The former Eight is Enough actress Tweeted about her contempt for the disdain the talent show demonstrates towards singers they deem ‘too Broadway.’  Buckley wrote, “With respect, ‘Dog,’ your opinion is whack and uninformed!”  She also said that Jackson demeaning theatrical voices was “beneath contempt” and “beyond idiotic!!!”

Over the past 11 seasons, there has been many an audition that Jackson (and the other judges) disparage by saying that a singer would be better suited for the stage rather than the pop world. 

The New York Post reports that Buckley said, “Broadway is a place, not a style of singing.  Whenever he doesn’t like something, he just throws in that ‘this is a Broadway voice.’  I don’t know how many Broadway shows Randy Jackson has been to, but clearly not many, because there’s a wide variety of shows on Broadway.” 

Follow Betty Buckley on Twitter           Follow Randy Jackson on Twitter

Buckley has a point.  Gone are the days when Broadway musicals were just limited to soprano-operatic sounding voices (a la Oklahoma or My Fair Lady.)  Today’s shows range from jazzy (Chicago) to rock (American Idiot) to gospel (Sister Act).  It is interesting that many American Idol finalists have transitioned from the television show to the stage—Constantine Maroulis, Diana DeGarmo, Taylor Hicks, among others.

Buckley attributes Jackson’s opinions to his dislike of vocal vibrato.  She said, “He clearly doesn’t like vibrato, and doesn’t think vibrato exists in pop, which is absurd.  Lady Gaga sings with vibrato.  Freddie Mercury did.  Beyonce, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald.  Christina Aguilera has a vibrato, and she’s spectacular.”

As an actress who has maintained an impressive career since the late 60s, the Tony-winner (for her role singing “Memory” in Cats), Buckley has become a legend in the theater world.  But her main concern with American Idol is that the show will deter young singers from pursuing their dreams.  She said, “You’re a young kid, a good singer, you go to these auditions, and Randy Jackson says, ‘you’re too Broadway.’  Then this kid, who had dreams of going into musical theater, says, ‘I don’t wanna be in musical theater because Randy Jackson thinks it’s not cool.”

American Idol producer, Nigel Lythgoe, is a great supporter of the theater through his other television show, FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance.  He responded to Buckley’s comments by saying, “Broadway is a Mecca for talent.  I will certainly speak to Randy.”

But, out of all the things I liked, there were 2 things that bugged me.

The first was something about the show in general. As SAG member Pam Munro pointed out to me in an email, the tickets for the awards were, according to their website, $800. “Who can PAY that? Certainly not most of the rank & file!” she said.

I absolutely agree. For most of us, $800 is a lot of change. That’s headshots and prints. Rent. 3 Months of acting classes. One drunken night on Sunset. It’s almost like the powers that be want to keep you and me from attending by keeping the price high, isn’t it? 

I know these things cost a lot to put on but you can’t tell me that SAG doesn’t make money off of the broadcast.

I have an idea for next year: SAG (and presumably AFTRA now) should keep a block of tickets allocated for each branch. Each branch could then take their top 10 earners (actors who made the most that year) and offer them tickets to the awards for $150 (or $300 for two – we have to take out dates, right?). If those actors decline, put those tickets back into the ticket pool and charge their $800.

What do you think of that idea?

The second thing was something that truly annoyed me. It was the salute to the branches around the country. In the segment, they featured working actors from branches like Texas and Chicago. Loved it! In fact, they should have featured more branches.

In the final part of the video, they showcased the Las Vegas branch. Who did they feature? That hard working, yet unknown actor Mike Tyson.

Huh?

We have over 200,000 members and they give a shout-out to Mike Tyson?

I like Tyson. I really do (plus, if I don’t, he could come to my house and hit me in the face) but come on, SAG. You couldn’t spotlight another actor who’s night or even career, could have been made from 10 seconds of screen time on the show?

Yeah, they were probably trying to be funny but seriously, who benefits more? The one’s who pay the dues. The one’s who’ve studied and struggled to do something we love?

Or Mike Tyson?

Broadway Week starts January 17th and runs through February 4th. Check out the list below of the shows that are on the list.

Off-Broadway Week will offer the same deal but from that starts on January 30th running through February 12th. Some of the shows include Carrie, Rent, SILENCE! The Musical and Avenue Q. 

List of shows currently offered:
Anything Goes
Chicago The Musical
Chinglish
The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Godspell
Jersey Boys
Mamma Mia
Mary Poppins
Memphis
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
Phantom of the Opera
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Relatively Speaking
The Road to Mecca
Rock of Ages
Seminar
Sister Act
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
Stick Fly
Wit

The program, entitled Make a Musical, will start this month with a pilot group of more than 20 schools across the nation, including sites in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

The group they will be working with, iTheatrics Junior Theater Project, helps adapt musicals for student productions and supplies information to help teachers involved in the program.  NBC has set a goal of adding an additional 180 programs by 2014, resulting in the funding of more than 1,000 schools that would benefit around 1 million students. 

NBC’s statement of their participation in this cause comes shortly before the premiere of their new drama Smash, which starts airing on February 6. 

NBC executive Len Fogge said in an interview with Huffington Post, “Smash centers around a group of people working to be part of a Broadway musical.  It’s only fitting that NBC play a role to further empower students and teachers to discover the thrill of one of America’s most unique art forms through the process of creating their own musical theater programs.”   

Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Grammer reveals how he manages to portray a character that is completely different than his past comedic roles — and how his current role relates to the possibility of his own real-life political future.

Though Boss is a one hour series, each episode is shot relatively quickly — the typical episode is shot in eight days.  For many actors that might be an unbearable pace, but for Grammer — who has spent half his life in episodic television — finds it liberating with an experienced cast, explaining, “I actually love working fast — those limitations can be freeing. There’s an honesty to it — you just go with your gut and jump into it. But you need people who are experienced, who can access themselves as quickly as possible. Firing on your first impressions can be really effective.”  After spending two decades playing Frasier Crane on the sitcoms Cheers and its spinoff Frasier, one would expect that Grammer would find the dramatic acting required of Boss difficult. 

But Grammer claims he actually finds it easier, saying, “With drama, you just get to pour it out. Tip the vessel over and out it comes. I just behave openly, in the context of what I know Tom Kane’s situation is. Of course, it requires a lot in terms of focus. But to make sure that a comedy succeeds, there’s more artifice and manipulation involved. You have to worry about the timing and how the whole cast comes together and also how to make it resonate emotionally.”

But in an life-imitating-art situation Grammer, a lifelong conservative, has often expressed his interest in one day running for Congress.  However, his desire to act trumps his desire to serve the public.  He jokes about this problem, explaining, “Getting into politics has always been in my head… But it has always been there that I want to do my part for my country if I can. Fred Thompson pulled it off — being both an actor and a politician — but I think I’d have to leave acting behind before I could do it. That’s something I would do when I’m finally an adult.”

Kate Winslet

Director Roman Polanski is sometimes better known for his personal dramas (fleeing the country in the 70s after facing statutory rape charges), but his acute skills resulted in many challenges for Winslet. 

In an interview with Wall Street Journal, Winslet recalls, “I think at various different points we all had said to Roman, ‘Look, would you like us to learn [the script]?’  Because it is based on a play and when it’s Roman Polanski, one wants to be as prepared as possible.  And he categorically said, ‘Oh no, no no’—very blasé—‘no need to learn it….’ And by Friday afternoon of week one, Roman said, ‘Ok, I think it would be really handy not to have our scripts in our hands on Monday, don’t you?’  And there was deathly silence, and I could see everyone sort of looking at each other like, ‘Well, what did you have planned for the weekend?’”  Although Winslet had never worked with Polanski, she came into the project prepared.  “I actually just laughed my head off because even though we’d only really known Roman a week, I could tell this seemed to be a very typically Roman thing to do, like suddenly come out with some grand thing like, ‘Go away and learn 110 pages of script in two days.’”

So Winslet and her costars—Jodie Foster (Silence of the Lambs, Panic Room), Cristoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds) and John C. Reilly (Chicago, Step Brothers)—memorized the script and came in ready.  The cast had two weeks of rehearsal—something most shooting schedules do not allow. 

Winslet says, “Some directors don’t like rehearsal.  I don’t ordinarily like pre-planning things or blocking things.  But sometimes things can really be revealed to you as an actor about your character that come out of an idea or a question that another actor has, and that’s fun.  I would happily rehearse for three days and never stand up out of a chair, just to be in a room with everybody.” 

Winslet was able to fight for some rehearsal time on the miniseries Mildred Pierce, for which she won an Emmy and is nominated at the upcoming Golden Globes.  But previously, she was used to preparing for roles on her own.  “If directors don’t want to rehearse, you as an actor go home, you do your homework, you do your own rehearsal and you figure it out, it’s fine.  I’m used to doing that.”

The other challenge facing the cast of Carnage was overcoming the already celebrated performances of the actors who performed the play on Broadway (Winslet’s role was originated by Hope Davis.)  Winslet says, “You can’t try and top it.  When it’s on stage everything has to be bigger because it’s theater, that’s how you get the laughs, so in a way I feel like those actors probably felt incredibly liberated.  They were glorious, big and subtle performances.  What the f—do I know, but I thought they were all absolutely amazing and obviously you can’t do that on film.”

But Winslet knew she would have to set aside what Davis had done with the role, and make it her own.  Because of the constrictions of film, Winslet worked to make the character different, otherwise the result would have “been too in-your-face, too over-the-top and not believable.  So what I tried to do was play my version of the character.  No actor wants to play someone else’s performance.”

Looks like critics are liking Winslet’s interpretation—she was just nominated for a Golden Globe for the performance and is rumored to be a front-runner in the Oscar race.

But according to a story in The Guardian, nineteen year-old Matthew Banks took playing hookey from jury duty to a new level — and it was all because he went to the theatre.

