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What is it like for you to go to TV? Has it been an adjustment for you?
I've never done anything remotely like this. One of the things I've always wanted ... was to work with people that I like more than once, and you rarely get to. I've always wanted so badly to work with actors repeatedly because the intimacy that you feel, and the safety that you feel and the comfort that you feel with some actors is something that you don't want to walk away from because you can only build on it. I really love these actors that share the show with me. It's dynamite to get to do a different story every week but with the same people.

What was the appeal to you in working in TV and, in particular, with working on a cable TV show when it seems like there used to be a stigma involved with working in cable?
I think cable has gone through this revolution. Well, television has, to a degree, but cable definitely has. They've reinvented themselves. Cable provided people with an alternative to have much greater freedom of expression and to suffer far less censorship.

Do you take being put after Kyra Sedgwick's 'The Closer,' as some sort of vote of confidence from the network?
Yeah, I think it's fantastic. What they've done with 'The Closer' is phenomenal. And what Kyra's done with 'The Closer' is really fantastic, so they have kind of an unprecedented thing going on. So, yeah, I think it is a vote of confidence by TNT, and we're all pretty excited about it.

Do you have any friends in the business who have transitioned to TV that you consulted with to see if this is something you really wanted to get into?
I knew I wanted to get into it, period, because of Grace. As soon as I read the character, I went, "I really don't care where this is happening." But I did call Dylan McDermott who did 'The Practice' with David E. Kelley and just said, "Okay man, how do you do this? How do you survive?" It's an ambitious thing to undertake, the one-hour drama.

Did he have any advice for you?
You know, he just said that the most exciting this about it is that you have to be very spontaneous. You have to live a somewhat different life in front of the camera. You don't get two months to memorize the lines. You might get a day, or you might be memorizing lines the day that you're shooting it. The rhythm of the speed of the shooting can be really intoxicating.

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