Tag: @tvprogram:356543

  • Yvette Nicole Brown: Super Star and Super Fan

    Variety's Celebratory Brunch Event For Awards Nominees Benefitting Motion Picture Television Fund - ArrivalsYvette Nicole Brown may be living her best life. All she just needs is some more quality time with Oprah.

    For the self-admitted super-enthusiast of all things entertainment, Brown’s got just about all her bases covered: she’s a prominent network TV actress (see the insta-classic sitcom “Community” and the current incarnation of “The Odd Couple”); she’s turned her addiction to “The Walking Dead” into regular guest spots on the aftershow “Talking Dead”; she put her red carpet reporter hat on to host the Hollywood Foreign Press Association official live stream of the SuperMansion” to her flourishing voice actress career — which includes stints as Beyoncé on “Bojack Horseman” and Amanda Waller on “DC’s Super Hero Girls.”

    She’s the ultimate fusion of star and fan, as she reveals in a wide-ranging conversation with Moviefone that includes her thoughts on her ongoing projects, her take on the current season of “TWD,” her outspoken Twitter account, the long-apparent genius of Donald Glover, her lifelong love for the late Garry Marshall, and why she needs a real sit-down with the Queen of All Media.

    Moviefone: When the Stoopid Monkey guys called you for “SuperMansion,” were you already a fan, or did you have to check it out?

    Yvette Nicole Brown: I was already a fan. I love stop-motion animation, so they had me with that. You add in Bryan Cranston and Keegan-Michael Key, I’m sold. I got a call about an audition. I think people think there’s some glamorous world where people just get calls going, “We need you on set tomorrow, darling!” No, it’s, “Would you like to audition for ‘SuperMansion’?” “Yes I would.” So I auditioned twice, and I got the nod.

    What did you want to bring to it? Once you got a sense of the role, and you knew the show already, what did you want to bring your contribution?

    I wanted her to be wacky, unpredictable, and fun. Every time Portia came to the scene, or Zenith came to the scene, I wanted them to know that it was going to be crazy fun. I hope that’s what I brought.

    Did you have to think, “Do I do it mostly in my own voice? Or do I put on a weird cartoon voice?”

    I think I was thinking “talk show host,” and she has to have gravitas, and she has to have an Oprah way of speaking. And I did her kind of like in reference to Oprah at first, and then the more we recorded, we realized how crazy she is. So we needed to take Oprah to, like, crazy town. So then it got kind of morphed into more of a mixture of Oprah sensibilities and wanting to help people, but then just a wacky black woman

    Have you met Oprah?

    I have met Oprah, but I haven’t met Oprah. I’ve had the, “Hi, I’m Yvette, I love you” moment, but I want to have a sister-girl sit-down, fry-some-chicken, talk-about-life moment, and I hope one day I achieve enough where I can get that invitation.

    One of the things I love about you is that you are a fan as much as you are a pro.

    I am a fan more than I’m a pro.

    Tell me what’s happening inside your head in a case like this, as in some of the other things you do where you’re living out the fan dream, when you get to show up thinking “I’d pay you guys to be here.”

    I actually hosted the Golden Globes red carpet for the Hollywood Foreign Press and Twitter and I had a moment where it was like, “I need to cut somebody a check. This right here …” Or refuse the check they give me, because this is my childhood dream come true.

    I’m interviewing Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn and Tracee Ellis Ross and Octavia Spencer and Donald Glover. To get to talk to a couple of my friends, hours before they got their first Golden Globe, and to know that that moment of anticipation and excitement is saved forever, and me getting my chance to wish them well publicly is saved forever, there is nothing greater.

    Let’s talk about one of those friends, Donald Glover, for a second. You knew he was talented. You knew he was multi-talented, but what’s been happening lately …

    Listen, if you Google me talking about Donald Glover as far back as 2009 or ’10, I have said this from the beginning: I have never met anyone more talented in every creative endeavor than Donald Glover. He can dance, he can sing, he can draw, he can bake, he can write, he can rap. When we were there first season, and he brought in sweet potato pies, little mini pies that he had made himself? “The baby bakes? Looks like the baby bakes, too.”

    There’s nothing that he can’t do, and also, he’s very efficient with time. When they yelled cut on “Community,” I went to the craft services table, as anybody who watched me balloon on that show will know. When they yelled cut on “Community,” Donald went and sat in front of his computer and wrote a song, or went and sat in front of his computer and wrote a script, or did a treatment. No time is wasted. I don’t know if he sleeps now, there was a moment in time where Donald wasn’t sleeping. He was like, “I’ve got too much. I’ve got to get it out.” So he’s the truth.