Banks had been serving four days on a trial but proceedings had to be halted when he claimed to be too ill to attend.  But he was only acting sick — turns out Banks had plans to see Chicago at the Garrick Theatre.  But his ruse was found out when court officials called his home and Banks’ boyfriend, Christian Orr, told them he had gone to the theatre.  Whoops!

The judge on the case ordered him to “serve two weeks in a young offenders institution,” calling Banks’ behavior “frivolous.”  Banks’ mother argues that her son is only “a naïve 19-year-old,” and that the penalty is too harsh, adding “He wanted a career in the government but he’s got a criminal record now.”  In a follow-up article, the unintentional stool pigeon Orr explains that while he understands the penalty he believes Banks is ultimately too immature to be a juror anyway, explaining, “I don’t feel he has the life experience or maturity to be a juror,” and agrees that the sentence is too severe. 

Listen, we all dislike jury duty, but there’s a lesson in all this — make sure you get your story straight with your loved ones before you play hookey in order to get some entertainment!

Congrats to all the nominees!

But, I just have one WTF as I go through the list: Glee was nominated as in the Ensemble category? The cast is fine with Jane Lynch, Heather Morris and Matthew Morrison being the standouts but nominating the cast for best ensemble? Seriously?

Check out the nominations below!

18th ANNUAL SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS® NOMINATIONS
THEATRICAL MOTION PICTURES

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
DEMIÁN BICHIR / Carlos Galindo – “A BETTER LIFE” (Summit Entertainment)
GEORGE CLOONEY / Matt King – “THE DESCENDANTS” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
LEONARDO DiCAPRIO / J. Edgar Hoover – “J. EDGAR” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
JEAN DUJARDIN / George – “THE ARTIST” (The Weinstein Company)
BRAD PITT / Billy Beane – “MONEYBALL” (Columbia Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
GLENN CLOSE  / Albert Nobbs – “ALBERT NOBBS” (Roadside Attractions)
VIOLA DAVIS / Aibileen Clark – “THE HELP” (DreamWorks Pictures / Touchstone Pictures)
MERYL STREEP / Margaret Thatcher – “THE IRON LADY” (The Weinstein Company)
TILDA SWINTON / Eva – “WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN” (Oscilloscope Laboratories)
MICHELLE WILLIAMS / Marilyn Monroe – “MY WEEK WITH MARILYN” (The Weinstein Company)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
KENNETH BRANAGH / Sir Laurence Olivier – “MY WEEK WITH MARILYN” (The Weinstein Company)
ARMIE HAMMER / Clyde Tolson – “J. EDGAR” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
JONAH HILL / Peter Brand – “MONEYBALL” (Columbia Pictures)
NICK NOLTE / Paddy Conlon – “WARRIOR” (Lionsgate)
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER / Hal – “BEGINNERS” (Focus Features)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
BÉRÉNICE BEJO / Peppy – “THE ARTIST” (The Weinstein Company)
JESSICA CHASTAIN / Celia Foote – “THE HELP” (DreamWorks Pictures / Touchstone Pictures)
MELISSA McCARTHY / Megan – “BRIDESMAIDS” (Universal Pictures)
JANET McTEER / Hubert Page – “ALBERT NOBBS” (Roadside Attractions)
OCTAVIA SPENCER / Minny Jackson – “THE HELP” (DreamWorks Pictures / Touchstone Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
THE ARTIST (The Weinstein Company)
BÉRÉNICE BEJO / Peppy
JAMES CROMWELL / Clifton
JEAN DUJARDIN / George
JOHN GOODMAN / Al Zimmer
PENELOPE ANN MILLER / Doris

BRIDESMAIDS (Universal Pictures)
ROSE BYRNE / Helen
JILL CLAYBURGH / Annie’s Mom
ELLIE KEMPER / Becca
MATT LUCAS  / Gil
MELISSA McCARTHY / Megan
WENDI McLENDON-COVEY / Rita
CHRIS O’DOWD / Rhodes
MAYA RUDOLPH / Lillian
KRISTEN WIIG / Annie

THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
BEAU BRIDGES / Cousin Hugh
GEORGE CLOONEY / Matt King
ROBERT FORSTER / Scott Thorson
JUDY GREER  / Julie Speer
MATTHEW LILLARD  / Brian Speer
SHAILENE WOODLEY  / Alexandra King

THE HELP (DreamWorks Pictures / Touchstone Pictures)
JESSICA CHASTAIN / Celia Foote
VIOLA DAVIS / Aibileen Clark
BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD / Hilly Holbrook
ALLISON JANNEY / Charlotte Phelan
CHRIS LOWELL / Stuart Whitworth
AHNA O’REILLY / Elizabeth Leefolt
SISSY SPACEK / Missus Walters
OCTAVIA SPENCER / Minny Jackson
MARY STEENBURGEN / Elaine Stein
EMMA STONE / Skeeter Phelan
CICELY TYSON / Constantine Jefferson
MIKE VOGEL / Johnny Foote

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Sony Pictures Classics)
KATHY BATES / Gertrude Stein
ADRIEN BRODY / Salvador Dali
CARLA BRUNI / Museum Guide
MARION COTILLARD / Adriana
RACHEL McADAMS / Inez
MICHAEL SHEEN / Paul
OWEN WILSON / Gil

PRIMETIME TELEVISION

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
LAURENCE FISHBURNE / Thurgood Marshall – “THURGOOD” (HBO)
PAUL GIAMATTI / Ben Bernanke – “TOO BIG TO FAIL” (HBO)
GREG KINNEAR / Jack Kennedy – “THE KENNEDYS” (REELZ CHANNEL)
GUY PEARCE / Monty Beragon – “MILDRED PIERCE“ (HBO)
JAMES WOODS / Richard Fuld – “TOO BIG TO FAIL” (HBO)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
DIANE LANE / Pat Loud – “CINEMA VERITE” (HBO)
MAGGIE SMITH / Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham – “DOWNTON ABBEY” (PBS)
EMILY WATSON / Janet Leach – “APPROPRIATE ADULT” (Sundance Channel)
BETTY WHITE / Caroline Thomas – “HALLMARK HALL OF FAME: THE LOST VALENTINE” (CBS)
KATE WINSLET / Mildred Pierce – “MILDRED PIERCE” (HBO)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
PATRICK J. ADAMS / Mike Ross – “SUITS” (USA)
STEVE BUSCEMI / Enoch “Nucky” Thomson – “BOARDWALK EMPIRE” (HBO)
KYLE CHANDLER / Eric Taylor – “FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS” (DirecTV)
BRYAN CRANSTON / Walter White – “BREAKING BAD” (AMC)
MICHAEL C. HALL / Dexter Morgan – “DEXTER” (Showtime)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
KATHY BATES / Harriet Korn – “HARRY’S LAW” (NBC)
GLENN CLOSE / Patty Hewes  – “DAMAGES” (DirecTV)
JESSICA LANGE / Constance – “AMERICAN HORROR STORY” (FX)
JULIANNA MARGULIES / Alicia Florrick – “THE GOOD WIFE” (CBS)
KYRA SEDGWICK / Dept. Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson – “THE CLOSER” (TNT)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
ALEC BALDWIN / Jack Donaghy – “30 ROCK” (NBC)
TY BURRELL / Phil Dunphy – “MODERN FAMILY” (ABC)
STEVE CARELL / Michael Scott  – “THE OFFICE” (NBC)
JON CRYER / Alan Harper  – “TWO AND A HALF MEN” (CBS)
ERIC STONESTREET / Cameron Tucker – “MODERN FAMILY” (ABC)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
JULIE BOWEN / Claire Dunphy – “MODERN FAMILY” (ABC)
EDIE FALCO / Jackie Peyton – “NURSE JACKIE” (Showtime)
TINA FEY / Liz Lemon – “30 ROCK” (NBC)
SOFIA VERGARA / Gloria Delgado-Pritchett  – “MODERN FAMILY” (ABC)
BETTY WHITE / Elka Ostrovsky – “HOT IN CLEVELAND” (TV Land)

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series

BOARDWALK EMPIRE (HBO)
STEVE BUSCEMI / Enoch “Nucky” Thompson
DOMINIC CHIANESE / Leander Cephas Whitlock
ROBERT CLOHESSY / Ward Boss Jim Neary
DABNEY COLEMAN / Commodore Louis Kaestner
CHARLIE COX / Owen Sleater
JOSIE & LUCY GALLINA / Emily Schroeder
STEPHEN GRAHAM / Al Capone
JACK HUSTON / Richard Harrow
ANTHONY LACIURA / Eddie Kessler
HEATHER LIND / Katy
KELLY MACDONALD / Margaret Schroeder
RORY & DECLAN McTIGUE / Teddy Schroeder
GRETCHEN MOL / Gillian Darmody
BRADY & CONNOR NOON/ Tommy Darmody
KEVIN O’ROURKE / Mayor Edward Bader
ALEKSA PALLADINO / Angela Darmody
JACQUELINE PENNEWILL / Lilian
VINCENT PIAZZA / Lucky Luciano
MICHAEL PITT / Jimmy Darmody
MICHAEL SHANNON / Agent Nelson Van Alden
PAUL SPARKS / Mickey Doyle
MICHAEL STUHLBARG / Arnold Rothstein
PETER VAN WAGNER / Isaac “Icky” Ginsburg
SHEA WHIGHAM / Sheriff Elias Thompson
MICHAEL KENNETH WILLIAMS / Chalky White
ANATOL YUSEF / Meyer Lansky

BREAKING BAD (AMC)
JONATHAN BANKS / Mike
BETSY BRANDT / Marie Schrader
RAY CAMPBELL / Tyrus Kitt
BRYAN CRANSTON / Walter White
GIANCARLO ESPOSITO / Gus Fring
ANNA GUNN / Skyler White
RJ MITTE / Walter White, Jr.
DEAN NORRIS / Hank Schrader
BOB ODENKIRK / Saul Goodman
AARON PAUL / Jesse Pinkman

