You can have good writing, but a great actor will make it feel and sound like great writing. You can have great writing, and mediocre actors will make it feel mediocre. Without the actors, you have nothing.
Denis LearyThere are about a thousand different variations on a horse neigh. Some of them sound like a horse having sex, some of them like a horse having sad sex.
Denis LearyI wanted to get more serialized. I had this idea for an event that would click onto everybody's mortality. I said, "I want somebody to die." Fortunately for me, when I was toying with that idea, John Landgraf, who's the head of FX but also a very smart executive, came up with the idea of the ashes in the maracas. He called me up and said, "Listen, what about this, they get the ashes in a box and when they get them, they shake them and they sound like maracas." And I was like, "Okay, now I've got my throughline."
Denis Leary