    And the thing that I always say about him, too — and I know I gush about him a lot publicly, but I’m so proud of him — he’s also a good man. There’s a lot of people that get a pass for bad behavior because they’re talented, and this industry rewards bad behavior, and you see people that are horrible just continue to get opportunity after opportunity. Donald deserves every opportunity he gets because he’s still a decent human being.

    I don’t think being Lando Calrissian is going to change him. I don’t think being a Golden Globe-winning show creator and actor is going to change him. I think he’s a good egg and will remain a good egg until the Lord calls him.

    Tell me about being an actress, and being Yvette on camera, too. You’re straddling both worlds now. What’s cool about that for you?

    You know what’s cool about it is I always think of acting as an offering. I don’t use it to take; I use it to give. I feel like there’s a lot going on in the world, and if I can be a part of something that makes people forget something at their job, or something in politics or whatever, for 30 minutes, what a gift that is. So I look at acting as an opportunity to say, “What can I give to people today?”

    I think of my Twitter page the same way. The hosting and the “Talking Dead” is me taking. It’s me as little Yvette from east Cleveland being around people whose work energizes me. It’s me getting to talk about television shows that I absolutely love. So it’s very evenly measured. I give and I take, and I hope that I give in the same measure that I take so that the scale stays balanced.

    You, of course, are a well-known “Walking Dead” superfan. Do you think they’ll ever let you on the show to act? Or is it too meta?

    It probably is too meta! I think I could probably be a walker. I’ve talked to Greg Nicotero and Scott Gimple about being a walker. My only thing is, I’ve done prosthetic work before on “Percy Jackson,” and it’s very long hours, and they shoot in the summer in Atlanta, and I’m a girl that likes comfort! So I joke and say, “If they ever want to do a flashback to before the zombie apocalypse in an air conditioned room, I am the girl to call.” But as long as they’re in the woods with soot and dirt on their faces in the summer time, I’m going to have to pass.

    Super polarizing season this year.

    It is!

    What side of the pole are you on?

    I have always been someone that affords a creator the opportunity to create the show that they want to make. I respect Robert Kirkman, I respect Dave Alpert, I respect Scott Gimple, Gale Anne Hurd, Greg Nicotero. They are telling their story, and I as a fan do not have a right to dictate the ride they take me on. I can get out of the car, but I don’t get to ride in someone’s passenger seat or back seat and dictate where they’re taking me. That’s just rude.

    So I thought that the first episode was brutal, but I felt that in order to pay homage to the comic book, it had to be. I feel like those of us that have watched the show from the very beginning, we’ve seen entrails out of people, we’ve seen bloated walkers in wells, we’ve seen people literally ripped to shreds. The reason that episode, the first episode, destroyed as much as it did, was because it was someone that we had been with from the very beginning, and it happened to him.

    But we’ve seen violence equal to, or at times worse, than what we saw in that episode. So I’m not going to tap out because a show about zombies is violent. And I also am not going to tap out before I see the person that caused the violence get their comeuppance. I believe the second half of this season is going to be amazing. I believe that my group is going to find themselves again and come together, and fight back this evil as they always do, and I’m going to be on my couch watching it when it happens.

    At the Globes, Meryl Streep made a sensation, and you yourself have been outspoken on Twitter about politics. I find it ironic that Donald Trump is someone who used his celebrity platform to actually end up in the highest office of the United States of America, and yet actors shouldn’t say anything?

    Isn’t that interesting? Doesn’t the irony just wash over you like an acid bath? That’s what someone said on Twitter. I thought that was a perfect way to say it. I’ve never felt that your vocation prevents you from being American. I never thought that your vocation or your profession prevents you from speaking up about things that grieve your spirit.

    I believe that you are given a platform to use responsibly. I try to do everything in my life with love, with kindness, and with care. When the nation is confronted with someone who mocks disabled people, who assaults women, who vilifies religion — certain religions — and vilifies certain races and ethnic groups, who tears down the family of a soldier who has passed away, who’s called women pigs, and dogs. As a black woman, a double minority, who would I be if I did not speak out against that evil?

    And I don’t care what office he’s in. He’s not the best of America. I’m not saying he can’t be better. It is my sincere prayer that he will get better. But I’m saying what I’ve seen right now, as long as it stays like this, as long as I’ve got air in my breath and Twitter followers, I don’t care if it’s five of us by the time I’m done, I will continue to speak about the things that are not the best of us.

