Gene Roddenberry Quotes

The great thing about TV is that it's so fluid. When you bring in someone for one quick role and they're fantastic, you can bring them back.

We are not really privy to all that crazy stuff that goes on in the show. I go to work, eat, and talk about food. The wild things happen when we aren't around. I expected Top Chef to last three or four seasons and we are now shooting season ten.

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.

Sometimes in theater, they'll talk about your character a lot before you enter, but that rarely happens in television.

I don't know what's coming down the pike in 'Gotham.' Part of me goes, 'Man, I just wish I could be in the writers' room. Do you need someone to make you guys coffee?' I just want to be a part of the flow of it.

In a way, 'Lost,' or maybe TV in general, is a kind of a contract between the writers and the viewers. And the actors - of course we have a great deal to do with it - but where the drama's made, sort of where the meeting of minds is, is between those two parties: writers and audience.

I would like to see more of the making of just regular television shows. Like the casting process. I think it's so fascinating to watch the actors come in and see how they discuss everybody afterwards. It's a crazy world that has no rhyme or reason.

The writers are the backbone in television, like in film, but eventually, as an actress, I can bring something.

There are directors who don't cast you for the way you act but for the way you are, the way you behave around the dinner table.

Alexis and I actually shot the very first scene of 'Gilmore Girls.' What I thought was fast was nowhere near what has become known as 'Gilmore pace.'

'Star Trek' came along fairly early. And I don't know what they saw in me that said Captain Kruge, because I hadn't done anything remotely like that, but it worked out.

I worked on a show called 'West Wing' before. I didn't work with Aaron Sorkin, but he created the show and set the tenor of the show, which was you follow the words of the script perfectly because there's a dramaturgical thing behind it.

We have a rule: if you're killing off a series regular, you have to tell them first. If you're killing off a person temporarily, you have to warn them before the script comes out.

If there is a snobbery, then they haven't been on set to see how a show like 'EastEnders' works. Because I know for a fact that some of my favourite actors are still not capable of doing what these guys do.

Even though I was playing myself on 'NCIS,' it was so cool to see how everything works behind a camera.

You have to fight to get your show not only on the air but then to keep it what it is and make sure that it doesn't get manipulated into something else.

I've been in rooms where the creator has sold a show and then felt like the network didn't buy the show they wanted. They bought a show they thought they could craft into the show they wanted.

We got kind of into a rhythm at 'Parks' because there were so many characters that we had an A story, a B story, and a C story just about every episode. So by the middle of that show's run, we always had three stories, and it worked really well.

I watch 'Electronic Boy' faithfully every week - not because I like the show but because I'm interested in where the smartest T.V. producers and directors are going, what direction they are headed in.

A lot of times, sets are not such fun places to be, and especially television sets, because everybody works so hard, and everybody's kind of grumbling about getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning and not getting home until midnight.

People don't always understand the way it works with casting. TV projects tend to be commissioned to screen at a particular time of year, so your shooting dates are chosen to meet that. And then the casting is a matter of choosing from the actors who are available for those dates.

It has taken a lot of persuasion for me to take part in an official documentary about 'Only Fools and Horses.' But, as time has gone on, it seems to have been imprinted in television history, and I thought it was only right that I tried to give an accurate insight into how the show was put together.

I've been doing theater for a long time, so that's something I understand. I'm such a babe in the woods when it comes to TV and film. I'm still learning. It's exciting.

Closest to my heart is probably 'Toast of London' because I came up with the character, based on a bunch of people I worked with in the industry. And Channel 4 didn't mess with it. Head to screen, it was exactly as I wanted it.

I think everything within film and TV helps inform every other role, so it's definitely helped my acting, being on the other side of the camera, and it's just given me a whole new appreciation for how hard everybody in the crew works.