Michael Cera on Writing for ‘Arrested Development’ and Getting Recognized for Starring in… ‘The Social Network’?

Rabid fans of the revived sitcom, Arrested Development, finally got their fill of new episodes when Netflix brought back the series this past Sunday.  Michael Cera, who plays George Michael on the series, had the opportunity to join the writing team as well.

“I always admired these guys when I was growing up,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.  “They were tucked away in their office—it was such a different world.  That part of it was most exciting: being accepted in there and watching this thing come together, which is very uncharted territory, I think, in terms of television comedy.”

The show has been off the air since 2006, and Cera admits at times he feels like he left as a youngster and returned as a man.  “The only place I felt that was in the writers’ room,” he said.  “Working with those guys felt like a graduation of some sort.  When I was around everyone else, you just get zapped back to the exact same dynamics as before.  It really feels like nothing has changed in the cast, in the group.” Read more

Nick Offerman on Landing His ‘Parks and Recreation’ Role: “I sobbed for 30 minutes”

Nick Offerman made a career appearing in small roles in sitcom to sitcom for about a decade before gaining steam in the late 2000s, which eventually led to his starring role on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation.  He is now a unique comedic element of thee show that has led to roles in both comedic and dramatic films.  In a conversation with The New York Times, Offerman speaks about his late-blooming career

Offerman has become known for his deadpan delivery on Parks and Recreation.  He explains that he developed this comedic approach because he didn’t think he could equal the crazy energy of other comedians.  He says, “Something about stentorian authority figures has always made me laugh. I also noticed that lots of the performers I was working with had a big, obnoxious energy that I quickly realized I could never match — and that when they finally finished being loud, with one well-placed remark I could also achieve some sort of comic victory.” Read more

James Van Der Beek on His New Show, ‘Friends with Better Lives’ and Just Staying “in the Game’ of Acting

James Van Der Beek isn’t too sad that his time on Don’t Trust The B in Apartment 23 is over.  He’s picked up a role on a new CBS sitcom and playing himself on the cancelled ABC show did help him put his Dawson days behind him.

“It took me out of one mold that I’d been in for awhile.  It’s tough to compete with something that was the cultural phenomenon that Dawson’s Creek was,” he said in an interview with Vulture.  “It ran for so long.  That’s a lot of hours playing one character in front of people.  So it’s natural that they associate you with that.  And also the nature of television, you’re in their living room, so it’s even more immediate.  I wish I could say it was a calculated, intelligent decision, but it really was just something that I thought was funny, that I hadn’t really done before, and there were just great people involved.  In terms of what it did for me?  It was an opportunity to do comedy on a regular basis.  Which I really enjoyed.  I feel like walking down the street, I do get called Dawson a lot less these days.  So maybe that’s a measure of what the show did.  Now when people mock me on the street, they use my real name.  So there you go.” Read more

Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara: Gloria “might be a stereotype, but I think the character is fantastic”

Sofia Vergara, who plays Gloria on ABC’s hit comedy Modern Family, doesn’t really object to her portrayal of a typical Latina.

“I don’t know why people think stereotypes are so terrible,” she admitted to Yahoo!  “I am Gloria, my mother is Gloria, my aunts are Gloria.  I mean, it’s not like I’m putting on a fake bra with big prosthetics, you know.  It might be a stereotype, but I think the character is fantastic.  She’s colorful, she’s honest, she’s out there, she cares about people.  She’s loud, but I am loud.  She’s crazy, but I am crazy.  It’s not a problem.”

She was cast in the role by creators Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, and they ended up forming the role to fit Vergara’s personality.  “They had meetings with me at the beginning and they would ask me things, because the character has a lot of similarities with my real life.  I am an immigrant in this country, I have an accent, I’m Colombian.  I have a child from a previous marriage.  So it was created around me.  But now they have Google so they don’t really need to ask me, ‘What is a Colombian dish or a Colombian hat?’  They just go and Google it.” Read more

Ed Helms on ‘The Hangover’ and ‘The Office’ Ending: “You realize if you stayed on the rollercoaster you’d probably get hurt or sick or something”

May has been a month of endings for Ed Helms.  First came the series finale of The Office, a show he has been starring in since 2007.  Then came The Hangover Part III, which is billed as the final movie in the box office hit comedy franchise.  He spoke to Moviefone about the end of two eras in his life and why now is the right time for both to conclude.