    As a celebrity that’s very wired into social media, you’re a bigger target than me when people disagree with you. How do you handle that?

    Most of them are ignorant — and I didn’t say “dumb,” I said “ignorant.” They don’t know, and a lot of them don’t know that they don’t know. That’s not saying they can’t open up a book, Google a reputable news source and find out, they just don’t know. So the first thing I try to see is, is this someone that is reachable? Because if they’re reachable and they just don’t know, then I’m going to try to share what I can to pull them back from the brink.

    But you’ve got someone in power working against that by calling news fake, and vilifying journalists, and saying that anything that is said that doesn’t come from this source is not true. I knew something was wrong when he told his followers not to watch the DNC. So I watched the RNC. I watched every minute of it. I’ve watched every debate from all of the parties. I am fully aware of every single person that ran. I watched everything. That’s how you make a decision.

    So if all you hear is one side of a story, and you have someone saying, “My side is the truth, but that person is lying,” how will you know? My heart broke when he did what he did to that CNN reporter. My heart broke. Because this is a man that has the most power in the world telling the people that are going to keep him in check “You don’t matter. Your questions don’t matter, and what you put out is not real. Because you’re saying things about me that I don’t like.”

    If he was a decent man, and he heard that a foreign power had intruded in our electoral process, and he cared about this country, he would say, “Stop everything. Let’s redo all of this. Because I don’t want it if I didn’t earn it, and I definitely don’t want it if somebody wants me because it benefits them, and that person is possibly a war criminal.”

    You guys don’t know yet about the future of “The Odd Couple”?

    We don’t. No idea. No, we have no idea. We literally will find out in May, and they have us until June. And listen, we did the best we could, CBS did the best they could, Nielsen numbers count. That’s why I’ve been begging to everyone, I’m like, “Guys just watch these last three. If you’ve never seen the show, please tune in.”

    They put us behind Matt LeBlanc‘s show and we held on 100% to his — and he was a rerun, and we held on to all of it. That’s the first time this season we’ve held on to 100% of our lead-in. I think Matt into Matthew [Perry] would have been a really great opportunity for our show. I don’t know why it never happened.

    Did you get to have many encounters with Garry Marshall before we lost him last year?

    I did. There’s actually a video of me talking to [TV Line’s] Michael Ausiello where I cried like a baby through the whole interview about Garry. He was simply the best that there was. The only person I can think of that even comes close to his level of caring for other people is Henry Winkler. The two of them are cut from the same cloth.

    This, in my opinion, perfectly encapsulates who Garry Marshall was: he said, “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” And he lived that. I don’t care if you were a street sweeper, or President of the United States. Garry treated you exactly the same and it was with love and kindness. And if you were rotten, he let you know you were rotten, and you didn’t have to be that way. You could do better, because we don’t do that here. And he created sets with lovely, wonderful people for that reason.

    I felt his loss stronger in certain instances than some family members that I lost, because there’s not a time in my life where he wasn’t a part of it. I love entertainment, so at every point in my life, there’s a Garry Marshall moment, a Garry Marshall memory. Then to get to work with him, and he was lovely, funny, and an encyclopedia of sitcom info.

    When he did the episode he did with us, getting to act with him was amazing because he’s got little tidbits: “When you cross, you make sure you ring the doorbell, then knock on the door — it’s funnier.” And sure enough, if you rang the doorbell and then knocked, the crowd went “Yaaah!” It’s like he understood the math of how a joke hit someone in the funny bone.

  • Bryan Cranston Loves His ‘SuperMansion’ Superhero — and Would Play Walter White Again

    The 23rd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards - Red CarpetSure, you’re following all of the Marvel- and DC-related comic book superhero shows, but if you’re not watching “SuperMansion’s” League of Freedom, you might be missing the funniest — and maybe even the most poignant — take on the cape and costume crowd.

    As the stop-motion-animated series returns to Crackle for a second season of misadventures from the over-the-hill, dysfunctional crimefighting team, co-creators Robot Chicken”) joined leading voice actor and executive producer Bryan Cranston for a press roundtable tackling an array of predictably silly surprisingly deep subjects.

    What do you bring of yourself to this character?

    Bryan Cranston: I don’t need boner pills! Let’s get that out there! You know, it’s similar to doing live-action, in the sense that when an actor takes on a character, it’s a marriage of words and ideas to what the actor’s sensibility is, and you find where that is. There are times when I’m directed to punch certain things, and I go, “Oh, yeah, I see! He’s more upset at this point.”