DEXTER (Showtime)
BILLY BROWN / Chicago Mike
JENNIFER CARPENTER / Debra Morgan
JOSH COOKE /  Louis
AIMEE GARCIA / Jamie Batista
MICHAEL C. HALL / Dexter Morgan
COLIN HANKS / Travis Marshall
DESMOND HARRINGTON / Joey Quinn
MARIA DOYLE KENNEDY / Sonya
RYA KIHLSTEDT / Michelle
C.S. LEE / Vince Masuka
EDWARD JAMES OLMOS / Professor Gellar
JAMES REMAR / Harry Morgan
LAUREN VELEZ / Lt. Maria LaGuerta
PETER WELLER / Liddy
DAVID ZAYAS / Sgt. Angel Batista

GAME OF THRONES (HBO)
AMRITA ACHARIA / Irri
MARK ADDY /  King Robert Baratheon
ALFIE ALLEN / Theon Greyjoy
JOSEF ALTIN / Pypar
SEAN BEAN / Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark
SUSAN BROWN / Septa Mordane
EMILIA CLARKE / Daenerys Targaryen
NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU / Ser Jaime Lannister
PETER DINKLAGE / Tyrion Lannister
RON DONACHIE / Ser Rodrik Cassel
MICHELLE FAIRLEY / Lady Catelyn Stark
JEROME FLYNN / Bronn
ELYES GABEL /  Rakharo
AIDEN GILLEN / “Littlefinger” Petyr Baelish
JACK GLEESON / Joffrey Baratheon
IAIN GLEN / Ser Jorah Mormont
JULIAN GLOVER / Grand Maester Pycelle
KIT HARINGTON / Jon Snow
LENA HEADEY / Queen Cersei Lannister
ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT / Bran Stark
CONLETH HILL / Lord Varys
RICHARD MADDEN / Robb Stark
JASON MAMOA / Kahl Drogo
RORY McCANN / Sandor Clegane
IAN McELHINNEY / Barristan Selmy
LUKE McEWAN / Rast
ROXANNE McKEE / Doreah
DAR SALIM / Qotho
MARK STANLEY / Grenn
DONALD SUMPTER / Maester Luwin
SOPHIE TURNER / Sansa Stark
MAISIE WILLIAMS / Arya Stark

THE GOOD WIFE (CBS)
CHRISTINE BARANSKI / Diane Lockhart
JOSH CHARLES / Will Gardner
ALAN CUMMING / Eli Gold
MATT CZUCHRY / Cary Agos
JULIANNA MARGULIES / Alicia Florrick
CHRIS NOTH / Peter Florrick
ARCHIE PANJABI / Kalinda Sharma
GRAHAM PHILLIPS / Zach Florrick
MAKENZIE VEGA / Grace Florrick

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series

30 ROCK (NBC)
SCOTT ADSIT / Pete Hornberger
ALEC BALDWIN / Jack Donaghy
KATRINA BOWDEN / Cerie
KEVIN BROWN / Dotcom
GRIZZ CHAPMAN / Grizz
TINA FEY / Liz Lemon
JUDAH FRIEDLANDER / Frank Rossitano
JANE KRAKOWSKI / Jenna Maroney
JOHN LUTZ / Lutz
JACK MCBRAYER / Kenneth Parcell
TRACY MORGAN / Tracy Jordan
MAULIK PANCHOLY / Jonathan
KEITH POWELL / Toofer

THE BIG BANG THEORY (CBS)
MAYIM BIALIK / Amy Farrah Fowler
KALEY CUOCO / Penny
JOHNNY GALECKI / Leonard Hofstadter
SIMON HELBERG / Howard Wolowitz
KUNAL NAYYAR / Rajesh Koothrappali
JIM PARSONS / Sheldon Cooper
MELISSA RAUCH / Bernadette Rostenkowski

GLEE (FOX)
DIANNA AGRON / Quinn Fabray
CHRIS COLFER / Kurt Hummel
DARREN CRISS / Blaine Anderson
ASHLEY FINK / Lauren Zizes
DOT MARIE JONES / Coach Beiste
JANE LYNCH / Sue Sylvester
JAYMA MAYS / Emma Pillsbury
KEVIN McHALE / Artie Abrams
LEA MICHELE / Rachel Berry
CORY MONTEITH / Finn Hudson
HEATHER MORRIS / Brittany Pierce
MATTHEW MORRISON / Will Schuester
MIKE O’MALLEY / Burt Hummel
CHORD OVERSTREET / Sam Evans
LAUREN POTTER / Becky Johnson
AMBER RILEY / Mercedes Jones
NAYA RIVERA / Santana Lopez
MARK SALLING / Noah ‘Puck’ Puckerman
HARRY SHUM, JR. / Mike Chang
IQBAL THEBA / Principal Figgins
JENNA USHKOWITZ / Tina Cohen-Chang

MODERN FAMILY (ABC)
AUBREY ANDERSON-EMMONS / Lily
JULIE BOWEN / Claire
TY BURRELL / Phil
JESSE TYLER FERGUSON / Mitchell
NOLAN GOULD / Luke
SARAH HYLAND / Haley
ED O’NEILL / Jay
RICO RODRIGUEZ / Manny
ERIC STONESTREET / Cameron
SOFIA VERGARA / Gloria
ARIEL WINTER / Alex

THE OFFICE (NBC)
LESLIE DAVID BAKER / Stanley Hudson
BRIAN BAUMGARTNER / Kevin Malone
CREED BRATTON / Creed Bratton
STEVE CARELL / Michael Scott
JENNA FISCHER / Pam Beesly Halpert
KATE FLANNERY / Meredith Palmer
ED HELMS / Andy Bernard
MINDY KALING / Kelly Kapoor
ELLIE KEMPER / Erin Hannon
ANGELA KINSEY / Angela Martin
JOHN KRASINSKI / Jim Halpert
PAUL LIEBERSTEIN / Toby Flenderson
B.J. NOVAK / Ryan Howard
OSCAR NUÑEZ / Oscar Martinez
CRAIG ROBINSON / Daryll Philbin
JAMES SPADER / Robert California
PHYLLIS SMITH / Phyllis Lapin-Vance
RAINN WILSON / Dwight Schrute
ZACH WOODS / Gabe Lewis

SAG HONORS FOR STUNT ENSEMBLES

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU (UNIVERSAL PICTURES)
COWBOYS & ALIENS (UNIVERSAL PICTURES)
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 (WARNER BROS. PICTURES)
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (PARAMOUNT PICTURES)
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (20TH CENTURY FOX)

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series
DEXTER (SHOWTIME)
GAME OF THRONES (HBO)
SOUTHLAND (TNT)
SPARTACUS: GODS OF THE ARENA (STARZ)
TRUE BLOOD (HBO)

LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Screen Actors Guild Awards 48th Annual Life Achievement Award

MARY TYLER MOORE

Until a couple of years ago, the 41-year-old earned his keep as a journeyman actor in Los Angeles and Chicago, never aspiring for more and always leaving time for his woodworking – again, just how Swanson makes it through life.

“I’d been making a really nice living for about 10 years here in L.A. I always felt successful just doing that… I wasn’t well known in the public, but I was a dependable working journeyman,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview.

“I was working more than all the people I knew from college and my Chicago theater community, so I didn’t notice that I wasn’t ‘successful’ enough. When I got my job on Parks, it was so dreamy, kind of unfathomable. I didn’t think a job that excellent could exist for me.”  Offerman has an explanation for why he and Swanson, Parks department head in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana, have so much in common. “Ron is always inside me, waiting to exact his righteous indignation. There’s a little bit of my dad and grandfather and every school principal I’ve ever come in contact with in Ron,” he explained about his character, a Libertarian who despises the capital gains tax and would eat bacon-covered steak all day if he wasn’t busy making sure the government doesn’t spend too much of its citizens’ money.

Now that he’s finally getting recognized for his talents, what advice does Offerman have for those actors still paying their dues? “The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that there is absolutely no better training ground than the theater. And the most important thing I learned from working SAG jobs is simply … patience,” he said. “If you’re an original thinker, you are going get told no a lot, and you have to be able to hear no many times from the bankers and trust that at some point, someone is going to recognize that you are an artist and not a can of soda.”

As Russell Edgington, he made the show 10 times more fun to watch with his portrayal of the Vampire King of Mississippi. From there he went back to Broadway in Elling and now, he’s starring in FX’s American Horror Story. He plays Larry the Burn Guy, a man who was disfigured in a fire started by his wife when he revealed his love for the neighbor, Constance (Jessica Lange).

In this Q&A, Denis talks about the make-up process for the show, how he got the part and how he’s “addicted” to theatre.

Follow Denis on Twitter!

American Horror Story airs on Wednesdays at 10pm on FX

For more American Horror Story, check out our interview with Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton

For the full interview, click the audio link above or download it from iTunes

You’re playing such a dark character, and a lot of times actors say that you have to like who you’re playing to be able to play that character convincingly.  Do you like anything about your character, and how do you connect with him?

Denis O’Hare: You know, it’s funny.  I love this character, and I love him because I feel like he is engaged in a sort of timeless epic struggle.  And I see him as kind of a Dante-esque figure.  He’s somebody who is trapped in a circle of hell, and he’s trying to work his way out.  And he’s a human being who’s flawed, and he’s obviously weak, and he’s given into temptation and made bad choices. 

But through that all he’s still got this sort of, I don’t know, passion and dream to achieve something.  And he’s—it’s an odd character.  Like no other character I’ve ever played in my life, I find that I have to reach for a metaphor to describe him.  I have an innate sense of who he is, and when I’m playing him it’s all very instinctual.  But to describe it I find myself running to literature, and so I think it’s sort of like Igor in the Frankenstein mythology, or an amanuensis in some other mythologies, or a psychopomp as they call them sometimes, somebody who traffics between worlds.  And it’s a really odd, beautiful character. 

