Film is like tech starts on the first day of filming and it never stops. There's never a moment when the audience comes in, you're just in tech forever, and I can't stand being on a film set. It's really tedious.
I've always come into a show when the show was already up and running.
In theater, you really work out the kinks and figure out exactly what you want to do and what we want to say, so by the time we have an audience, we're really prepared. With TV, you have a day... Sometimes, just a few hours.
The tech rehearsal for Brits is so different. They have little glasses of wine and walk around saying, 'Lovely, darling, lovely.'
We do pretty much the same set list every night, and the show's down to certain cues because we have video and all this production and lights and everything going on.
I will walk out on a scene if it's all lit and ready to go but it's not happening.
On stage, the audience watches from a fixed viewpoint and the director cannot retake something he doesn't like. It has to work straight through.
Every show is a mess at its first preview. No one's had enough time to rehearse in costumes, traffic patterns backstage haven't been worked out, machinery weighing thousands of pounds is being operated for the first time. And, also, it's the first time all the material you've written is before the public.
