One of the mainstays of voice work for animated shows on television is Alex Borstein, best known for playing Lois Griffin on “Family Guy.” A Chicago native, Borstein began her voice acting career doing voices for various “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” series. Her acting and stand-up training came into play when she began getting case in a variety of live-action television series, culminating in becoming a cast member of “MADtv” in 1997 (Ms. Swan was her most popular character). She was also a recurring character on “Gilmore Girls” and popped on in supporting roles in such films as SHOWTIME, GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK, BAD SANTA, CATWOMAN, THE LOOKOUT, and KILLERS.
She’s been voicing Lois Griffin on “Family Guy” since 1999, which has led to roles in other Seth MacFarlane, including “The Cleveland Show,” TED, and A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST. In more recent years, Borstein’s acting career has moved into a wonderfully dark direction with periodic appearances on Showtime’s “Shameless” (for which she also wrote several episodes) and the brilliant HBO comedic series “Getting On,” which just concluded after three painfully awkward seasons. On the show, Borstein played the classic arrested development nurse Dawn Forchette. She also just began doing two voices for the new Fox animated series “Bordertown”—the mother and daughter Janice and Becky Buckwald.
I had a chance to sit down and have an extended talk with Borstein recently when she was visiting her native Chicago. We pretty much walked through her entire career, and she gave us a glimpse into the he life of a working actor and all-around creative artist, who is moving into writing and producing, while still keeping herself firmly in the acting world. We had a great time, and I hope you enjoy my chat with Alex Borstein…
Capone: So what brings you back to Chicago? Do you still have family here?
Alex Borstein: It’s two fold. Yes, I am from here, and I love coming back. I also try to come back once a year for a Bears game and to see family and friends.
Capone: You went to the Bears game last night?
AB: I did.
Capone: Oh, man.
AB: We had a blast. It was close [the Bears lost]. It was a fun game.
Capone: I know, that’s why it hurts.
AB: We got to go on the field in the beginning. We just had a great time.
Capone: Was that because of your connection to Fox?
AB: No, it was just people being kind, someone knowing someone and hooking us up. It was really nice.
Capone: When I told someone I was interviewing you today, she said, “Ask her if she still plays the harp” [A reference to the character she played on “Gilmore Girls”].
AB: The harp, that was the most difficult thing ever. I took lessons just to learn how to fake it. For “Getting On,” I learned how to play the cello, which I really learned and still play and love it. The harp was so hard. I took lessons to be able to hold my hands right.
Capone: It seems like a very physical thing to have to learn.
AB: Yeah, the pedals.
Capone: I didn’t know there were pedals on a harp.
AB: Yeah, it’s like a grand piano.
Capone: On its side.
AB: Pulled up, right. And it has pedals. It’s really complicated and hated it because I couldn’t do it. Anything I don’t excel at, I immediately hate.
Capone: They’re bringing “Gilmore Girls” back to some degree soon. Can you say if you’ve been approached to return?
AB: I believe I am going to be a part of it in some way. I’ll say that. I’ve played multiple characters.
Capone: I know, I didn’t realize that in the pilot that you had played the part that Melissa McCarthy went on to play. That’s a great story.
AB: Yeah, I started as Sookie, and then because of my “MADtv” part I couldn’t do it. Then I played Drella, the harpist, then I played Miss Celine, who was like a 90-year-old stylist. I’ve done multiple things on that show.
Capone: You have these wonderful chapters to your career.
AB: That means I’m old. [laughs]
Capone: I’m sure we all have chapters to our lives, but some people have only read one chapter, and some people have read them all. “Getting On,” which was an amazing show that I can’t believe went three seasons. That third season was my favorite; you guys took more chances in that third season. I thought I read somewhere that there might be the slightest chance that it might find life in some other form.
AB: That might be a bit of the Dawn Forchette in me being delusionally optimistic, but the way it was written, it left some doors and windows open. It was written so we could continue in another form, but would HBO allow that? Could the creators take it somewhere? I don’t know. There are so many “ifs,” but that by far was one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life.
Capone: I had never seen the British show before, but I was always aware that’s where it came from, and in the episode this season where you brought on the original actors, I didn’t even know that’s who they were, and I figured it out. There was something weirdly familiar about them. It just seemed really obvious that there was a kinship.
AB: We kept saying it was like living in a fun house mirror, like it’s exactly right, but it’s misshapen and odd, but you know it’s the same thing.
Capone: That was a great idea that is so rarely tried.