You seem to really be able to lose yourself in every role you play.  You’re so great all the time, but it always takes a minute to go, “Oh, it’s him!” because you’ve become that character so incredibly.  How does that happen with you?

Denis O’Hare: Well, part of it is the richness of the character.  A part of the reason I’m drawn to characters like this guy, or like ‘Russell Edgington,’ or like even the guys like ‘John Briggs’ in Milk, is that they’re sharply etched, and they’re clearly defined.  And so I, as an actor, have an easier task. 

I know where I’m going, and if you add to it an aspect that’s larger than life like someone like ‘Russell Edgington’ who’s 2800 years old, or someone like ‘Larry’ who’s got a very severe physical deformity, it takes away part of your resistance as an actor, and you simply give over to the character’s features and the character’s characteristics.  You know, Ryan [Murphy] wanted me to have a wooded arm and sort of a limp.  So the minute you start putting these things on you feel different and you feel like someone else, and that then forms everything.

What is it that you like and dislike about genre work like American Horror Story and True Blood?

Denis O’Hare: I guess I didn’t even know the word genre until I did True Blood.  That’s how naïve I was, and I didn’t realize that there was a point of view about certain types of TV.  And so I guess I found it disappointing that there is a segment of the critical community that looks at genre as something that is separate, less than.  And especially when it comes to something like the awards I find it kind of baffling that True Blood has been snubbed so many times given the incredible range of acting they have on there, I mean, incredible storytelling and the incredible production values. 

So I guess I’ve been a little shocked at the prejudice that exists even by having a word called genre.  What I love about it is that it, like sci-fi, is truly imaginative.  And I guess I’m kid at heart in that when I go for entertainment.  I want to be totally transported.  I want to go somewhere else, I want to encounter different things, different beings, different universes.  And so I love that aspect of being able to play those things in both True Blood and in American Horror Story. 

How did the role come to you?

Denis O’Hare: Fairly suddenly and without warning.  I received a phone call, my agent got a phone call from Ryan Murphy saying he wanted to talk to me.  And my agent said, “I can’t tell you what.  I just know that he wants to talk to you.”  And I said, “Well of course I’m going to take his phone call.” 

And he basically outlined American Horror Story for me and said that there’s a character named ‘Larry the Burn Guy,’ and I’d like you to play it. Couldn’t tell me whole lot about where ‘Larry’ was going to go, but he sent me the pilot which I read over the weekend, and we were supposed to begin on Monday and he said, “Do you want to do this?” and I said, “Absolutely, I’d love to do it.”  And that was it.  We made the deal, and we moved on. 

It was very unusual, and that was my understanding is that’s how Ryan operates.  He tends to be very to the point.  He decides what he wants, and he goes after it and gets it, and I loved it.

There are so many schools of acting from Stanislavski Method to Laurence Olivier’s, “It’s all just pretend, dear boy.”  What is your process, and how did you apply it to creating ‘Larry’?

Denis O’Hare: I mean, I’m a Stanislavski actor.  I was trained at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois—Evanston, rather.  The tradition I come from is a form of Stanislavski, which means that you are looking simultaneously at the text and looking for clues beneath the words.  And you’re also doing an imaginative exercise where you’re thinking about what’s happening in this world, what’s happening after this moment, what’s happening before this moment, where have I come from, what is the entire history behind this moment? 

And with a character like ‘Larry’ there’s so much to draw on.  And the challenge, of course, is that I’m not always up to speed about what is true and what’s a lie.  And I’ve had a shocking conversation from Ryan about a month ago where we’re talking about where ‘Larry’ was headed, and given last night’s episode he said to me, “Well, we’ll find out that everything ‘Larry’ said is a lie.”  As an actor you’re kind of like, “Oh, so all the things I’ve been playing are a lie” which is kind of genius on one hand, because actors with too much information can be very dangerous creatures. 

So it’s nice to not have all the information but to simply play what I think is happening in front of me.  It’s certainly what deluded people do, and many of these characters are deluded.  So it’s kind of nice to be in the same boat as they are. 

‘Larry’ looks so completely scary.  Can you  talk about the transformational process that you have to undergo to turn out looking as a burn victim?

Denis O’Hare: Yes, it’s funny… I was noticing last night that they actually favored my right side, my face, a lot in that episode, and we didn’t actually see a whole lot of the burned part, which I found very interesting.  It’s a trick when you’re shooting to try to figure out how…which side do you favor.  Makeup takes about three and a half hours, and it’s this great company that works with American Horror Story.  Christien Tinsley is the name of the company, and a guy named Mike Mekash is my primary makeup artist, and he’s just fantastic. 

And it’s a long process, obviously.  It’s multi-layered appliances, and then there’s a lot of painting, a lot of hand painting, and then there’s a wig involved, and then that goes on.  And then the hand has to be cinched in, and the hand gets makeup-ed.  And it’s exhausting, but it’s really great, because it allows me to sort of step down into the character gradually.  I don’t ever get chopped into shooting.  By the time I am shooting I am very well ready. 

You come from a long line of actors who are onscreen wearing a good deal of prosthetic make-up from Ron Chaney to Robert Englund.  That first time you’ve had the makeup one, how much time did it take for you to kind of get into that skin and realize the extent of what your facial expressions could be like and how far you can take it?

Denis O’Hare: There’s a—when you first put it on I was walking around the lot at Paramount in California, and I went to the cafeteria.  And it was very uncomfortable, because the makeup is so good, and it looks so real that people assumed I wasn’t an actor, they assumed that is was, “Oh, look at that poor guy.”  So people would sort of avert their eyes, or they would nod politely, and it’s a great exercise in exploring what the character’s daily reality must be like.  I found myself, and I find myself, not wanting to be in public. 

So when I’m shooting I tend to sit in my trailer alone and ask the … with me.  I tend not to—I don’t want to walk around, I don’t want to be gawked at.  It’s really weird, I just find myself in the position, I just, you know—not that I’m ashamed; I don’t want to be the freak show. 

And that’s a really interesting experience I didn’t expect to have.  It’s an intense thing.  I can only really smile on one side of my face, on the right side.  The left side is sort of locked down, and that creates a wonderful, wry, crooked expression.  I can—it’s funny, I have a few scenes where I’ve actually wept, and the left eye also weeps so, there is that.

You’ve done a ton of Broadway and obviously film and TV.  Does any one give you more satisfaction at the end of the day?

Denis O’Hare: You know, I think—I mean, I’m trained as a theater actor, and I’ve spent most of my life on stage, and I—the sort of immediacy and tight-wire act that theater acting is I’m addicted to.  That being said, there are things you can do in film and TV that you can not do in theater, and the subtlety in film and TV I really relish.  And the sort of outlandish effects you can do in film and TV I find attractive.  I, for instance, have never done this kind of makeup on a stage piece.  I’ve never done that before, and so I’ve only been afforded this sort of experience in TV and film, and I do love that.

I’m sure you don’t have to audition a lot anymore, but what’s probably been your worst audition where you just come out of the audition room and you’re like, “Ah.”

Denis O’Hare: It’s funny you should say that.  I don’t know if you know who James Morrison is.  He was an actor on 24.  He’s a lovely guy.  He made a documentary called Showing Up, and it is about the audition process, and he interviewed, I don’t know, 30 people. 

B.D. Wong is in it and Lois Smith and Stephen Spinella and tons of actors, Margo Martindale, talking about their worst experiences in auditions.  I’ve had a lot of them.  I tend to be a little feisty, and I’ve had fights in auditions with casting directors which I’m not proud of, and it didn’t serve me well.  But I—yes, I have a little bit of an Irish temper.  

Michael Shannon

As Shannon prepares for his upcoming role as General Zod in Man of Steel, he sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about his early years as a struggling actor.

Unlike many actors, Shannon didn’t enter acting because of a deep love for movies or theatre.  In fact, he accidentally stumbled into it in high school after he realized that he wasn’t cut out for anything else!

He explains, “I wanted something to do after school; I was in Kentucky and I was not athletic — athletics are very competitive in Kentucky so I was not going to get on any teams — I tried math team or something and that didn’t go very well.  And then I saw this thing for speech team, which I… I didn’t even know what the hell it was.  I walk into the room and they say ‘Tell a story.  Just make up a story.’  I was like ‘okay’ so I made up some goofy story and they’re like ‘All right, that’s pretty good,’ and they said ‘We want you to be in the monologue competition.’  And I was like ‘I don’t know, what is it?  I don’t know what that is.’ And they hand me a piece of paper and said ‘You memorize this.’  Okay, so I went home and memorized it and it was Garrison Keiller; it was from Lake Wobegon Days, and it was like a page long, you know, and I had never memorized anything in my life.  But I practiced it all the time; I would just be in my bedroom practicing it.  I was an alternate, I actually was not a first-stringer, I would only do it if somebody got sick or got hit by a bus.  But that never happened.  Although I did go for… they called me once and said ‘Our extraneous speaker can’t come, would you like to do that?’ and I was like ‘Sure.’  That’s when you draw subjects out of a hat and you have to make a speech about it.  So, that wasn’t really acting, but that was my first exposure to the wonderful world of dramatic arts.”  

After that experience he started to pursue acting in Chicago.  Shannon recalls his first experience on stage: “I had moved up to Chicago where my father lived, and I had gotten out of high school and just started auditioning in the city.  The first play I did was called Winterset by Maxwell Anderson.  It’s an amazing play about Sacco and Vanzetti — remember them, the Italian anarchists — well it imagines one of their sons trying to avenge their father’s death.  It’s an amazing, beautiful play.  I did it out in some suburbs… in the Park Forest River Park… Forest River something.  But that was my first job”

So were the reviews any good?  Shannon jokes about his initially reviews in the Chicago media.  “Richard Christianson, who was like the Frank Rich of Chicago Theatre… I think he said something like ‘Michael Shannon is a semi-attractive youngster who thinks acting is rubbing his eyebrows and flapping his arms like a Brooklyn Bird… well the second show I did he said ‘Although technically deficient, Shannon has a great deal of passion… or raw talent.”

