It’s a very political decision he has to make.” I found from the very beginning that when I infused my own personal feelings about an issue it went against the grain of the character.
We make these people climb this filthy rope and then we stand at the bottom and say, “Hey, your hands are dirty!” To show heroic, progressive, democratic politics at work was more than I ever expected.
Take action. Every story you’ve ever connected with, every leader you’ve ever admired, every puny little thing that you’ve ever accomplished is the result of taking action.
The issue for my character, and the issue of the show is, how dirty do your feet have to get without suffocating yourself in the mud in order to get an inch of what you really want done?
Being an actor, you always feel like you’re swimming upstream. People are going, “No, they don’t like you. They don’t like the way you look. They don’t like how old you are.”
Aaron is a very passionate, maniacal writer so the scripts really come from him, but he is very open to… y’know, we’ll plan ideas and we’ll certainly tussle about stuff when the script comes out.
I grew up in a family where the internalized understanding was that the kids were going to grow up into a better world. I worry, because I don’t think my kids are going to have that.
I was at the vice president’s Christmas party. I thought that his speech was spectacular, and I knew that it was a very emotional and difficult thing for him to do, but I admonished him for not waiting just one more stinking day.
In the right situation, acting on television can be extraordinarily satisfying creatively. But that’s incredibly rare. Otherwise, it can be like working in a really remunerative coal mine. That’s the down side.
