Leah Remini Quotes

Yeah, I'd done a bunch of pilots. Some that had gone for a while. One that went for 13 episodes. But I had never been on a show that had lasted more than that.

Normally we go in, we do a series and then that's it, we're axed!

'Spooks' was unique. It took up such a lot of your life - I think we did 10 episodes for the first few seasons. That's six months of your life.

Having gotten TV shows on the air, that's so much less work that trying to get the 'Veronica Mars' movie made.

If you go to pilot then you are probably going to go to series. That's my feeling about it.

How that works is our first season was the year we had a threatened writers' strike, so what we did was that instead of doing 22 episodes, we did 30. We put 10 in the bank.

For 'Breaking Bad,' it was like, that's one of the best pilots, probably the best pilot I have ever read.

At our best, it's a good experience but we do 22 episodes a year, so there are some clunkers.

I did a pilot for Anything But Love in 1988 that didn't sell.

The first season of a show is kind of like an extended pilot. You're only really on the map if it goes a second season.

'Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script.

Another show I really enjoyed working on was 'Raising The Bar.' I did four or five episodes of that show.

The lifespan of any show is to end in cancellation.

Sometimes when I watch a TV season, your favorite shows die quickly. And then sometimes it's not your favorite, and they live on for 12 years.

I am currently talking to one of the studios about making American Star as a TV series.

Looking back now on our workload, I just shake my head at our pace. 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' was my first series, so I didn't know anything about that when I started. I just assumed it was normal to make 26 episodes a year on a seven-day shooting schedule.

I want 'Chicago Fire' to go as long as 'SVU.'

I just wrapped a new show for Amazon called 'Transparent.'

It's not about creating 22 episodes indefinitely for as long as you can do.

When you're working on a television series, you only get a very short off-season. The scheduling of TV is relentless.

There are shows that have been prematurely canceled, but I don't know if 'Smash' was one of them.

What I do know is how difficult it is in this industry to get a show on the air. There's so many different stages: getting a script bought by the network, then getting a pilot made and having that pilot go to series, and then, when that series gets on the air, having people watch it.

We work the full year round to make 10 or 12 episodes, and 'The Good Wife' makes, like, 26 in that time or something, which I can't believe. I don't know how they do it.

It's funny because 'West Wing' is similar to 'Game of Thrones' in some ways, as it was very hard to pull off back then.

There is a 90% failure rate for most shows. It's difficult for any show to write for the next season.