After a few years in Chicago theatre Shannon decided to pursue a movie career in Los Angeles for several years.  “I came out to LA… I lived here from 99 to 2001 — the turn of the century… I did three Jerry Bruckheimer movies — that didn’t hurt — which helped.  Yeah, it was good, it was a productive time.  I worked pretty much constantly.  There were breaks here and there, but it was good.  Most of the time I was like, third guy on the left or whatever, but I got a lot of experience, I got to see how it worked, you know.  But then I started to miss doing theatre, and I went back to Chicago in 2001.”

In the interview Shannon goes on to explain his first major roles and how he ended up with the lead role in Take Shelter.  Check out the rest of Shannon’s interview below:

John C. Reilly

But that doesn’t mean Reilly doesn’t get intimidated when he’s cast in a film with an all-star cast. As one of the leads in Roman Polanski‘s latest film, Carnage (an adaptation of the award-winning 2006 Yasmina Reza play God of Carnage), Reilly spoke to Moviefone about being in such an acclaimed production.  “That’s one of the difficult things of being an actor that I’m still not used to. You have to go, you have to show up at these places where you know nobody, and sometimes with really impressive, high stakes people like Roman Polanski. You just have to be confident enough in yourself, ‘I belong here! I belong in this room, little John Reilly from the southside of Chicago belongs in a room with Jodi Foster and Kate Winslet and Roman Polanski.’ A friend of mine in acting school said, ‘Fake it ’til you make it.’”  He adds a summary of that good advice: “Just pretend like you belong there and maybe you’ll rise to the occasion.”   So which does Reilly prefer: comedy or drama?  While he might not have a preference, he certain knows which he finds easier.  He explains, “Comedy is easier in that it’s just a more joyful day at work. The whole point is to just have fun, but that said, it’s pretty demanding. It’s either funny or it’s not, and when it’s not funny there’s no getting around that.”

Like many actors, Reilly draws from his youth to help him in his roles, as he does in his indie misfit teenager comedy Terri.  Reilly admits that like the main character in Terri he wasn’t very popular in high school, revealing, “I was an outcast but I was an outcast among a group of outcasts.” 

He elaborates, explaining that being an outcast actually drew him to acting, “I come from a pretty working class Irish-American neighborhood in Chicago. I went to a public school, for grammar school and got involved in plays pretty early on at the local park by my house, which was an odd thing. Not many people did that. But for whatever reason I was drawn to this world of make-believe. A friend of mine told me about it and we went over there together and I was like, ‘This is my people! This is what I like doing.’”

I’m glad he discovered it so early — after all, whether it’s in a comedy or a drama, John C. Reilly is always worth watching!

Carnage is set for a December 16 release after debuting during the New York Film Festival.

Michael Shannon

After the long-resumed but little-known Shannon received an Oscar nomination for 2008′s Revolutionary Road his popularity has exploded because of his chilling role as Agent Nelson Van Alden on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, which has launched him into the seemingly perfect role of General Zod in the upcoming Zack Snyder Superman film, Man of Steel. 

Because of these recent intimidating roles one would think Shannon wouldn’t be the type of person you’d want to run into in a dark alley, but as Shannon tells The Daily Beast, his background is far more varied.

First of all comes the fact that Shannon was trained to be a comedian in Chicago.  Still, he admits that he often finds himself gravitating to characters who have some sort of mental illness — including an upcoming role as infamous hit man Richard Kuklinski in The Iceman — explaining, “I’m not an expert on mental illness.  I don’t necessarily think that we have as great a handle on our brains as we seem to think we do. I still think the mind is very mysterious and people are very mysterious.”   Shannon credits his interest in analyzing such characters to his grandfather Raymond Corbett Shannon, who was a noted researcher in the behavior patterns of insects.  Shannon recalls, “There certainly seems to be a curiosity that’s been handed down.  He died when my father was a child, so sometimes I wonder what he’d make of all of this that I’m doing. My father had this letter that my grandfather had written, and it was the only thing I ever really knew or saw about my grandfather, and it was a letter in which my grandfather listed all the things he wanted my father to be able to do, and it was like 200 damn things! My father would show me this letter and say, ‘This is where I came from.’ I was like, ‘Holy s—, that’s intense!’ So I guess I’ve got some of that in my DNA. That intensity.”  It certainly suggests the intensity that Shannon brings to Boardwalk Empire!

Yet certainly Shannon’s biggest blockbuster role will be General Zod, memorably played by Terrence Stamp in Superman II. Shannon admits that taking such an iconic role is challenging, but he’s ready to make it his own.  He says, “I’ve seen Terrence’s interpretation and I loved it. It’s iconic and it’s intimidating.  It requires a lot of imagination, since it’s not an everyday character or someone you’d run into on the street. I have to figure out what it means, the whole notion of being a general. I went out and got Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs just to read about the life of a general and see what he thought about and what that experience was like, because to me, that’s a key component to capturing the character.  It’s not enough for me to be in Man of Steel, I want to do something really special with it. It’s not like I’ve won the lottery or something. I’ve got to justify everybody’s wanting me to be involved.”

Michael Shannon currently appears in Boardwalk Empire, now in its second season on HBO and in the films Take Shelter and Machine Gun Preacher, now both in limited release.

Written by Sean Pratt

Just because you’re acting in a play doesn’t mean you can just kick back and enjoy yourself.

You’ve made it through technical rehearsals, the show has opened and now the next several weeks will be about working at your day job and performing during the evenings and weekends…or so you might think. But really, this is the time when you should be doing three important things; promoting this current production to the people in your network, using this play as an entrée to meeting new people in the Biz and finally, using the free time you have to research future work. They’re all important and the time to do them is during the run of that show!

Extra! Extra! Read all About It!

Hopefully, before Opening Night arrived, you were sketching out ideas for how you wanted to promote this show and your part in it. Both the information and its presentation are important here, so don’t just send out a notice that you’re in the show…add some sparkle to it by being creative. Also, you have multiple ways of reaching your targeted groups.  Here are four suggestions:

1. Create a flyer about the show. If it’s garnered a great review, incorporate that as well. Also, be sure to either include a press shot of you in character, or at the very least, your headshot. If there’s a really great photo to work with then consider putting it on the front of the flyer with the show info, etc., on the back.

2. Take this same idea but use less info and put it on a postcard. There are dozens of companies on the web that offer great deals on printing up small runs of postcards for a great price.

3. Are you on Facebook…of course you are! Then create an event page and send out some invites. The same goes for an email blast to all the people in your contacts.

4. You might consider creating an e-newsletter to keep people informed about your work. These cost next to nothing and are an easy way to create great advertising with video, audio and links to your resume, reels and photos.

Hi, You Don’t Know Me But…

An actor is never as attractive, or wanted, as when they’re working, which makes it an excellent time to push for that meeting with the agent, casting director, or theatre that you’ve wanted to talk to. From their perspective, the confidence, happiness and excitement you’re projecting, because you’re working, seems to magnetize your personality. From your perspective, you’re at the top of your game and the future looks great. This feeling should be the anchor you can hold onto, because you’ll be nervous, if you land that audition or interview. Plus, you’ll have something current to talk about.

When writing or calling them, be sure to use the show as the lever by which you get them to finally open their door to let you in. Offer to send them a flyer or some other piece of advertising which talks about the show; better yet, offer them tickets! Let them know that you’ve been waiting for the appropriate time to contact them and now is the moment. Even if they can’t make time for you, the fact that you made the effort has put you on their radar screen.

Watson, the Game is Afoot!

The final task is to put your detective hat on and start looking for your next job. Use the Yahoo! and Facebook Groups you’ve signed up with, along with Google Alerts to collect information about who is casting what projects in your city. If you’re lucky enough to be working out of town on a well-paying gig, then maybe you should be looking at the theatres or casting offices there. By networking with the local actors there, you’ll find out who’s who and what’s what.

There’s many a story of an actor who was working in Las Vegas, Chicago, Seattle or Washington D.C., who spent their free time learning about those cities and what opportunities they held, auditioned for a project and landed another job there.  

Sean Pratt, (AEA / SAG / AFTRA), has been a working actor for over 20 years. Sean was a member of the resident acting company at The Pearl Theatre, an Off-Broadway classical repertory theatre and has also performed at numerous regional theatres around the country.  Major films include – Gods and Generals, Tuck Everlasting and Iron Jawed Angels. Television work includes – The host of HGTV’s, Old Homes Restored, and supporting roles on Homicide, The District and America’s Most Wanted.  Audiobooks – He’s narrated for 15 years and has recorded nearly 550 books in just about every genre.  He also teaches classes on and writes articles about the business of the Biz.

The show, starring Jason O’Mara and Stephen Lang, is set in the year 2149 at a time when humankind is threatened with extinction. In an effort to save the human race, scientists develop a time machine that opens a portal 85 million years to prehistoric Earth.

The Shannon family, Jim and Elizabeth and their three children, travel through the portal to establish a new human colony in hopes of saving the future earth.

Jason, whose credits include In Justice and Life on Mars, stars as Jim Shannon, “a devoted father with a checkered past who guides his family through this new world of limitless beauty, mystery and terror.” And dinosaurs. Yes!

I talked to Jason in a conference call about how he got the part, the acting challenges he had to face and the difficulties of shooting on location for months at a time.

Follow Jason on Twitter!

Terra Nova airs on Mondays at 8/7c on FOX

For the full interview, click the audio link above or download it from iTunes

How did this part and this show come to you?

Jason O’Mara: Well, to be perfectly honest it was one of those kind of things that was—okay, let me start at the beginning.  I was in London doing a play at the Donmar Warehouse.

What play?

