Leading TV Actors Ponder Their Craft & Professional Embarrassments

Reporters from The Hollywood Reporter sat down with two groups of leading dramatic TV actors who were surprisingly willing to talk frankly and openly about their work, the challenges of their craft and their own foibles, sometimes in gruesome detail.

Representing the female actors were The Good Wife's Julianna Margulies, Homeland's Claire Danes, The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick, The Killing's Mireille Enos, Mad Men's January Jones and Shameless' Emmy Rossum. Their male counterparts included Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Homeland's Damian Lewis, Parenthood's Peter Krause, Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, Touch's Kiefer Sutherland and Boss' Kelsey Grammer.

I found it curious that the tone of the round-table discussions between the women versus the men was starkly different. Whereas the men seemed to be jovially trying to one-up each other with gross and embarrassing tales while they munched on snacks (like cubes of cheese), the women were deferential to one another and had flowers instead of food on the table in front of them. (The men are allowed to eat but the women weren't?)

My favorite parts of the discussions:

• January Jones said that people she sees on the street give her grief for Betty Draper's bad parenting.
• Jones said appearing as "fat Betty" during the fifth season of Mad Men was a pain in the neck due to all the prosthetics she had to wear.
• Peter Krause admitted to once suffering from sudden gastrointestinal problems while acting on stage in a play.
• The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies, struggles with being the "good girl" on her show's set even when she doesn't think she needs to be there all the time, particularly for scenes where she has no lines. Her quote seemed very Katherine Heigl to me, almost a cry for help: "There are days when . . . I had worked until midnight and then I had to go and shoot something else at five in the morning. I looked at my husband and I was like, 'This is why Judy Garland was on pills. I can't keep this up. I need a pill!'"
• Jon Hamm was once told he'd never make it as a TV star.
• Damian Lewis related an anecdote about getting injured on stage -- sustaining a wound that required multiple stitches -- during a sword fight with Ralph Fiennes yet he continued to act as he bled profusely from the face.

 I completely concur with a person who posted a comment on YouTube after the interview with the panel of women who said that this was a fascinatingly interesting discussion, a model for what these types of discussions should be, as opposed to the vacuous fluff that passes for interviews these days.

Notes on Pop Culture: '30 Rock' Cartoon, Bossypants, 'Parenthood' Finale

30 Rock/Jack Donaghy Cartoon

What do you get when you combine 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), when he's jonesing for a frozen yogurt, with Brian Williams who has taken the last of the frozen treat? Well if you give Donaghy Superman-like powers, you’d get the snarky video above.

I love the fact that Williams – who's the reason why I watch the NBC Nightly News, along with all the senior citizens who need the denture cream that’s always advertised during the broadcast – is willing to put himself out there to look like a buffoon so often, like on late night shows and on Saturday Night Live.

Bossypants

As soon as I got my hands on the award-winning and overall awesome Tina Fey’s new memoir, Bossypants, I whipped through that book in short order, adoring her just a wee bit more with each new self-deprecating comment. I particularly loved how she included delightfully awkward photos of herself as a child because I too have awkward elementary and middle school photos lurking in my past that come close to being as embarrassing as the ones Fey included in her book.

The result of my jaunt through all things Bossypants? This column on the seven things I learned while reading Fey's book.



Parenthood Finale

After a really strong, tear-jerker of a season, Parenthood capped its sophomore year with a so-so finale that seemed as though it was earnestly trying too hard to pull together loose ends in the off chance the show didn’t get renewed for a third season.

In my review of the finale, I said I wasn't fond of the apparent quick resolution to Amber’s downward spiral (just because Zeek offered her a tough love tale for about five minutes wouldn’t, in my opinion, just snap her out of her deeply troubled funk), nor did I buy how quickly Sarah went from having her play accepted to be read/acted to being performed on stage. It was what, less than 24 or 48 hours from the first read to the show?

But I did adore the Adam storyline and Peter Krause, who kicked some serious behind as Six Feet Under’s Nate, continued to be wonderful as the stressed out, good guy father of two who works really hard, tries to the do the right thing and yet oftentimes winds up getting kicked in the behind and reacting to situations with genuine human angst and anger. To watch Adam get fired on the same day he learned that his wife is pregnant with baby number three – on top of his 16-year-old daughter who he recently found out is having sex and his son with Asperger’s – was a perfect example of what this show does well. Despite all his flaws, which the writers bravely allow viewers to see, you still root for him.

My fingers are crossed for a Parenthood third season and given that the ratings were strong for the finale, I hope that means we’ll hear from the NBC suits soon.

'Parenthood' & 'The Good Wife:' That Was Some Tuesday Night of TV

*Warning: Spoilers from the recent episodes of Parenthood and The Good Wife.*



Both Parenthood and The Good Wife broke my heart last night . . . but in a good way, not like the Lost series finale did.

Parenthood – I reviewed the episode here – took me on a very uncomfortable set of journeys with parents of teens in varying stages of angst. On the one hand, Adam and Kristina Braverman (Peter Krause and Monica Potter) had to process the idea that their 16-year-old daughter is having sex with her boyfriend. On the other hand, Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) was dealing with a teenage daughter Amber who is spiraling out of control with drugs and reckless behavior after being rejected from the two colleges to which she applied.