AB: It was so cool. That was so much fun. Just hands down, everything that that show is—the material, the people, the location, the wardrobe—everything about it was perfection. Lightening in a bottle.
Capone: Even though it was meant to be very darkly funny, it had to have been one of the hardest acting experiences just getting the exact right tone.
AB: It was the most challenging.
Capone: Did you walk away from that and say, “I have become a better actor because of this experience and being around these other people”?
AB: Absolutely, it changed everything. And the timing when it came into my life, I had just had my second kid, a month or two before we started shooting, and I was a hormonal basket case. Had that not been the case, I don’t know if I would have gotten the part. I think my audition was so colored by that vulnerability that I had right then and that exhaustion and looking put upon and feeling abused like you do after you have a baby, I think that really had a big part in them seeing me as Dawn. It has completely forever changed me. It absolutely made me a better actor. It made me not afraid to be vulnerable, not afraid to show those sides.
I had always played before kind of a smart mouth or smart ass. In the THE LIZZIE MCGUIRE MOVIE, Miss Ungermeyer was a flippant, smart mouth, not necessarily three-dimensional human being, and Lois, she has different sides and different colors to her, but for the most part, in 22 minutes of animation, you don’t have the opportunity to delve that deep into the colors of a character. This was by far the first time I was allowed to do something that required being a normal human.
Capone: Dawn has so many layers, too.
AB: Layers, and some softness, and not having all the answers, not just having a smart ass reply to something. Just crumbling and folding, I had never been given the opportunity to do that before.
Capone: They always say villains never think they’re villains, and I’m guessing Dawn probably doesn't think she’s delusional. How did you find her? What was the mindset you assigned to her that the rest of us see as crazy?
AB: I think it’s optimism. I do think it’s slightly delusional, but she sees it as optimism. She’s indefatigable. You just can’t suppress her. She’s like a whack-a-mole. You smack her down in one hole, and she’s going to shoot up out of the other one. That was fun to play, that kind of exuberance. You cannot kill this woman. She’s a cockroach, really. That was really fun to play.
It came from the writing. Everything you see is what they crafted, Mark [V. Olsen] and Will [Scheffer, executive producers]. They’re these fine artists, and we’re just the colors, and they decide which to use. They were constantly shifting us, like a recording artist changing the tone and treble and the bass. And Laurie [Metcalf, co-star] too. Laurie’s been acting for how long? She’s a master. She’s I think one of the finest actresses there are right now, and even for her, she says all the time that she had never been directed so well and given so many colors to play. I’m aware of how rare that opportunity was.
Capone: Even on the surface, the show very honestly deals with getting older, dying with some amount of dignity. That’s where the comedy vanishes a moment sometimes. Dawn is really good at her job. Whatever is wrong with her personality, she’s really good at her job. Usually when you see her dealing with patients, it’s really sweet and compassionate.
AB: That was something Mark and Will were instrumental in. They made very clear, one of the first days on set, “You are a disaster. You’re a basket case. But on the ward, on the floor, this is your army. You are the leader of this, you control this, and it’s the one place in your life where you feel control.” So that was always something they wanted to feel, they wanted the viewers to feel. Even if there was a question of not knowing what the next move was, she made it look as though she did. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I”m going to take this, I’m going to hold this.” She has no idea what the next move is, but she’s talking through it and leading everyone else around her to believe that she knows what the next move is.
Capone: For the most part, that’s all of us. We know what we’re good at even if it’s not our life, but we all have one good thing we can vanish into. I love that about her.
AB: I do too, and I love how she immediately will, if someone shits on her, she’ll turn and shit. If Dr. James would shit on Dawn, she would immediately turn to Marguerite or Didi and give it right back. It’s like little kids, when you hear your kids reprimanding the dog the way you would reprimand them. That’s exactly it.
Capone: You had this parade of older actors that come through as patients in every episode like June Squibb and Ann Morgan Guilbert. When that one patient in the final episode started singing Janis Ian songs I was like, “Is that—?”
AB: “That sounds like Janis Ian.”
Capone: I had to look it up, but sure enough, it was her.
AB: Wasn’t that crazy? That was Janis Ian.
Capone: That was great.
AB: We couldn’t believe it. We had Betty Buckley, so many of those women, the resumes they came in there with, the experience. June has become a really good friend now, and the stories she tells. She worked with Ethel Merman, Pacino. She’s done it all.
Capone: I interviewed her for NEBRASKA a few years back, and I was like, “We’ll talk about NEBRASKA, but I want to hear about your days on Broadway.”