Jason O’Mara: It was called Serenading Louie.  It was an off-Broadway play from like 1972, I think, or ’73, that was being revived and I did it with Jason Butler Harner, who is a great American actor.  I think he’s going to be in Alcatraz on Fox in the mid-season.  Simon Curtis directed it, who’s married to Elizabeth McGovern and he’s directed a lot of stuff recently, actually.  He’s just directed My Week with Marilyn, which is coming out soon. 

I really had a great time, but I really felt—I had skipped pilot season because I was in London for all of that and I thought that Hollywood had completely moved on and had lost interest in me, which would have been fine, you know, whatever.  Things go in cycles.  I came back and my agent called me and said, “Just so you know I’ve had several conversations with Dreamworks and Fox about a production that they’re working on called Terra Nova and Steven Spielberg is highly involved in the casting and is signing off on everything related to the production.  That’s a hoop that we need to jump through before we progress any further.”   I hadn’t got an offer or anything.  This was just, you know they were just sort of checking my availability and seeing if I was interested.  I read a version of the script, which has changed a lot since, but I was intrigued by the scale of it and the ambitiousness of it.  After I was done reading it I thought that this can never be made for television; it’s too big.  This is a movie.  Then remembering that Steven Spielberg was involved, I thought well, if anybody can do it, he can.   

What intrigued me most about the script was that it was really about second chances and if we were given a second chance as a race would we make the same mistakes?  That was kind of the thing that hooked me onto it.  I said to my agent, “You know I would be interested if it goes further.”  He said, “Okay, well there are a lot of people involved with this because it’s such a big production.  I’ll discuss this with everybody and get back to you.” 

Then I got a phone call.  I was walking down the street in New York City and I got a phone call from him again, my agent, saying, “Okay, Steven Spielberg has been in touch and he wants to watch some scenes from your work.  He wants to see some reels.”  But not my show reels, he wanted to see some more dramatic stuff.  I sent some scenes from Life on Mars to my agent and he put them together on a web site for Mr. Spielberg to watch and he watched them. 

Then I didn’t hear anything for about 48 hours and I was sure that I would not get this; that I wouldn’t hear any more about it and I got a phone call saying, “They want you to take the role of Jim Shannon on Terra Nova.  Would you be interested?”  I said, “Hey, man it has Steven Spielberg; it has dinosaurs and it’s one of the most ambitious TV projects of all time.  That sounds like a dream, sign me up.”  I did and I haven’t regretted a single thing.  It’s been a wonderful journey.

You’ve been on some good series that unfortunately haven’t quite caught on with audiences.  Is there something different about this?  Does it feel like this is really going to be the one that really sort of hits it out of the park in that regard for you?

Jason O’Mara: Oh, I hope so.  Yes, third time lucky, is it, maybe?  I’ve never got a show to a second season so I’m sure people online are painfully aware of this and maybe audiences are as well.  What’s great about this is that in Life on Mars I had the most amazing cast assembled on television at the time, I believe, so I was ably supported in that.

In Justice was a great show, but I don’t think we were able to make enough noise to kind of break through, but with this I’m really not sweating the premiere because it’s really about whether people are ready for a show like this, and I believe they are.

It’s not really down to me.  The show is way bigger than the actors are.  Steven Spielberg’s presence is one of the selling points.  The dinosaurs obviously are a huge aspect of all of this, so we’re hoping that people kind of come for these reasons, but stay because they’re enjoying the world we’ve created and the dynamics between the characters and the relationships that are forming.  As the season progresses and deepens you’ll get to know the characters better and see where we’re going with the story lines.       

To answer your question, I really feel like it’s out of my hands and I’ve done my work and now it’s just a question as to how much of a hit this is going to be.  I think we might be on to something here, but I’ve been wrong in the past.

Could talk about sort of just acting in the world of Terra Nova—acting without dinosaurs actually being there and working such a physical show in the wilderness, so to speak.

Jason O’Mara: Yes, well, first of all you know Brisbane stood in for Chicago.  Brisbane is the Australian city on the East Coast of Australia, and a lot of Chicago was CGI because we’re not dealing with Chicago, we’re dealing with that city 150 years or so from now.

We tried to recreate it in the most imaginative way possible.  I think it looks pretty darn cool, but scary as well.  The future is kind of a bleak place.  Listen, it has been very challenging shooting this show.  We’re outside for a lot of this.  The Australian Outback can be quite unforgiving.  We haven’t had any medical emergencies on the cast so far in terms of the wildlife.  There are a lot of snakes.  I don’t know how poisonous it was, but I had a toad like crawl across my boots just last week, which was really kind of cool actually, but we’re really out there.  We’re really out there in the rain forest and on location and we’re exposed to the elements for better or for worse.

I mean anybody who goes out for a hike on a regular basis knows how tired you are in the evenings and you come back after a long day’s shooting of being out in the forest and you want the next day off, but we don’t get days off.  The next it’s up early and it starts again.  That’s the challenging thing with TV; it’s not the action scenes per se and it’s not the location scenes and the heavy dialogue scenes, but the fact that there is just no let up; there is no break.  Oftentimes we’ll even work Saturdays to get all this in. 

We’re shooting in eight or nine days per episode, but we shoot in blocks and to accommodate publicity like the tour I’m on now and other things we have to move the scheduling and the shooting days around, but it’s something we have made work for ourselves.  It’s working so far.  We shoot with three cameras per unit.  Sometimes we shoot with two different units or where we’re shooting two different episodes at the same time.  Sometimes we splinter units that have cameras on board helicopters.  It’s a pretty big production—the size of which I’m not sure has been seen in recent memory on broadcast TV.  

Could you tell us what maybe sticks out most in your mind about shooting the pilot for Terra Nova? 

Jason O’Mara: Let’s see.  Well, first of all, it’s been well documented how difficult some of the shooting days were on the pilot due to the inclement weather.  As if it wasn’t hard enough trying to create as ambitious and as complicated a show as this is to make, we had to contend with some extreme weather.  The days where I opened my trailer and stepped down and literally was up to my knees in a pile of mud—they were the days where you go, I don’t think we’re shooting today.

They were able to work magic with the schedule and oftentimes we would be back in a studio or whatever, wherever we needed to be while it rained cats and dogs outside, or cats and dinos, as it felt sometimes.  So that was probably the most challenging aspect of that. 

From an acting standpoint, what maybe were some of the initial acting challenges stepping into the role for you?

Jason O’Mara: Yes, well, I’ve always tried to keep my character—I like to play very raw characters, characters who have a degree of vulnerability and passion about what they’re doing.  I suppose the greatest acting challenge was to allow Jim to have enough darkness and even allow him to be more flawed than perhaps he was on paper.  That is something that I’ve sort of confidently been talking to the writers about, about trying to keep Jim as complicated as possible so he’s not just a hero running around protecting his family and chasing dinosaurs, either chasing after them or running from them, so that there is a little more to him than that.

I suppose that was sort of my challenge to try to keep Jim as grounded, as real, and as complicated and human as possible.  Technically the green screen acting can be difficult because—there is something worse by the way than a tennis ball on the end of a stick, it’s an Australian visual effects assistant running around with a cardboard dinosaur head cut off on the end of a stick while wearing shorts and sandals running around a field.  And you’re supposed to look intimidated and scared to death of this guy and he’s a very sweet guy, but it’s just really hard to be really scared of something like that when all you want to do is burst out into fits of laughter.

That stuff can be tricky and difficult, but then you’re really at the whim of the visual effects guys and the editor when it comes to that stuff, so you do your best with it and move on.  I think just trying to keep Jim as edgy and engaging and as intriguing as possible given that we’re also trying to make this as appealing for as many different people as possible.  That’s always a very thin line to walk.

How was it decided to shoot there or using Brisbane as Chicago, for example?

Jason O’Mara: I’m not really involved in those decisions, but I know that there was talk initially—I only know just through the phone calls I would get last year and it has been well over a year now since this whole journey started for me.  I would get a phone call saying, “Okay, right now they’re considering Louisiana.”  “Right now they’re considering Hawaii.”  “Right now they’re considering Florida again.”  I think it was deemed that Australia would offer the show the right kind of locations in a pretty localized way.  We’re only sort of 30 minutes drive from one place to another.

From where we live to the studio to the Terra Nova location to all of the other locations that we’ve been shooting like waterfalls and forests and beaches and cliff faces and all that stuff—it’s all pretty localized.  There is an amazing amount of sort of topical diversity when it comes to landscape in a sort of small amount of space.  I think that’s probably why it was chosen over the other places. 

There is also a fairly established infrastructure there that is their sort of Hollywood.  They have stages set up there and next to it is like a theme park called Movie World.  Sometimes we have roller coasters and people screaming as we’re having a break inside the studio and walking from our trailers.  It’s kind of funny.  They do have that sort of already set up.  They have very experienced crews.  Our crews have been fantastic.  It’s also a beautiful part of the world. 

I think while I find the separation very difficult, and while I always prefer production to be done on U.S. soil because I think it’s important for jobs here in the states and to keep the industry in the states, I do understand why Australia was the set location for the first season of Terra Nova. 

You mentioned Spielberg and time travel and dinosaurs and the intense shooting schedule and everything.  Do you find it even the little off time that you’ve had a weird transition to doing mundane things like taking out the trash or doing dishes?

Jason O’Mara: No.  No, what’s good about this is the really hard thing about this – the hardest aspect of all of this is being away from my family.  I don’t know if I’ve answered any question like that since we started this call, but the hardest thing has been being away from my family.  My wife, Paige Turco, who is an actress, who is pursuing a career from New York City and my son who is seven years old.  I really, really miss them. 

