get upstairs. You’ve got to brush your teeth. Let’s go.’ And everything gets delayed and that just makes me in my head think, ‘You know what? I’m behind schedule. I’ve got to catch up. I’ve got to catch up!’ Heart palpitations!”

Darryl Bell – “Everyone has had the ability to laugh at themselves and be light-hearted, you overlook the seriousness of a man never stands taller than when he bends over to help a child. And for Grant and Charlie and Billy, raising their children with the epidemic of single-parent families where children don’t have men in their lives, where young boys don’t have people to mentor them and show them how to be men, these gentlemen are making sure, one, that their children aren’t in gangs or drugs, and, more importantly, as Chris Rock said, the daughter stays off the pole, you know. So that is taking responsibility for what you are supposed to do. Being a father to your child isn’t an option. It’s a requirement.”

Charlie Mattera – “This is a great country. It’s America. You can really put a foot to your life. You can destroy yourself in the worst possible way, but you can also come back from Hell. And I’ve worked very hard to get my life back on track, and I figured, after a criminal background, the only place to go would be Hollywood because there’s so many criminals in film and in the entertainment business, and I figured I’d be right at home. But I was very lucky and fortunate enough to meet a really nice girl. And my wife is a psychologist, so I have in-house counsel. And she’s a great girl, and she’s put up with me and dealt with me and given me a beautiful son. So, right now, I look at it like I’m batting a thousand.”

“Househusbands of Hollywood” premieres on August 15 on Fox Reality Channel…but, like I said, you can hunt it down on Hulu, iTunes, and elsewhere.