AB: Exactly. I want to to hear the dirt. She’s the real deal, and she’s so cool. She’s so much fun. The most interesting thing about “Getting On” that I learned is, you never know you’re old. We look at those women going “Those are elderly women.” June on the inside feels the exact same way, and I still feel like I’m 20 years young. It never changes. It’s like you never match your exterior. It’s such a cruel trick. It’s so evil that your exterior crumbles long before you interior does.
Capone: That is another lesson I learned from that show. I should definitely talk about “Bordertown.” You play two characters. I’ve seen the first two episodes.
AB: Yes, the mom Janice and the daughter, Becky.
Capone: Which Becky’s voice sounds like it hurts to do.
AB: [In the voice] She sounds like this. I like to say she’s part Kathy Griffin and part Chewbacca.
Capone: What was your initial calling? Was it acting? Was it improv? What led you into everything else?
AB: I think it was just performing in some way. The very first thing was Passover, singing the four questions in front of the family. I would always do impersonations of my grandmother, who had this really heavy accent. So it was always some sort of performance and wanting to get a laugh or a reaction out of people. And then at 12, I did this acting camp, a theater camp. From then on, I knew I wanted to do it but I didn’t think I could do it. I majored in rhetoric, I didn’t major in theater. I didn’t think I could make a living doing that.
Capone: Was that around Chicago?
AB: No, I went to school in San Francisco. I majored in rhetoric there and I did sketch comedy with a group in the dorms and standup all the while, but I didn’t major in theater. I felt like college should be something that helped propel me to get a job if I can’t do theater. So I felt like, why would I major in theater? It just didn’t make sense to me, which I’m glad about. I like having a varied background. And rhetoric is the art of persuasion through words, so it’s a good writer’s background, which I’m doing a lot of now, writing as much as acting.
Capone: Does the writing work a different muscle than performing?
AB: Absolutely. Writing is the hardest thing there is to do, in my opinion—to write well, which I don’t even know if I do yet. But writing is really the hardest thing. The blank page is just the most daunting thing in the world. When you get on set and you have lines that you’re told to do, as challenging as “Getting On” was, which it was— every day was a trick to figure out what the tone was, you had someone else leading the charge and the words are there. But when you sit down to write, it’s all on you. I’m writing a pilot for Fox right now, a live-action one, and an animated pilot for TBS, so those are just much trickier.
Capone: So watching “Bordertown,” I was thinking it’s equal-opportunity offensive to both cultures in this equation. Was that a conversation, about going too far?
AB: “Bordertown,” I’m not writing on that, but absolutely. I know Mark Hentemann, who is the creator of the show, and Seth MacFarlane along with him, both have this “Family Guy” history, and both have the same mechanisms in terms of how they run the room. But absolutely, there’s always a discussion, and the room is filled with a lot of people from both sides of the point, too. You’ve got people who are from bordertowns in Texas and a lot of Latinos working on the staff to lend believability to it and to help be a barometer. Really the rule I have and the rule that most people have is, “Is it funny?” If it offends, that’s secondary. Comedy is offense.
Capone: Coming out of “Family Guy,” offending people is not really a concern.
AB: But the old Greek definition of “comedy” is offense. It’s something without pathos, is the definition of comedy. So you have to put that on hold for a second, go for it, go for the jugular, and if it’s funny, you keep it in. If it doesn’t get a laugh at the screening or the table reading, then get out. But it’s not about being offensive, because something could be horrifically offensive and still be funny, in my opinion.
Capone: So how come you’re playing two characters?
AB: Mark Hentemann years ago did this other show called “3-South.” I think it was on MTV. And I did a voice similar to Becky’s and he always loved it. He wanted that character, that voice somewhere, and when this show came around, he asked me to do the pilot presentation. I think at first he said, “Just do both of these because it’s easier for the pilot presentation.” Then I think when it came time to cast it, he wasn’t happy with anything and he’d gotten so used to that sound for Janice the mom that he just had me do it, which is fun. It’s actually really fun to play multiple characters in the same show because you’re coming at the same scene from two different perspectives, like a little RASHOMON, you know? Two different avenues, so it’s interesting.
Capone: When did you start to realize you had a talent for, not just doing voices—I don’t hear any similarities between your voices here and any of the characters that I’ve heard you do in an animated setting. When did you realize you had a gift for that?
