Adam Arkin talks LIFE
Okay so it’s not a recent interview, but who cares!
Back in April, Adam Arkin was interviewed by Comedy Centric, and of course at some point it was question of his most recent work, on LIFE. It’s short, but good.
He makes a point to praise Sarah Shahi, and as anyone who’s watch the show it’s easy to see why, and also talks about the move to Fridays, deciding to do as me and see only the better part of the news (that LIFE is back for another season), and that since the network (probably) has lower expectations than they’d have for a show on any other night, it might be a chance for LIFE to grow there for a while, a long while.
Hey, after all CBS put NUMB3RS on that exact same slot, Fridays at 10pm, and it’s been doing pretty well for some time now…
Here’s the part of the interview about LIFE :
I happen to love your current NBC series LIFE, on which you play Ted Early, the ex-con confidant and housemate of Damian Lewis’ central character Charlie Crews. Is acting on the show as much fun as watching the show is for fans? May we devotees please have an example?
Adam Arkin: Acting on the show has been a lot of fun, primarily because most of the acting I get to do is with Damian [Lewis], who I have felt a great deal of camaraderie with and I like to think we have similar approaches to the work. We are serious about the work but we don’t take it seriously, which translates to being able to relax, have a good time, and get the work done.
Any time you get a chance to work with live animals and have horses on sound stages and swim with coyotes, how can you not be having a good time? And I also have to give a shout-out to Sarah Shahi, who has been doing fantastic work on the show. She’s both a terrific person and professional.
I have to squeeze in a second question about LIFE because I was also more than a little ticked when, after so much finger-crossing and vocalizing by fans to persuade NBC to give the series a second season, the network obliged but then announced earlier this month that LIFE will air on Friday nights — the desert island of broadcast television — when it returns.
Can fans expect anything different from/on the series as a result of this unfortunate time-slot change? For instance, how are the cast and crew coping with the news? Will there be belly dancers, weekly giveaways, devious subliminal messages, and such to lure viewers in?
Adam Arkin: I think they’re planning on giving belly dancers to the cast members to cheer us up after the schedule change. (kidding)
First of all, we haven’t been working together as a company since we got the news. We’ve been on hiatus since the writer’s strike began, and we don’t start working until June. But that being said, there are pluses and minuses to the schedule change. The minus side is that it’s not considered a hot night, and it’s a night that’s traditionally considered for a lower number of viewers.
But there are two additional pieces of information in response to that. Number one, because of the preponderance now of people using their TiVos, and the amount of people watching shows online or recording and streaming video, the scheduled night is not as important as it once was.
And the other issue is that being on Friday night also means that the network doesn’t have as much vehement competition on that night. It’s a night on which we may have a very long life (no pun intended), so I don’t think anyone’s overly upset about it. The fact that we were picked up by NBC is a much bigger deal than what night we air on.
[ Source: Comedy Centric ]