They have come over to visit me for an extended period of time, but not for the full five and a half months or whatever it’s been.  I‘ve spent a lot of that time missing them terribly.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is my wife hasn’t been there to tell me to take out the trash, so every cloud has its silver lining.  No, I did actually go to the—I’m so intense on this show; I work almost every scene.  I work almost every day.  I literally do not have time to take out the trash.  I’m going to be coming down to earth hard when I get back home because that is one of my major jobs in the house is to stamp out the garbage.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Before this season started, McElhenney, who is usually really fit, grabbed headlines by gaining 50 pounds – 53 to be exact. He did it because he was watching a “popular sitcom” and noticed that the actors got better looking over the years. So, he thought, “what would happen if the character would completely just let himself go and his age caught up to him?” After eating probably thousands of doughnuts (yes, that’s what he ate), he was successful. I’ve seen a couple of this seasons episodes and he’s right, it does add a lot more to the character and the show.

Rob also talked about their plans beyond this season, how he and the rest of the cast are involved in every aspect of the show and if there will ever be another Nightman Cometh tour. 

It’s Always Sunny airs Thursdays at 10 on FX

For the full interview, click the audio link above or download it from iTunes

How much of the show is scripted versus you guys just ad-libbing?

Rob McElhenney: Well, we usually try to do at least one or two takes completely scripted. So, we very carefully and arduously over probably the longest span of the production cycle spend writing, and I’d say we get at least one or two, maybe three, takes of it exactly as scripted. And then from that point forward we’ll ad lib and maybe change the scene, or if certain things aren’t working we’ll make cuts. And then, in the editing room we have either scripted or non-scripted takes, and then sometimes we find that it just works better in script form, and sometimes it just works better as a completely new scene, and we’ll build something completely different in post.  

Do you ever worry that you go too far?

Rob McElhenney: No, but mostly because we have—I think we have a really sensitive barometer for that, and ultimately we have a rule, which is, if it comes across as the characters being mean and abusive, then it’s funny. But, if it comes across as the writers or the creator or the producers being abusive or mean, then it’s not funny. And, I think ultimately the audience can tell the difference.

All of you guys are involved in every aspect of the set, the filming, what’s going on behind the scenes and in front of the scenes. Can you tell us a little about your viewpoint as one of the actors/producers/writers with the show?

Rob McElhenney: Yes. I mean, I can’t imagine doing it any other way. For us, it’s just sort of been that way from the very beginning. And, because it was such a grassroots show, and because we didn’t know how to make a TV show, we just kind of figured it out as we went along.

You know, it’s the really, the only way we know how to do it, and we’ve definitely—over the years—have gotten a little more patient and certainly a lot more respectful of each person’s individual role on the show. And thus far now, I think, in Season 7, we’ve spent a lot of time delegating responsibility, and that’s really been, I think, the key to the show continuing to grow and to get as good as it’s gotten.

So, it used to be that we would sit behind the monitors, and right behind the director’s ear, and kind of be really, I think, ultimately overbearing, and I think we’ve gotten to a point where we work with the directors. Well, this year one director, Matt Shakman, we’ve gotten to a really great rhythm with him where we’re getting what we want, and he’s getting what he wants, and everybody’s happy.

One of the big things this season is that you put on a lot of weight. Could you tell us more about that? You actually put on what, 50 pounds I think it is?

Rob McElhenney: Yes. A little over 50 pounds. I think the final count is like 52 or something—53.

Where was the reasoning behind this? Were you guys just like, “Oh, we think it’d be funny is Mac got fat?” What did you guys think about that?

Rob McElhenney: No. Ultimately, what happened was, it was in between seasons last year; six into seven. And, I was watching a popular sitcom, and I noticed that the actors were getting better looking as the years were going by, and I started to think about any show that I have ever seen in which that wasn’t the case.

I feel like shows in their sixth, seventh, and eighth season, the actors have a lot more money, they become a little bit more famous, and they have better access to better wardrobe, new hair, new teeth, sometimes plastic surgery. And, I thought how untrue of life that was, that especially characters like this who abuse themselves in so many different ways, would start to look—would start to deteriorate over time and certainly wouldn’t look better.

And, our goal has always been to try and do what’s not being done on television, and literally deconstructing the sitcom. So, where most sitcoms try to make the characters as lovable and likable, and as far I’m concerned, as fake as possible, we try to go the opposite, which is to make them as deplorable as possible, just to see if we can get away with it. And, it seems like the audience responds to that.

So, for me, it wasn’t just about getting overweight, it was about trying to look as unattractive as I possibly could. So, it was as if, what would happen if the character would completely just let himself go and his age caught up to him? So, I grew a disgusting beard, I didn’t wash my hair, and I was 50 pounds overweight, and yet the character still thought he looked good. That to me was funny. Simply getting overweight, that would be just a stunt, and that wasn’t very funny to me.

Just out of pure curiosity, in your journey to put on 50 pounds, is there a particular food item you found most effective?

Rob McElhenney: Donuts. Yes. I actually worked with a nutritionist to try and do it as healthy as possible, but at a certain point I just needed to consume as many calories as possible. And, he said go for the donuts so that’s what I did. I would literally eat six to eight donuts everyday through production. That was amazing. I will not lie to you.

I was originally buying some of those donuts that you can find prepackaged in the supermarkets, and my nutritionist was like, “Look. If you’re going to eat donuts everyday, don’t eat those, because they have a shelf life of six months, and they’re pumped full of so many preservatives and chemicals that you’re going to wind up even sicker than you would be otherwise.” So, I was literally encouraged to find a healthier form of donut, and I found that in the form of a local bakery.

Do you have an end game in mind? As far as how many seasons that you see the show running for, where the characters are going to go?

Rob McElhenney: Well, originally we did. And, what we found is that we just kept thinking that the show was going to get old after awhile as most sitcoms do, but I think we have a couple of things on our side.

One is that we don’t do 22 or 24 episodes like most sitcoms. We’ve done as few as seven and as many as fifteen. But we’ve never exceeded 15, and I think that that’s helped us just from a content standpoint.

So, we have that kind of going in our favor, so it’s not about the amount of years. It’s more about the amount of episodes. And, every time I kind of mention to fans, “Hey, do you think that this is going to get old?” they keep saying, “Well, it hasn’t gotten old, yet.”

 So, our feeling is, if we can keep making the episodes and people keep watching them, then we’ll try to do it as long as possible, and I think a barometer for us will be each year saying, “Is this episode as good or better than the season before it?” And, if the answer is no we’ll have to think about wrapping it up. And, if it is, we’ll keep making them. And, as of now we’re under contract for at least two more.

The gang has always gotten into some fantastically awesome and outrageous situations. Is there one specific thing that you would like to see happen that you guys haven’t done yet?

Rob McElhenney: If I can answer that question now, it would have already been in an episode.

I think, ultimately, we rack our brains in that writer’s room every year trying to figure out just that. And, there hasn’t been anything that we’ve tried, that we’ve really wanted to do, that hasn’t quite worked. There are certain things that we—there are some things—that we try to do that might not work in a particular episode, but we can make them work in another episode.

When you guys are coming up with storylines, do any of you ever say, “No, my character would never do that?”

Rob McElhenney: No, pretty much because our characters would do anything if it suited their needs in the moment. So like, even forms of like great ultraism, or any acts of great ultraism, would still play regardless of how deplorable our characters were if they felt like it was going to garner them what they wanted in that particular moment. Because, then you buy it, because you know what the motivation is, even if in the moment the motivation is selfless, you know ultimately it’s going to be selfish.

And, when you’re on hiatus, are you pursuing other work like auditioning or writing other things, or just taking a much-needed break?

Rob McElhenney: No, I feel like I’ll take a break when I’m in my 40s. I think right now I want to take as much time as I have to take advantage of the opportunities that we have because of the show. So, I’m writing a movie, and I know the guys are writing a movie and working on a couple of other TV shows, and we’re producing an animated show for FX that will be on next year. So, we try to stay busy.

Obviously the show requires a ton of planning. What have you thought of beyond this season, assuming you’re getting approved for Season 8?

Rob McElhenney: Yes, we actually we just signed an overall deal for the next two years with an option for the tenth season, so we’re definitely coming back for Seasons 8 and 9. And, what we’re going to do is, cut the order back to ten episodes, at least for Season 8. We’re not sure about Season 9.

And, ultimately that’s because we want to make sure that the quality of the show stays up to par, and ultimately we’d all love to do 15, 20 episodes, because it would be incredibly lucrative. But, I think, really when it comes down to it we don’t want to ever feel like we’ve sold out our fans.  And as frustrating as it might be for us and for the fans to only get to watch ten episodes, and for us to only make ten episodes next year, I think, ultimately, it will keep the quality of the show up. And, to me, I believe that this season, the seventh season, is our strongest season yet. Which to me, it makes me incredibly optimistic for the future.

Do you guys plan on ever doing another Night Man Cometh tour?

Rob McElhenney: It was. We actually, we thought about doing it this year, to promote this year, because we—two years ago we did the East Coast and the West Coast, but we took a lot of flack from all our fans in the Midwest and in the South who wanted us to come there. You know, the Chicagoes and the New Orleans and the Dallases and the Houstons and the Kansas Cities, and we really wanted to make it happen, we just didn’t have the time.

So, this year we talked about doing it, but Glenn—it would’ve been right around now—and Glenn’s wife would have been having a baby. So, we decided let’s put it off until next year. And so, I think we’re planning to do it next year.

LL Cool J

LL is currently starring in NCIS: Los Angeles as Special Agent Sam Hanna, a former Navy SEAL who now works in the undercover unit of NCIS in LA. At the beginning of this season, he and co-star Chris O’Donnell are are in eastern Europe to rescue Hetty (Linda Hunt), who is trying to convince the Comescu crime family that Callen (O’Donnell) is dead.

I talked to LL at Comic-Con about the bromance he has with O’Donnell, how his character is still a bit of a mystery and how he feels about doing his own stunts.

Follow LL on Twitter!

NCIS: Los Angeles airs on CBS, Tuesdays 9/8c

For the full interview, click the audio link above or download it from iTunes [There is some irritating noise that goes on througgout the interview, I apologize]

Your partnership with Callen is pretty well established by the first episode.  How did you guys create that amongst yourselves?  Did you guys create a back-story?