AB: Well, right now, you telling I have a gift. I just realized it [laughs]. I think it was growing up with a second language in the house, and learning multiple languages and having that ear, being able to move you palate multiple ways. I think that was part of it. Doing my grandmother’s accent. My parody of my grandmother turned into Ms. Swan, which is a character on “MADtv” So that was really the birthing, when I realized, “When I do my grandmother’s voice, it makes people laugh.” At school, I would do a teacher’s voice, an impersonation of a teacher. But again, I don’t think I thought “This is an avenue I can explore” or “I can monetize this or delight the masses with it.”
Really when “MADtv” happened, the audition for that show, you had to come in with three characters with three different impersonations. I didn’t have any fucking impersonations at that time, so I had to come up with some, and they were so untimely it was ridiculous. I did Eartha Kitt and maybe I did Rosie O’Donnell, because she was very popular. Who was the last one? Maybe Bernadette Peters? It was these random things that were not finger on the pulse at all, but that’s when I went, “Oh!” And every week on “MADtv,” you’d be presented— “You’re playing Bjork.” “Okay, then I’m going to figure out how to do Bjork.” I’d watch the tape. Really the weeks and years on that show solidified that. It’s not like Rich Little, where I exactly get it, but you have a comedic take on someone, creating the characters and the voices. I do think having the different languages in the house had something to do with it.
Capone: Having that around you all the time and finding a way to impersonate the people around you, that sets the tone for the career.
AB: Yeah, but until you get hired and start doing it, you don’t know “This is really something I can do.”
Capone: How did you and Seth MacFarlane find each other?
AB: We were lovers [laughs]. I was working on “MADtv,” pretty new on it, and we had this TCA, Television Critics Association, party, and at that party, a woman named Leslie Kolins Small who worked for Fox in their alternative development, she had developed “MADtv” for the network, and she had worked with this kid named Seth MacFarlane developing animated pieces that were going to perhaps be interstitials on “MADtv,” the way that “The Simpsons” started on Tracy Ullman. That was the plan, and then Seth was smart enough to say “I think I don’t want them as interstitials and give my rights away and own them.” So she was developing a pilot presentation and asked me at one of these parties, “I know you do characters. Do you do voiceover work? Would you be interested in helping us out with this pilot?” And I was like “Of course.”
The only gig I’d ever had was on “MADtv,” so I said, “Absolutely, I’m happy to.” She said, “I’m working with this guy Seth.” I literally met him at a studio in Santa Monica. He had the drawings of Lois and other characters, and we didn’t have much time. He said, “Do you have any ideas for a voice, or what your want to do?” I was doing sketch comedy on stage still, and there was this scene we were doing called “The Magic Man” my friend Jeff wrote, where I was playing his mother [she begins speaking in a slower version of the Lois voice], and I did a voice based on my cousin in Long Island, and she’s also Hungarian, so it’s weird, her accent. But that’s the voice I was doing on the sketch. I said, “How about that?” And he said, “It’s interesting, but it’s too slow. We don’t have time. So we worked on it a little bit. “No toys at the table, Stewie.” It was still a little lower in the beginning; it’s higher now. He was like, “I like that it’s not exactly Long Island. It’s East Coast-y but not matching Peter.” He liked that I didn’t do an exact female version of Peter.
Capone: It’s not the same accent as Peter or anyone else in her family.
AB: No, not at all. When you meet her parents, the Pewterschmidts, they’re upper-class Long Island, from money. I I imagined her backstory—she went to school in New York City, just had this mish-moshy accent. But he liked it. He liked it was indeterminate and mushy and a little grating. Yeah, then the pilot presentation got picked up; Fox wasn’t entirely sold. They said, “Well, can you just audition other people? You didn’t even audition Alex. You just used her on the pilot. You need to see what’s out there.” I showed up and had to re-audition for it. Linda Blair was there, Mindy Cohn. Everyone you’ve ever heard of or seen on TV was there reading for this. I got really lucky that I got to keep it, thanks to Seth.
Capone: And you’ve done voices on his other shows, correct?
AB: I did Loretta Brown. I did Cleveland’s wife Loretta for years on “Family Guy,” and then when he had a spin off, Loretta was already gone. He was remarried.
Capone: That’s right.
AB: I’ve done some voices here and there on “American Dad.” Initially, when “American Dad” was being put on the air, they thought “Family Guy” was dead. “Family Guy” was dead when they were developing that. But by the time it was getting closer, I think they knew both were going to be in contention, but that was something they initially had talked to me about was perhaps doing Francine on “American Dad.” So I’m happy to be in the Seth empire.