    And then, there are times when I bring in my own personality and they go, “Oh, that’s good! Let’s go on that track!” I’ll do certain things or make certain sounds that the guys will respond to and go, “Oh, that’s good!” Early on, as we were feeling through the character, I think it was Zeb that said, “I don’t know, it just feels better when he’s really angry. He’s just really upset.” And then I have to figure out why.

    It’s because he’s losing his sense of relevance. He feels it slipping away, so he’s desperately clutching onto these things. That made it easier for me.

    It doesn’t matter if it’s animated or live-action, you’re still developing a character, you want to be consistent with that character and you’re contributing to the storylines. It’s as engaging as live-action development.

    Did you have to learn a lot about the superhero culture, tropes and references for this?

    Cranston: I’ve never been a comic book guy, so I look at it just from the justification of the character’s emotional sense. What does he want? What does he feel? Who does he want to be around? What is he losing? Who is he afraid of? That always mixes in fine. The more you humanize superhero characters, the more they’re relatable. The more they have a vulnerable point, whether it’s emotionally or their superpower, or whatever, we relate the superpower or the loss of a superpower to their emotions. It’s just fun to walk through that.

    Zeb Wells: And it was important to us that you didn’t have to know a bunch of comic book superhero references to find the jokes funny. We wanted the characters to be funny in their interactions and have very human conflicts, and have that be the basis of the comedy.

    Matt Senreich: You have these insane superpowers, but that’s irrelevant. It’s about humanizing them and grounding them in a way that we can all relate to.

    Matt and Zeb, what made you think of Bryan for this role?

    Senreich: We were afraid to ask him. We wrote the part, and in the script, it says, “A Bryan Cranston type.” We had our buddy, Seth Green, play the part for the temp animatic, and we realized that voice wasn’t good. He just turned to us and lectured us on how we’re very chicken and we should just reach out to Bryan.

    To Bryan’s credit, we sent him the role and within 24 or 48 hours, we got a call back. It was beyond flattering. He was like, “I don’t want to just play this part. I want to make this show with you.” It just took off from there.

    Cranston: For me, if it didn’t have an interesting story to it, I wouldn’t be sitting here. But the idea of a household full of superheroes who are perhaps past their prime and trying to hold on to what’s left of their dignity and abilities appeals to me. And having sequences where the superheroes go shopping and do household chores was a really good idea.

    What did the success of the first season give you permission to do with Season 2?

    Wells: It was seeing how well exploring the humanity of the characters ended up working. With the second season, we could push the drama a little bit and trust that the characters we’d created and that the actors helped us create would make those situations funny.

    So if you look at Season 2 on paper, some of the episodes would sound more dramatic and that the stakes are a lot higher, but they’re all just as funny because we still have this band of idiots. We were really able to take the brakes off and do high-stakes superhero adventures. It’s really fun.

    Senreich: We saw how pairing certain characters together worked or didn’t work, in certain ways, and what conflict built from their politics and their boyfriend-girlfriend relationships.

    Does animation give you an advantage in discussing controversial topics that live-action does not?

    Senreich: Yeah, I think you can get away with a lot more animation than you can in live-action. I come from the comic book and action figure world, where violence is funny in animation. When you go back to Tom and Jerry, it plays a lot better. If you see those things in real life, you’re going to be taken aback. It allows you to over-dramatize certain relationships to get to that point you want to make.

    It just allows for you to push the envelope a little bit more, but it’s dangerous to go too far. It’s about always knowing where that limit is. There are certain topics that are too far, so it’s about where is it too far and how do you make it funny while at the same time not, and also teaching a lesson while going through a situation like that. It’s a tightrope that you walk, and as long as you’re aware of it, you’re allowed to do a little more with it.

    Matt and Zeb, how long have you guys worked together?

    Wells: Off and on, for 10 years now. We’ve known each other longer.

    Senreich: I found Zeb when I was working at a magazine called Wizard, back in the day. He entered a VHS video competition. I was probably 25, at the time, and Zeb was 20. He won that competition, and I just stayed in touch with him ’cause I thought he was a talented fella. And then, when Robot Chicken started up, I brought him on to write with us, and that was since Season 3. We’ve just been goofing around, ever since. It’s been a nice romantic interlude.

    Cranston: Matt is really one of the bosses — and he brought on Zeb to take over this show, and even though the guy who brought on the guy doesn’t agree with everything, he gave the power over to Zeb to say, “You know what? You’re running the show. You’re the showrunner, so go and do what you think is best.” That’s pretty remarkable.

