Scripted Performance Quotes

Comedians dissect jokes all the time. Comedians are beautiful structuralists. But ultimately it's an athletic endeavor. You have to be able to just hit the backhand. You can't think about all the pieces of it. You can't think about your swing. You just have to do it. Reading someone else's deconstruction of what I do, all it does is put me in my head. On nights when the show goes particularly well, I am not aware of its fluidity. A lot of nights I'm just worried that I'm not going to be as good as the script in front of me.

You can go on 'Saturday Night Live' now and not even play live.

It's exotic for me to be given a script that's already written, and be given a pay cheque, and asked to dress up and play, and that's all.

I didn't debut in a film playing a diva.

I've been fired from a situational comedy with a script they wrote specifically for me because of my voice.

I felt like when you're an actor, you don't get to fully creatively express yourself - most of the time, it's not your own writing or direction.

I'm not used to a script.

I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it.

The way Apatow works, you do it scripted a couple times, and then he just kind of lets you go and improvise.

I'm not very good when I'm given scripts.

I'm not an ad-libber. If I'm asked to ad-lib, I can ad-lib forever and it's really fun to do that, but I find that well-written scripts are put together very carefully. Once you start to ad-lib and add words to sentences, there's a slacking that happens. When it's good writing, it's taut. I'm not judging people who do ad-lib.

Stand-up is really personal. It's not like somebody else is writing the script and you have to do what they write.

I love to act and put on a show, but you're playing a character all the time. For music, it's really just me being myself.

On the last day of our five-day work week, we did two performances and we had an audience. It was similar to theatre; we went from beginning to end, and it was very pleasing.

A lot of people don't realize that wrestling is acting; you're playing a role and a part.

With acting I am being led by the script, other actors, the director, etc. But with songwriting I feel it is much more self reliant and allows me to be in the creative experience without being as dependent on others.

In a way I'd say it's maybe more satisfying to do a play, because there is a beginning, middle, and end. But I also really enjoy the television experience, because there's a certain part of it that you have to let go of and trust in that process.

Whatever is on the page is what I'm married to. I'm very prepared. I'm a thespian. I don't like to improv. I don't like to go off course 'cause I think that's where stuff happens. When you stick to the material 'cause it's written so well, that's where the magic happens.

I think as an actress, I prefer having a character on the page. It allows you to be more invested in actually creating a whole person. It's easier when you're not trying to come up with your next line on the spot.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

'Dinner' is completely scripted. There are some improv elements, but I'm not interested in pranking people. It's more like a play than standup.

I know that I present very - they say that I present very, very calm and very, very smart, very articulate, elegant. Yeah. And I go, 'Brilliant teams of makeup and wardrobe happened to dress me and clothe me and put my face on and do my hair. And then these brilliant teams of writers give me words to speak. I just need to make sure that I have them all in this combination in my body, in my being, and then I get to do it on camera, in front of a brilliant team of camera workers who really know how to like me and make me sound good.' So I'm just really a dork in real life.

I actually think film and TV are sort of the same thing now. To me they're all motion pictures. There's a camera, a script, other actors and a director. Doing a sitcom is a little different. It's kind of a hybrid, half movie, half play, presented in a proscenium fashion - the camera's on one side of the line, the set on the other, the audience sitting behind the cameras.

I play grizzlys, but I'm not a grizzly. I'm a song-and-dance man.

When I was a bit younger, I did this tiny role on 'The Musketeers,' and I had to stay dead.