LL Cool J: Well, we didn’t create a back-story. I mean, you know, the back-story obviously, you know, Shane is dealing with that but I think that’s about just chemistry in general.  I think when you get in a room with people that you like to talk to usually there’s a vibe or there isn’t, you know? You can’t create a vibe.  The vibe is there.  You go on a blind date, either the vibe is there or it isn’t.  So, we just kind of clicked.  The chemistry is there.  The energy is there.  It made it easier, you know?  

Did you guys hang out any before filming?

LL Cool J: I never met Chris before we started filming the show.  I met him at the table read and then, you know, 15-20 minutes, we were laughing and joking, and it was like we knew each other a long time.  I think that that is the interesting thing about it.  It just really clicked.  I couldn’t engineer it.

So has the bromance evolved into real-life?

LL Cool J: [laughing] The bromance, oh my God.

Yeah, we’re cool, we’re cool.  I mean it’s not like, you know, Chris, we’re totally different though.  You know, Chris is on the golf course and I’m in the gym and the studio.

No golfing for you?

LL Cool J: I mean, yeah, every now and then.  Every now and then in between jelly rolls but yeah, we, you know, we’re very different but we connect and we click, and I think that that’s the interesting thing that we bring to the screen as well.  I think that that makes it kind of interesting because it’s not like him being from the north side of Chicago and Illinois out there in that world and I’m from New York, from New York City so it’s a different thing that we have but it kind of works together.  1+ 1 = 3 when you put us together.

Will we be getting any more back-story on your character this season?

LL Cool J: You know what, I don’t know.  I kind of like the fact that Sam is a mystery.  There are advantages to that.  I get that question a lot right now.  I guess, for the last couple of seasons, we have been focusing on Callen’s back-story but you know, I kind of enjoy the fact that we don’t know a lot about Sam.  For me, it’s just bringing this role to life.  I get to play a former Navy seal, have fun, you know, busting my guns, jump over cars, explode, blow stuff up.  So, I’m good with that.  If we get to find out more about Sam, but I don’t think we need to rush that because hopefully, we want the show to be around for a long time and at some point, you know, we will need somewhere to go.  So, you know, the longer we don’t deal with that now, hopefully, we will be able to deal with that later.

What would you say the biggest difference between season 2 and season 3 are?

LL Cool J: I would say the comfort level and understanding the technical aspects of where we need to be when we’re actually doing the scenes, you know, that part of it.  The tactical aspects of it, handling the weapons, dismantling the weapons, cleaning the weapons, those little things, you become more comfortable and that helps.

In terms of tone or in terms of action, are we going to see any more or less of any of that?

LL Cool J: Well, I think that you can’t win this year with what you did to win last year. I think that you kind of got it always keep it fresh and kind of approach every situation like it’s a new situation.  So, I think that that remains to be seen.  We’re just gonna have fun and hopefully allow the show to flow based on how people respond to the world, you know what I mean?

What has been your favorite scene to shoot so far, if you have one?

LL Cool J:, Well, the other day, I had a cool… I like sliding over hoods. [laughs] I’m not talking about Queens, New York either.  The other day I got to like slide over a trunk of a car chasing this bad, this girl, and she is in a Benz and I’m like sliding over the trunk.  It was crazy.  That was kind of cool.  That was a lot of fun, a lot of fun.

Do you do a lot of your own stunts?

LL Cool J: Yeah, I do most of them.  You know, if a horse or a mule needs to kick me in the head I’ll use a stuntman.  Let him go into a coma but I try to do the majority of my stunts because I want people to know that I’m invested in the character and I want to give them the real experience, you know.  I wouldn’t have a stunt person on the stage rapping for me, you know what I’m saying?  “Yo, go on tour for me. You look like me!” So, I’d rather do my stunts when I can.

Written by Rhonda Musak

I’m in great envy of Winnie the Pooh. 

I’m thinking in particular of the Winnie the Pooh as illuminated by Benjamin Hoff in The Tao of Pooh, that open-hearted, wide-eyed fella who can’t but help land squarely on his feet.  At this moment I’m sitting on my own personal battle line between desire and action… and I am envious.

Like any acting role, all of my blog posts have some part of me in them, but this one in particular goes to the core. 

I have decided to be this personal because I don’t believe that I am alone; I have met comrades in these trenches in many forms: friends, colleagues, and students.  I am speaking here of my personal struggle with finding a place of peace and flow that lies somewhere between the intersection of desire and action.  I recall the words an insightful teacher once said to me during my conservatory days: “Rhonda,” he said “you are like the woman who shows up at a store sale before anyone else in order to buy the place out.”   But how pray tell is it done?  How do we stand in the place where desire must meet with action and find peace?  The choice to commit ones life to any field within the world of art is one full of the deepest ramifications on every level.  We make this choice out of deep desire: a desire to create; a desire to give; a desire to use every part of ourselves in order to fulfill something that goes way beyond mere daily existence.  It’s impossible to take making this choice lightly.  Inherent in the choosing is giving up a stability that is offered in the road most taken—if you do ABC you will get XYZ.

And then there is action…oh, do not dare forget about action!  Taking one step after the other after the other after the other.  But those steps have a potential to turn into a jog and then into a run and then into a marathon and sometimes that only feels like the beginning.  The whirling and the swirling until we have spun ourselves into an utter exhaustion that points to desire as the evil culprit of it all.

When I recall the most impactful moments of my life, there is nary a whirl or a swirl to be seen.  How is it that I got from Chicago to New York City?  One day, while living in Chicago, I picked up a copy of a local newspaper, The Chicago Reader, on the way home from dance class.  I opened the newspaper to find an enormously tiny ad for auditions for an NYC acting conservatory.  Within less time than it took for my heart to beat, I was on the phone arranging my appointment.  That was it: one tiny dart sailing through time and space hitting an exact bull’s-eye.

Gratefully, there are moments of my life when this kind of flow is in abundance.  My heart is at peace as I allow the painter to paint the picture through my life in an effortless cascade of action that is centered in a place that I can’t even touch.  But at other times, the tables are turned and I am standing over my metaphorical garden shaking my fists and screaming at the top of my lungs “GROW!”  It’s those directives that ultimately squash the very seedlings I have lovingly tended and nurtured.  And honestly, the fist shaking and screaming are just plain exhausting.

I gather that the great work, the work of the ages and of sages, is to be at choice with peace.  Benjamin Hoff talks about that sweet spot in the middle of desire and doing: “…through working in harmony with life’s circumstances, Taoist understanding changes what others may perceive as a negative into something positive.”  “Through working in harmony with life’s circumstances”…there’s something faithful and beautiful about that phrase that instantly makes a case for landing on one’s feet.

In fact, as if on que, as I searched for a way to end this piece I checked my e-mail and found this “Note form the Universe”*—with ease and grace it provides the perfect ending:

“Think back on your life, Rhonda, just for a moment, to when something wildly wonderful and totally unexpected happened.  Something that rocked your world and changed your life.  That curled your hair and colored your cheeks.  That lit your fire and buttered your bread.

See what happens when you leave the cursed hows to me?

As you were,

The Universe”

* You can sign up for A Note from the Universe at www.tut.com.

Rhonda Musak is the owner of NYC acting studio, Art & Soul Acting. As an acting coach and an Erickson-trained, solution-focused life coach, Rhonda blends powerful acting techniques together with transformation solution focused life coaching; a dynamic combination that insures that students learn sustainable acting tools as well as know when to use them and why.

For more information about acting classes, private acting coaching in person or via Skype, college prep program and the Art & Soul Acting Book Club for Actors’, please visit www.artandsoulacting.com

In fact, only Chicago, Sweeny Todd, Dreamgirls, and Hairspray have won over critics and audiences alike, but it seems in a few years we’ll likely be adding The Book of Mormon to that list: Trey Parker and Matt Stone have confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that they intend to make a film version of their smash hit Broadway musical. 

Just don’t expect it anytime soon. 

In case you haven’t noticed, most film adaptations of Broadway shows don’t end up hitting theaters until several years into the Broadway run (or even after the Broadway show closes) simply because a film version would likely cut into the Broadway box office as well as the ticket sales of any touring versions of the play.  With The Book of Mormon opening in Chicago, London, and on the road next year, it wouldn’t be financially wise for The Book of Mormon and South Park creators Parker and Stone to push the film version out too soon.   Why is it likely that the film version of The Book of Mormon will be a success?  Because the creators, along with producer Scott Rudin — who produced Parker and Stone’s South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Team America: World Police, and is also one of the producers of The Book of Mormon — will be involved.  Stone explains, “The great thing is, a lot of Broadway teams would have to go team up with a Hollywood producer and bring on a Hollywood director, but Trey’s a director and Scott’s a great producer. We’ve all made movies. So it’s kind of cool, it can stay in the same family.”

If you can’t wait until the film premieres The Book of Mormon will be on Broadway for, well, quite some time as it is already sold out through the end of the year.  So either way you’re probably waiting.  But at least we know that when it finally hits movie theaters it will be something worth looking forward to!

With the tourist season winding down, the typical Broadway slump is about to happen so the NYC tourism board is helping to sponsor the sale in an effort to boost attendance.

The offer goes from September 18-30th and they are on sale now.

There’s a great selection of shows available but if you want to see The Book of Mormon, Spider-Man or How to Succeed, you’re out of luck. No half-price for you!   Here is the list of the shows that are participating:

The Addams Family
Billy Elliot the Musical
Chicago the Musical
Jersey Boys
The Lion King
Mamma Mia!
Man and Boy
Mary Poppins
Memphis
The Mountaintop
The Phantom of the Opera
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Relatively Speaking
Rock of Ages
Sister Act
Wicked

To get tickets, click here: nycgo.com/broadwayweek