Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Interview with Lady Mac
By Gustave | Season 1 | Episode 20 | Aired on 04.13.2002
It was that kind of thing, because I was about to leave town to go and do another pilot which I was very excited about. And when I went to the 24 audition, I didn't see the "old faithful" -- the usual women that I usually see at auditions -- and I thought [laughs], "Hmmm, maybe no one's interested in this one. Why am I here?" But then I walked into the room and I met Joel [Surnow] and Robert [Cochran] and Steven [Hopkins] and they were fans of The Larry Sanders Show, and I was just enjoying the project. It was just a little project -- just a pilot -- and I thought I'd just go on to Seattle and shoot the other project. But they were interested in me and so they tried to work it out around the other project. For a moment it was not going to work out scheduling-wise and they wanted me to choose and I said to my agent, "I don't want to choose!" [Laughs.] I liked them and I wanted to do their project but I just didn't think it was something [laughs] big. I didn't even know that Kiefer was involved. I just said, "Oh, who's playing the husband," and they said, "Dennis [Haysbert]," and I said, "Oh, yeah, I want to do this!" Dennis and I have been husband and wife before.
Have you? Should I have known this?
In Germany, we did a miniseries. [The Writing on the Wall, 1994] We had a great time.
You guys have wonderful chemistry.
Yeah, and so I said, "I can just fly back down to L.A. and do this." And that's how it worked out. For the pilot, they only had me for a day.
They only had you for a day? Now that I think about it, you didn't have a lot of screen time in the first episode.
But it was good screentime. I realized when I was shooting that this wasn't television. We were making a movie.
That was one of my questions for Karina. I asked her if making 24 was more like making a series of related movies or an interesting television show.
Well, because what we are doing is making an interesting television show, that's the given. But when you're there shooting -- the atmosphere, the way the directors, producers, and cinematographers have created the environment -- it's more like making a film.
Also, the acting is more like film acting than television acting.
Absolutely. It's an internal, realistic acting style that I'm in love with. Ever since The Larry Sanders Show, it's been my acting choice.