Vijay Sethupathi Quotes

When I rehearse, it ends up doing more harm than good. I think I work a little bit better when it's right off the bat. Mostly, I try to wrap my head around a role as much as I can without rehearsing and then kind of make it as fresh as possible on the day.

I don't work out a lead section and practice it for a day and then lay it down. I don't do that. The first time I do something I think is expressive or really cool, that's what's actually on the recording.

When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous.

I personally don't like to rehearse so much. I really sort of trust my instinct.

You have to be sharp when the camera's rolling. I want to be totally unselfconscious, like a child playing. I do as much prep as possible so I can lose myself for those seconds.

I am spontaneous and not a method actor.

You shouldn't think about technique when you play. You have to be you. It cannot be about, 'I can play this, and I can show you that.'

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

I don't like improv at all. It terrifies me. I like to know exactly what I'm going to say. Being surprised does make me a better actor. Anytime I'm afraid of something that makes me rise to the occasion, it scares me, but it's what makes great actors - being in the moment.

Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.

If you're saying the same line 10 times and making it look like you just came up with it, that's acting.

I don't really like 'acting' - I like things to feel as natural as possible.

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.

I'm more interested in knowing my cues than my lines. If you know what your cues are, then you know what your reaction is going to be to them. Acting is about reacting, and if I can kind of purely react, that's easier for me.

I feel when acting, I am sometimes overly self-conscious; I think, 'Going, no, don't, put your eyebrow back where it was and, you know, turn to the left.' You know, I'm sort of very consciously adopting this character. But with music, I don't know. I found it was a question of just closing my eyes and just sort of letting things come out.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

I like that feeling of letting loose, of not planning every step. The best performances are the ones that you just let happen.

My roots are in stand-up, and stand-up is very freeing. There's no script involved; you just fly.

The immediacy of improvisation is intoxicating, but there's an intimacy that you get that's very different when you're doing drama.

You know what the material is so that you never play it the same way twice.

Wu-Tang has only done, like, three rehearsals throughout our whole career.

If you just freestyle, everybody is gonna go, 'Freestyle.'

I think the best thing you can do for an audition is to just do your work, be creative. It's OK to be spontaneous.

If you're an open channel when you're onstage, if you're just a vessel, things are going to come out that are stored away deep in your DNA.

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.