Capone: Being a part of “Family Guy” for so long, I’m guessing you could probably do that for as long as the run happens and be very comfortable. But I feel like it frees you in many ways to be picker about your live-action roles.
AB: I’m really lucky. And now I’m so spoiled from “Getting On” that it’s really hard to take anything else. Things that come down the pike, sitcom opportunities or very traditional sitcom mother roles, I can’t do it. I just can’t. That’s why I end up writing. That’s why I end up developing. It’s an effort to do something a little off the beaten path. This thing that I’m writing for Fox right now, it’s still for a network show. It’s not going to be the same grizzly grey that I love about cable and HBO, but being able to write for yourself, you can shoot for something interesting, something different.
Capone: It is something you’re writing for yourself then?
AB: Yeah, something that I like to be in. Who knows? You know how development goes. But it’s really tough having “Family Guy” too and “Bordertown” too and being surrounded by really smart, interesting writers. It’s really hard to try to move backwards. It’s like a pawn: you just want to keep moving forward.
Capone: So you’re concentrating on writing right now. Are there acting jobs that we don’t know about yet?
AB: Right now, I’m not. I’m focusing on these pilots. Literally tonight, I’ll finish a rewrite on this and send it in to see what’s going to happen. If it’s a yay, then we might start shooting something at the end of January. So I’ll be very busy with that. Very soon. So if it’s a go, it’ll be very soon, and if it’s not, I’ll put my ear to the ground to see what the next acting gig would be.
Capone: I have to ask you—and I’ll admit I don’t remember you in this—I noticed in your credits that you were in CATWOMAN?
AB: Oh yes. How could you not remember? [laughs]
Capone: Honestly, it’s probably because I haven’t seen it in ages.
AB: Wasn’t it the worst movie of the year?
Capone: Of the year?
AB: That year it was.
Capone: You shouldn’t limit yourself to just one year. What do you remember about making that?
AB: I ruined it. No, I played Halle’s best friend. There’s a lot of boobs. I had a lot of boobs. Yeah. I’m in it [laughs].
Capone: What do you remember? When you were actually shooting it, was it just any normal film set, or did you go, “Something’s not right here.”
AB: As I said, everything comes down to the writing, and what happened is they went to production long before they were ready because Halle was available, so they let the idea and the shininess of everything get in front of…
Capone: A script. [both laugh]
AB: Yes, they weren’t exactly ready. It’s really a miracle when a movie is great, so this is an example of what shouldn’t happen. It’s just all these different parts moving at different speeds. We were all giving different types of performances too. Right when we started shooting, I remember being given a note, like being pulled into the trailer after the first day and told, “We don’t want anything to be very arch. We’re moving away from arch.” I was like, “I don’t even know what that means.”
Capone: What does that mean?
AB: Like over the top, an arch villain. But it was tough. Our director was predominately French speaking, so it was tough. Communication was a little tough, and maybe that was part of the breakdown, but he’s a brilliant visual artist. This guy did that movie VIDOCQ with Gerard Depardieu, and before that did a lot of special effects. He was beautiful story teller, but I don’t know what happened.
Capone: I always wonder if the studio took it away from him and cut it themselves. Maybe there was something good there at some point.
AB: I don’t know. I was a hired hand and I was delighted. And I loved every second of it. Working with Halle was fun, and Sharon Stone was fun, Benjamin Bratt was in it. It was really fun. I was in Canada, and I had a blast. And it didn’t damage my career.
Capone: At the end of last year, “Getting On” was on a lot of people’s best of the year lists, so now that you’re a part of that conversation about television being in a golden era. What do you look to as the gold standard of television right now? It seems to this incredible place.
AB: It is, right? It’s exciting. I like all dark storytelling. I like darkness and I do enjoy a lot of violence. Like “Deadwood,” I loved that show so much. I just got so into it. Right now I feel very behind on things. I’ve heard a lot about this “Making a Murderer.” I still need to see that. I still haven’t seen “Transparent.” I never started watching “Orange is the New Black.” I’ve missed it all. But I really enjoyed the original French version of “The Returned.” That was magnificent. I love “Luther.” I really enjoyed the beginnings of “Orphan Black,” which I stopped watching because of time, but the ones I saw I just had a blast. I loved watching that.
Capone: Did you ever get a chance to watch “Fargo”?
AB: No I have not started “Fargo.” I definitely want to see it. And it has a real woman at the core.
Capone: There are a couple actually. Both seasons.
AB: I enjoyed “The Killing.” I loved her, Mireille… I don’t know how you pronounce it.
