The old cliche “I love all my children equally” apparently applies to multiple personality disorder.
“I love them all!” said best comedic actress nominee Toni Collette, when asked Thursday which persona on Showtime’s “United States of Tara” she likes playing best.
Well then, which was most challenging? “Initially, I was nervous about Buck,” she added, referring to lead character Tara’s beer-swilling masculine alter-ego. “I didn’t want him to be too cliche or laughable. But that (anxiety) dissipated after a while. It was just a matter of getting in a room with the other actors and saying my lines.”
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Shaved bald when he took the podium last year to receive his dramatic series actor trophy, Bryan Cranston says he’ll appearing at September’s Emmy telecast once again sans follicles.
“Just like last year, we’ll be a month and half into production,” said the “Breaking Bad” star, who stays thin and bald to play a late-stage cancer sufferer. “I’ll be bald and emaciated again. There’s a discipline to it. Like anything, once you get used to it, you cease to feel deprived. You know it’s right for the character and right for the show, and you know it’s for a good cause.”
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“This is so unbelievable -- it feels like I’m living some crazy dream,” said Cranston's co-star Aaron Paul, also nominated Thursday for “Breaking Bad.”
Moving as a regular on HBO’s “Big Love” to the AMC series several years ago, Paul conceded he didn’t know what to expect.
“This was before ‘Mad Men’ came on the air,” he said. “This was before I knew AMC even did original series.”
Paul added that “Breaking Bad’s” second campaign had distinct advantages over its first, which produced a lead actor Emmy for star Bryan Cranston.
“In season two, we had much more room creatively, because we got our full 13-episode order and we weren’t cut short by a writer’s strike,” he explained. “There was room for more character development across the board.”
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Gaining guest actor recognition for his role last season as assistant district attorney Miquel Prado on Showtime’s “Dexter,” Jimmy Smits said the work helped him get over the cancellation of the Cuban immigrant-themed “Cane.”
The show was one of several ABC dramas launched in 2007 but ultimately upended by the strike.
“In a lot of ways, there’s a bitter-sweet taste to this,” Smits said. “I got to do another iteration of this South Floridian guy and get it out of my system.”
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HBO’s “Grey Gardens,” grabbing 17 nominations including best TV movie, benefitted from a surfeit of research materials, according to Patricia Rozema, who co-wrote the script with Michael Sucsy.
“It was basically an embarrassment of riches,” said Rozema on Thursday morning, after learning of her nomination. “My task was to streamline it all into a clear story. We had so much information available.”
To their benefit, Rozema and Sucsy had full access to dailies shot 34 years ago by legendary documentarians Albert Maysles (an executive producer for “Grey Gardens”) and his late brother, David.
