Acting is a Job: When To Speak

The Closer Season 3's blooper reel includes a scene from "The Round File." Kyra Sedgwick, the actress, sits on a couch across from an elderly woman. Sedgwick is waiting patiently. As the seconds tick by, she breaks the silence to inform the older woman, actress Nina Foch, "I'm waiting for the airplane to pass by overhead."

The sharp-witted older woman retorts dryly, "I know, dear. I've been acting for many years." Kyra Sedgwick laughs delightedly.

Why do they wait? Because acting is a job, and actors dislike having to do extra takes.

A separate commentary mentions

how these actors rehearsed their scenes

together before filming, mostly to

get the blocking down.

Michael Weatherly's commentaries on NCIS episodes are worth listening to since he addresses these types of issues. That is, he actually talks about directing and camera work (he doesn't retell the episode's plot, which type of commentaries drive me crazy--I'm watching the episode! I know what happens!). In one such commentary, he propounds on a scene with David McCallum (Ducky):

"Watch this," he tells viewers as McCallum, as Ducky, delivers a piece of dialog, then slides shut a metal door in Autopsy to punctuate his point before he continues to speak. "He did that to avoid having to come in and record his dialog over the sound," Weatherly informs us, obviously proud of McCallum's seamless performance.

I love these glimpses into TV shows because they remind us, This is a job (and actors don't want to stay late any more than the rest of us).*

*Presumably, Bellisario retired in part because he was driving the NCIS cast crazy; he kept doing rewrites on episodes through the last hours of shooting, forcing the actors to stay longer and longer on set. Mark Harmon finally put his foot down. Harmon won. Bellisario was a master in the field, and the later seasons of NCIS don't have nearly the same cohesion as early seasons or Bellisario's other shows. Still, I understand the actors' frustrations. To them, truly, really, however much viewers romanticize them, every gig is a job.