Capone: Mireille Enos.
AB: Yeah, I like a lot of those dark, depressing shows [laughs]. Isn’t that weird? But I do. I just like flawed people. I like watching a lot of flawed, fucked-up individuals on television, and what human beings are capable of is what lights something in me. I like seeing either the darkest or the highest points someone is capable of.
Capone: Even when I see shows that have nice, happy people, I always envision what’s really going on.
AB: Or what you’d like to see happen. It does seem like the biggest problem we have now is the glut. There’s so much material, and you can’t consume it all. So things like “Getting On,” they get missed. Usually when I meet people, if they’ve seen it, they loved it. But most people haven't seen it.
Capone: It’s a a show that sometimes made me hold my breath with the awkwardness of a moment. I can see some people feeling really uncomfortable watching that show, but everyone I know that watched it liked it.
AB: Me too. I think I just know really smart people.
Capone: I believe the main reason I started to watch the show was Laurie because; she has roots in Chicago as well.
AB: This last season, if she doesn’t get recognized in this years round of awards, honestly I don’t know. She’s so fucking good in this season. The things that happen on her face in a millisecond, you see 16 shades of blue that you don’t know existed. It’s unreal.
Capone: She does this thing where—and I don’t know if I can explain it right—she will literally go from looking beautiful to looking ugly in a fraction of a second. And it’s all reflective of what’s going on in her head, just by changing expressions.
AB: Yeah. The best. She’s like a jazz musician. Her face is an instrument. She doesn't need any words; she’s phenomenal. And I was working with people who we were all consistently aware of how good the material was, that was magical. Here’s what I’d like to do in TV—whatever Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer are doing or what they create, I would like to be a part of it.
Capone: Are they on tap to do something else?
AB: They’re always working. They’re developing a few other things. You know how that goes. We’re all waiting.
Capone: I still can’t believe that show was on TV. I’m so happy it was, but I started to watch it and I’m like, “This is kinda of gross, and funny, and makes me really uncomfortable and I have to keep watching it.”
AB: It’s so different. It’s like a car wreck.
Capone: So now you’re just working on your own stuff. How has that process been, other than frustrating?
AB: The first one I did, right after “MADtv,” with one of the producers of “Gilmore Girls.” We developed a pilot I wrote that I wrote with someone else at that time called “Life at Five Feet,” and it was very much a network sitcom. It was kind of like me, almost Cyrano de Bergerac. It was a normal-looking gal being a ghost writer for a super model who has a column. So THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS meets CYRANO. It was really solid. It was perfectly air-able. It wasn’t great or perfect or what you see now on HBO. But it just didn’t make that round. It was that year that “Good Morning, Miami” got chosen instead. And “The In-Laws” with Dennis Farina. Yeah, nothing that lasted. It was for NBC, but we came really close, though. It was my first time out of the gate writing a pilot. It got produced and shot, and we came really close. They said we’ll just do it mid-season, but they ended up pulling the plug.
So my introduction to development was like, “Oh, this is easy.” Then I had two other goes at it. Nothing was shot. We didn’t produce anything. I really like the writing part of it the best. It’s really where you feel…it’s almost like Dawn on the hospital ward: when you are behind your laptop, you’re in control. You’re it. You’re the last word, you chose everything, you make up the names. I love it. Of course, it’s gutted as soon as you give it to somebody for notes. But those moments are the finest.
Capone: Other than the people that you are officially working with on any given project, are there people that you bounce things like that off of informally and say, “Do I have something here? Or is this garbage?”
AB: Yes, definitely. I have a couple of friends. One of them is a writer in “Family Guy” named Patrick Meighan. On this current pilot that I’m writing, I bounced away on him. I took him to coffee and said, “Is this something?” And he has knowledge of the area too that I had chose. “What do you think of this? Is this believable?” When I had my first draft, I gave it to him to read. He had a couple thoughts like, “Maybe not this. Maybe not that.”
But you have to be careful. You can’t take it to too many people and you can’t ask for too many opinions, because guess what? You’ll get all of them. They will all be different, and they’re all subjective, and everyone would write a different show. But it always helps to at least have one person to say, “Am I too much inside my head on this? Does this make sense to the outside reader?” Sometimes you start omitting scenes and pulling and changing the order, and you knew what was once there, but you’ve taken it out, and the viewer is now confused. You should always have to have somebody give you a second opinion.
Capone: Alex, thank you so much. That was awesome. I’m really glad we had no time limit, too.