Helms wasn’t looking for any grand sendoff for his character, Stu, when he signed on for The Hangover Part III.  He explains, “If anything, and for Stu in particular, I just wanted a sense of closure for the whole Hangover/Wolf Pack world. And then if I got a few good jokes in along the way, I’d be happy.” Read more

Colombian Soap Opera Actor Beaten and Robbed When He is Mistaken for His Tough TV Character

Sometimes it’s hard to separate an actor from his or her characters.  For example, many are still surprised when they hear Hugh Laurie speak in his natural English accent because they heard him speak with an American accent for eight seasons on House.  That’s not so bad — at least they don’t expect him to answer medical questions, right?  Even in that case hopefully all he would have to say is the old “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.” 

However, the situation could be much, much worse, like in the case of Colombian actor Mauricio Bastidas.  Bastidas played a villainous character on the soap opera Tres Milagros (Three Miracles).  Read more

Jeffrey Tambor on the Crazy Shooting Schedule of ‘Arrested Development’: “I love that as an actor”

The rabid fans of the once defunct Arrested Development can breathe a sigh of relief when new episodes of the cult classic start airing on Netflix on Sunday.  With his other show Onion News Network airing on Amazon, Jeffrey Tambor is becoming a true fan of the Internet age.

“I am the Internet guy,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.  “But the reason the Onion News Empire was such an easy decision to make is I so trust that side of the fence now.  It’s a little like being Off Broadway—that sort of excitement of not knowing what it is going to be.  The fervency of it all.” Read more

Megan Hilty on the End of ‘Smash’ and What’s Next for Her

In the end, Smash is, at best, an imperfect television series.  It took an interesting industry — the behind-the-scenes creation of Broadway productions — and incredibly talented singers, like Megan Hilty, yet somehow failed to make it interesting to general audiences or even Broadway diehards.  That is the main reason why Smash is wrapping up its run at the end of this season (only the show’s second).  Hilty, who played the often mean Broadway hopeful Ivy Lynn, spoke to iDesign about the end of the series

Hilty expresses hope that fans of the show will be satisfied by the series finale — though it wasn’t entirely written that way.  She says, “We have the greatest fans of the show and they’re very, very loyal, but I hope that the season finale is satisfying for people.  I feel like it will be because they kind wrote it just in case it didn’t get renewed, that it would wrap everything up. I think people will be pleased with it. It won’t be like ‘what would have happened?’” Read more

How Much Did the ‘Arrested Development’ Stars Get Paid for the NetFlix Revival?

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the media over the last two years, the cult favorite Fox television comedy Arrested Development, which ran from 2003-2006, is being revived for new episodes on the streaming service NetFlix.  While the entire original cast that made up the dysfunctional Bluth family and creator Mitch Hurwitz have returned to the series, being that the revival is more of a one-time “event” than an ongoing series the stars of the show had an unusal arrangement in terms of how much they were paid per episode.  Entertainment Weekly published an article about how much the stars of the series would be getting for coming back for another go-around.

As part of the revival, each of the show’s stars was promised at least one starring episode, which factored in how much that person was paid.  The actors were paid $125,000 for each “starring” episode and $50,000 for any episode in which their characters had more than 90 seconds of airtime. Any episode which features less than 90 seconds of their particular character netted them $10,000, and a clips of old footage in episodes would net them an extra $1000. Read more

Grimm’s Silas Weir Mitchell: “I am susceptible to the power of suggestion…to the point where [suggestion] became my career”

Silas Weir Mitchell, who plays Big Bad Wolf Monroe on NBC’s Grimm, isn’t getting too caught up in the ratings hype regarding his successful show.

“I think it’s literally the fact that I am susceptible to the power of suggestion…to the point where [suggestion] became my career,” he said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times.  “That’s what actors do.  They avail themselves to an imaginary event to the point where that imaginary event becomes real, which is really just the power of suggestion.”

It may sound like Mitchell is getting sucked into the supernatural drama that Grimm represents.  The series takes place in a hidden world where fairy tale characters come to life.  “We’re all very invested in the imaginary world that we’re in,” he admitted.  “Everybody knows that we have this weird little world that we want to enrich.” Read more

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