'The Good Wife' was definitely the biggest surprise and gift that I've had in a long time, and that did come out of some other work that I had done. That whole adage of 'work begets work' actually worked in that case - it was at the very end of their first season that my character was first introduced.
I think that in order for anything to work on television, you have to have conflict. Nothing can be too happy or it's boring. People don't want to watch that - they want to watch things that are exciting and dangerous and sexy and have tension.
I shot all my stuff on 'Arrested Development' in one day, and was brought into a really well-oiled machine. 'Cause it was the last season, and they were wrapping up a lot of stuff because they knew at that point that they weren't coming back. There seemed to be kind of a freedom, and certainly the cast had a great amount of camaraderie.
Back in 2004, Kellie Overbey handed me her play 'Girl Talk' to read. I fell in love with her brutally delicious humor and the fearlessly deft way in which she drew her characters. They jumped off the page and begged me to give them a space in which to stomp around.
I got my first big paycheck for 'My Best Friend's Wedding.' This was in the days when you actually did get paid to have a supporting role. It just doesn't happen like that anymore, but this was in the '90s. It was the golden age!
I learned from master teachers at the University of Evansville, at Juilliard, at Shakespeare festivals all over the country, eventually landing at Shakespeare in the Park in N.Y.C. That show transferred, so I got to make my Broadway debut doing 'The Tempest' with Patrick Stewart.
The heroines in 'That's What She Said' are flawed, messy, damaged, hilarious and culpable and not really concerned about being acceptable to the audience in any traditional sense, which for me is what makes them all the more gorgeous. And the fearless truth of that is what makes it funny.