    Wells: We try to run it like a relationship, where it depends on how passionate either one of us is about something. If it’s keeping Matt up at night and I just think it’s a slightly bad decision, I’ll just let him have it. And that goes both ways. The real problem is when we’re both equally passionate. Then, I don’t know how we solve it. Whoever is more stubborn wins.

    Senreich: When you know someone for as long as we’ve known each other, it doesn’t feel like there’s ever a wrong way to play it out. I do believe in the people that I work with. I’m friends with these people, and I know that’s a dangerous thing and people say not to do it, but I like going to work and smiling every day. I don’t want to work with people I don’t like.

    Titanium Rex is searching for relevance as he gets older. You, ironically, have become more relevant later in life, Bryan.

    Cranston: Try telling that to my wife! Art business is a little different. It’s a little different. And I’ll say for men, too. It’s different for men. There’s more opportunities for men. There really is. So I’m certainly the recipient of that good fortune, and I’m appreciative of it. Had it never happened, I’d still be a working actor and be fine, and not know what you miss.

    I don’t think life or this business owes me anything, so you reap what you sow. If you work hard, you have a better chance of producing something that you’re proud of. If you don’t, you won’t. And it’s really simple. Ask Warren Buffett: “All right, Warren, what’s your secret?” He goes, “Well, just make more right decisions than wrong ones.” I swear to God that’s what he says. You go, “That’s it?” He goes, “Yep, that’s it.” Wow. Make more right decisions than wrong ones.

    And it’s like, yeah, I think all of us try to do that every day. And that’s no different. This is what we try to do at work. We think this is the strongest choice. We’re not positive. We think, OK. Then it comes to us, and we’re reading it, giving notes, or reading it in the booth doing it. Then some suggestions, and they’ll take two or three different ways of doing something.

    Wells: Or if we were unsure about something … Sometimes an actor saying, “This doesn’t feel right to me either.” That’s happened with Bryan, it’s happened with Yvette [Nicole Brown]. Then you’re like, “OK, I had that in the back of my head that that might be wrong. If you think it’s wrong as well, then let’s sit down and change it.” And you have to be open to that. You have to be open to the happy accidents and discovering that stuff, where it doesn’t feel as alive, and you’re missing out on great stuff.

    Bryan, your “Breaking Bad” co-stars Aaron Paul and Betsy Brandt told me recently that if there’s any downside at all to be a part of that series it’s the high level of work that you got to do, making it hard to decide what to do next. Do you feel that way when you thought about what the projects were going to be?

    Cranston: It’s a nice, difficult position to be in. Yeah, the bar was raised with the quality of writing on that show, and you want to see if you can match that anywhere you go, and I do. I want to make sure that what I do has specific purpose, and not just throwing a dart at something to keep busy.

    This is an example of just that: that good storytelling doesn’t have to be in the form of the classics. It doesn’t have to be revered by everybody. In fact, to me, the best storytelling is not universally loved by every single person. And to me, I think you water down the efficacy of the work itself.

    Is there any chance we’re going to see Walter White on “Better Call Saul”?

    Cranston: I don’t know. You could. I actually think it’d be fun. I have not been approached by it. I know that Vince [Gilligan] wouldn’t do anything that would damage the overall brand that he’s worked so hard to develop on a stunt-cast kind of thing. Then I think, “Well, what if it’s just a brush-by? If it’s just two guys in a market. Are those ripe? I don’t know.” We don’t even register that we knew each other three years before we see each other again. That’s life.

    It’s actually very honest. It happens. So the bottom line is, I would do it in a second. If Vince wanted me to be on the show, I’d be on the show.

    What’s been the unique pleasure of doing this show, distinct from the “Robot Chicken” experience?

    Senreich: For me, “Robot Chicken” is a sketch comedy show. It’s “SNL” using action figures. It’s always been that, and we always laugh, because if you look at the staff of “Robot Chicken,” my first sold scripts were dramas with Geoff Johns as my writing partner. Zeb comes from the comic book world and was working in comic books for a while. We have two playwrights. It’s like, very odd selection of people who have worked with “Robot Chicken.”

    But this lets you tell a story where you actually can sit down, and it puts us back to our roots where we’re like, “OK, we can actually find characters, we can go into their history, we can deal with their relationships,” and that’s something that we’ve always loved to do.

    Wells: For me, there’s an animatic for a later episode, and it’s a scene between Jillian [Bell] and Bryan. And we were watching an animatic, and I got choked up watching it. It’s like, “That’s not supposed to happen in the Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, watching an animatic for one of our shows!”

    Cranston: That happens to you when you watch animated porn, too.