Sh*t Emmy Award Winning Actors Say

Modern Family‘s Eric Stonestreet stars in this Funny Or Die video take off of the popular Shit [insert name here] Says meme.

And keep a lookout for another Emmy winning actor towards the end.

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Stars Share The Job That Landed Them Their SAG Card

Getting your SAG card. That’s the goal all actors are striving towards (if they don’t have it already). Here, some of today’s hottest stars reveal the story behind the job that landed them that honor.

“I got my SAG card doing the first ever commercial for Dasani bottled water. I thought I only got the part because of my red hair but then the commercial was shot in black and white and I realized I got the part because I could sell the s— out of overpriced bottled water.” — Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Modern Family

“Fran Van Hartesveldt, a commercial agent in town, explained to me that to get a SAG card, I needed a job and to get a job, I needed a SAG card. He had pity on me and gave me one line in a show called The Great Gildersleeve. Years later, when I got my own show, I hired Fran as one of my writers.” — Betty White

“I got my SAG card with one line in the movie, The Doors. I was very sassy with [director] Oliver Stone in my audition, so he offered me the job on the spot. In every take I kept making the line a little longer until Oliver yelled at me.”  — Lisa Edelstein, House

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Modern Family – Live Table Read

The cast of Modern Family got together a couple of weeks ago to do a live table read. They gathered some lucky fans and read an upcoming episode.

If you’ve never been to an actual table read, check it out!

A Day On The Set Of Modern Family

Modern Family is one of the best shows on TV, so much so that I”m even watching the re-runs.

Here’s a quick video of what happens on the set during the course of a day – all in 60 seconds!

Jesse Tyler Ferguson talks ‘Modern Family’, improvising on set and audition for the role

From movieline.com

I read that you weren’t looking to get back into television when you read the Modern Family pilot.
Right, when I read the Modern Family pilot, that’s when I started thinking about it again but yeah, I had a bad experience last season doing a show that just really was not well-received and I kind of — probably because of the writers’ strike — it just never came together and it was a really painful process to be involved in. It was just unanimously loathed. And I’m a theater guy, so I had an opportunity to do theater in New York, and then this happened, so that changed everything. There was no way that I could not go in on this role.

It’s amazing that 30 pages could change the entire trajectory of your career.
Yeah, and really the whole cast felt the same way. We all had a different journey with it. Mine was fortunately very simple — I didn’t have to go in too many times to audition. But Julie [Bowen], for example, was dying to do the show but she was nine months pregnant with twins and the show was not sure how they could work around it. Eric was a really unknown actor and he had to really fight for it. Ty [Burrell] had to test, I think, three times for it. [Modern Family creators] Chris Lloyd and Steven Levitan actually shot a screen test of him in their backyard to show how brilliant he would be for the show because it just was not translating in the room. Even Ed O’Neill — I think he lost the part at one point to another actor [ed. note: it was Craig T. Nelson] and it came back around to him.

I heard that you also initially auditioned for the role of Cameron. How far were you in the audition process before realizing you were a better fit for Mitchell?
It was literally the first audition, and I had been desperate to play Mitchell. I feel like I had probably played Cameron before and it didn’t seem terribly challenging for me. I just felt it was more of a challenge to find the humor in his seriousness and his uptightness. And then the first audition with Chris and Steve, they said, “Oh you’d make a great Mitchell too. Why don’t you come back in and audition for that part?” And I said, “Well that’s what I’ve been telling people for weeks and no one has been listening!”

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Ty Burrell: “Modern Family”, improvising and single-camera comedies

From Movieline:

What did you first think of the show’s concept?
It’s funny because I have worked with Chris Lloyd on three shows and for Steve Levitan, this is my second. I loved the concept, but they could’ve told me it was about two guys who sit in the same room for 20 years, and I would’ve loved it. I have so much faith in their writing, but I mean I loved the idea and thought it was something totally new, using this style for a family comedy. I was really excited about that.

How was this experience with Chris and Steve different?
I think everybody’s getting to do new stuff, which is exciting for the writers and us. I’ve never gotten to do a show that give us some things that are more intimate, that get into the nooks and crannies of the character, and allow more room for movement as far as minor amounts of improvising and stuff. For them, I sense that it’s similar, that they’re getting a chance to write in a way that allows for some humor that doesn’t always work well in multi-camera comedy. You know, it’s such a precise medium, multi-camera. This one really allows for movement, for lack of a better word, a lateral movement. The longer silences, awkwardness, and also just some humor that’s a little bit more abstract. The good thing about it is an old-fashioned comedy still works in this medium. You can still do slapstick too.

Modern Family seems to stand out even among single-camera comedies. How would you categorize it?
I think it’s different from a lot of single-camera comedy in that Chris and Steve are writing it with heart, and it’s not so much so that it’s schmaltzy or saccharine, but it’s also not keeping you at arm’s length with irony. It makes it different from single-camera comedy that way. And it’s different from multi-camera in that we take some of the pressure off the jokes; the precision is gone, and you can’t see the punchlines coming as much as you can with most multi-camera.

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