Karl Malden was quite a mentor. He taught me things he had learned from being in front of a camera so long.

It was really executed well, from the art direction to the wardrobe to everyone else. And I have to say, two really exceptional directors who did three each. Roxann [Dawson] did the first three and Jeremy [Webb] did the second three. And I think they really were very meticulous in getting the right tone because it is both. It isn't dour and it isn't grim, but it's not a romp either. It's truthful and it has room for both of those things.

You always know when something works it's a result of everything firing on all cylinders.

I don't think anyone sets out to do something bad, it's just that it's very difficult.

The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more.

Improv is not something I had a lot of experience with, because for a long time, my only experience in front of a camera was all television, which is pretty rigid script-wise, except for the occasional scene where you toss in an ad-lib just to elongate something. Like, say, you're walking down a hall and you just don't have enough dialogue, and you throw in something. But you don't really have time to do other than what's written. It's very rigid. Shows have a certain rhythm that nobody wants disturbed.

You need someone to tell you how to do things like hitting your marks, or driving a car so it looks right or getting out of a car so it doesn't take a million years of screen time.