The Adam and Kristina story seemed to me to be a cautionary tale: Be careful what you ask for. If you ask your teenager if he or she is having sex, like Kristina did, be prepared in the event that you receive an affirmative answer. What do you do with that information once you have it? In Kristina's case, she became speechless and bumbled a lot, even lied to her daughter Haddie about how old she was during her first time. As for Adam, he was utterly unable to look at Haddie, his little girl, and treated her as though she had the plague. His disappointment was palpable and real. This storyline concluded with Kristina telling Haddie the truth about her first sexual experience and Adam realizing that Haddie was still Haddie. And, though it made me squirm in my seat – particularly the cell phone call scene – I loved it.

Not so great, the Amber storyline. Not that it wasn’t written well -- it was -- but it was truly heartbreaking. I honestly don't know what I'd do in Sarah's situation if my kid were acting out in this way. Although I will say that I’ve grown a wee bit tired of episode-ending car crashes featuring major characters. (*cough Grey's Anatomy cough*)



Over on The Good Wife -- which I DVRed and watched after Parenthood – I loved the clever way in which the writers chose to reveal to Alicia Florrick that her husband Peter had slept with a former colleague and now-current colleague of Alicia’s back during Peter’s philandering days when Alicia thought his only dalliances were with a prostitute.

This big reveal, sharing with a main character information viewers have known for several episodes, could’ve been done in a number of showy, melodramatic ways. But by having the private investigator casually mention the name "Leela," with Alicia having recently given a TV interview saying she’d forgiven her husband which people were crediting with putting Peter over the top, vote-wise, and with Peter just being declared the winner was particularly devastating.

Couple that with the fact that Alicia had been looking at a pricey house in her former leafy suburb – much like the home she had to sell after Peter went to jail – and started imagining rebuilding her life with Peter now that she’s stronger and sits on what she sees as an even playing field with her husband, and the ghosts of the past just just won't leave Alicia alone.

How the writers handle the next episode, I think, will be important in setting the tone for the series from this point on. And I’m hoping it’ll be as well executed as this episode was.

Fall TV Previews: 'Parenthood' Returns for Sophomore Season

I enjoyed the brief (13 episodes), uneven freshman season of Parenthood this spring. By the time the last few new episodes had aired – the high school bullying storyline was excellent – I’d grown to look forward to new installments, particularly to the work of Peter Krause, who’s Adam Braverman, and Mae Whitman, who plays Amber Holt.

NBC has released two new promos for the second season but they don’t offer much by way of new information.





Parenthood’s season two premiere is slated for Tuesday, Sept. 14.

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Good Wife' Stays Solid, 'Grey's Anatomy's' Parent Issues & 'Parenthood' Turning a Corner?

Good Wife Remains Solid

Okay Good Wife writers. You’ve got me.

My frequent complaint about your freshman drama has been that I’d prefer to see more scenes depicting the life of a political spouse/family in the wake of a humiliating sex scandal committed by the public official (a la the Spitzers, Sanfords, Clintons, Edwardes, et al) rather than load it up with legal procedural stuff. If I want to watch a garden variety lawyer show, I could go elsewhere. It’s not that I mind the legal cases, it's just that I didn’t want them to overwhelm the unique twist that makes The Good Wife different from other dramas.
That was the fear I had when The Good Wife seemed to be focusing more on getting to the truth about a criminal case or on how to deftly maneuver in the courtroom in order to secure a particular judgment.

But, overall, I have to say, the writers have done a good job of balancing the law and the personal life. Even though the latest episode “Doubt” – in which the disgraced, house-arrested Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) did not even appear – focused largely on a murder case, it did so in a way that was smart and intriguing by looking at the case from the perspective of the jury. Gold stars for not ending the episode in a rosy, optimistic note for Julianna Margulies’ Alicia Florrick’s team.

Grey’s Ponders Mixing Maternity & Medicine

Mixing maternity and medicine has been a semi-regular theme on Grey’s Anatomy since day one. We’ve known from the first handful of episodes that Meredith Grey sustained emotional damage from a childhood in which her parents divorced, her father essentially abandoned her and her mother, a successful surgeon, virtually blew her off and always chose medicine over Meredith.

In a 2007 episode, Meredith was assisting in an operation on a child both of whose parents were career-oriented and hardly ever at home. As a result, the girl bonded with her nanny more so than with her own parents. Meredith remarked that people with big-time careers should just get a cat instead of a kid because the kid needs time and attention from a mom or a dad. However the lead surgeon in the room, Miranda Bailey, a new mom, took umbrage.

Years later, Bailey, who’s now a divorced mom, has had her ups and downs with the child/career thing but seems to be in a good place right now just as other characters with high-pressure careers -- Callie Torres, McSteamy, McDreamy and Meredith -- are contemplating parenthood. I explored how Grey’s has been handling the issue of doctors having kids in my weekly Pop Culture column on Mommy Tracked.

Got Fingers Crossed for 'Parenthood'

Loved, loved, loved the 1989 film Parenthood starring Steve Martin. Loved how it covered parenthood from the beginning (with pregnancy, infancy and childhood), all the way through being the parent of grown adults. It provided a wonderful depiction of parenthood as a continuum where, on the one hand, you're doing everything for your young child and coaching his Little League team, and on the other hand you're dealing with an adult offspring by providing hands off support, wisdom and babysitting services.

So I'm left to wonder if the new NBC dramedy Parenthood -- starring Peter Krause, Lauren Graham and Craig T. Nelson -- will be as good as the movie, or, perhaps, even better because it can delve into issues with more depth? Will it be a different, more drama-focused version of Modern Family without becoming, say, a Brothers & Sisters sans a vineyard?

NBC has finally released some longer clips of the show, which premieres March 2.

What do you think?