Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don?t know beforehand what roles we?ll ask them to talk about.
The actor: Few actors embody the concept of the everyman quite so effectively as Bill Pullman. Having successfully portrayed a plastic surgeon (Singles), a private detective (Zero Effect), and a pedophile (Torchwood), Pullman?who may or may not have a thing about playing characters with occupations that start with a ?P??returns to the Oval Office 17 years after Independence Day to play the second U.S. president of his career in the new NBC series 1600 Penn.?
1600 Penn (2012-present)??President Dale Gilchrist?
Bill Pullman: Right off the top, the first thing that leaps to mind is that, in conjunction with the sneak peek of the show, we were on The Voice, sitting in the audience, and for 30 seconds or so they turned the camera to us and said, ?They?re gonna run a sneak peek of 1600 Penn right after us!? I?ve gotten several pins and whatnot to wear on the show, and for some reason, when we went on The Voice, I wore a presidential pin on the inside of my coat, even though I was just there as myself. Not in character, in other words. And as I was sitting there, I found myself thinking, ?This was a weird thing to do, I wonder why I wore this.? But I think it was something to do with feeling the security of the office while wearing it. You can see why people like it, I guess. [Laughs.]?
The A.V. Club: When you were put in consideration for this gig, it seems impossible that someone didn?t say at some point, ?Well, for starters, we already know he can play a president.?
BP: I had met the director [Jason Winer] about a year before, and at some point he must?ve been thinking about me for it, but he didn?t mention it. So when I heard about it? well, I later found out that they thought I was a long shot. It was a case where they didn?t know if I?d be up for it or not, but I was on their wish list, so they went for it. And I thought it was a long shot, too, frankly. When I heard about it, I thought, ?Okay, I?ll read it, but I don?t know. It doesn?t seem likely that I?m going to be excited about playing the president again.? Largely because if it were to get traction, then that?d be my identity for a while. I?d already spent a whole career trying to diversify and stay away from being stuck with any one ?type.? But this one really surprised me. I hadn?t done comedy in a while, I was interested in the writing and really charmed by it, and I just thought, ?I?d better look into this more.? And I ended up doing it.?
AVC: You?re certainly not afraid to do small-screen work, but had you been actively looking for a series?
BP: No. I hadn?t really. I get offers to do pilots and things, but I?ve never really felt like I was a good candidate for it. I guess I?ve always felt like I was outside the culture, be it the mainstream, the zeitgeist, or the media-driven. Because I don?t watch television, and I don?t follow the score cards in The Hollywood Reporter about whoever?s doing what. To tell you the truth, I feel a little left out in the cold! When I watch some of the comedies on television, some of the humor just escapes me. I should probably leave it at that.?
AVC: What are some of the sitcoms that you do like?
BP: Well, when I say I?m out of it, I?m not joking! I watched Modern Family because Jason Winer had been involved with that, and I really enjoyed it. So I guess I would say I like that. But I don?t think it?s a really well-rounded opinion that?s grounded in deep knowledge of the medium.?
Cagney & Lacey (1986)??Dr. Giordano?
BP: Oh, my gosh. That is amazing that you?ve got that. [Laughs.] I was just starting out in my career, and I remember just really feeling lucky that I?d gotten the part. I?d never been on a set before, but I went down, and both Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless were really polite and welcomed me, and I was feeling like I was just a member of the family right away. We did a rehearsal, I was a doctor, and we did a walk-and-talk down a hallway, then they were chatting me up, and everything was very casual.?
Then all of a sudden, we went to shoot, and they had put in all of these extras, and gurneys were going by, and people were stopping with clipboards, and I totally freaked in the first take. I thought, ?I can?t remember my lines! It was all casual, and now all of a sudden there?s all this chaos!? But then Tyne just took me over to the side, and she said, ?Hold up here,? because she could see that I really couldn?t get anything out, and we just went to a room and she ran the lines with me so patiently and said, ?Don?t worry, it happens all the time.? And then I went out and did it, no problem. But I just kind of realized at that moment that TV was a very different ballgame.
AVC: How did you come to a career in acting in the first place?
BP: I was going to college on kind of a vocational program for carpentry, and it was largely an act of rebellion at the time. It was ?71, I didn?t want to go to an Ivy League college, and I was just looking to do something different. But then I went to an audition with a bunch of refrigeration students who were trying out for a play, and I got cast by a guy who became a lifelong friend. I said, ?Okay, maybe I?ll do a couple of plays?? And he said, ?No, you?re not going to do any of these things you thought you were gonna do. You?re going to the college that I went to and getting a degree in theater. It?s a good life. You?ll like it.? So I did that. [Laughs.]?
Torchwood (2011)??Oswald Danes?
BP: Yes! That was a great adventure. In a very bizarre way. I never stopped liking the premise of that. It was a parable that really had a lot of social and political references, with the whole idea that I?m about to be executed and then I don?t die, at which point they realize that no one else is dying any more. I play a convicted murderer and pedophile, the one person that everyone wants dead and everyone wants to see killed, but when they can?t kill me, I turn that around and begin to become a messiah. And I really, really loved working with the Welsh, including the main man himself, Russell T. Davies. He was great, as was Julie Gardner, the producer. They?re most excellent people, as was everyone working on it. The cast was great, too, from John [Barrowman] on down.?
AVC: Not that you haven?t done dark material in the past, but you wouldn?t seem to be the first choice to play a pedophile murderer. How did you find your way into the mix for consideration? Did Davies approach you personally?
BP: Well, no, it was just an offer, but then I talked to him. I?d certainly done dark things before. I?d done a couple with the Lynches, including Surveillance with Jennifer and, of course, Lost Highway with David. But Russell actually said, ?I just thought it?d be a lot of fun if you were playing the role because people don?t expect it.? So I think he just dialed it up that way.?
Lost Highway (1997)??Fred Madison?
Surveillance (2008)??Sam Hallaway?
BP: Oh, my God, I remember shooting [Surveillance] in Canada, and when we went to shoot that? We were on a soundstage, and they?d built a set, so we were in a real contained area. And I came out the door after some of the first takes, and all the Canadian crew, who had been so friendly with me, suddenly seemed as though they didn?t so much as want to catch my eye.?
AVC: What?s it like working with two different generations of Lynches? Are there decided similarities in their styles?
BP: I just love ?em. I feel like I?m as close to them as my own family, just with their charm and the joy I get from being in their company and everything. In that way they?re similar. Artistically, though, they?re opposites. David comes from an art-school background and never discusses psychology, and Jennifer comes from a place where everything is coming from a psychological basis. So they?re seriously diverse.?
AVC: How was David to work with? He has the reputation of being the nicest guy in the world, yet his sensibilities are about as dark as they come.?
BP: Yeah, I was always impressed by his ability to be smiling as he talked about heinous behavior by human beings. Some of it with him, I think, is just a sense that underneath the fa?ade of it all is this turbulent dream world that drags us into modes of behavior that we don?t acknowledge in our public life.?
Igby Goes Down (2002)??Jason?
BP: Oh, yeah! You know, the people who mention that film? You really have to have a good sense for films to find those small movies that stand out as unique and interesting, and I think that qualifies. That one was quite potent for me. My mother had a lot of psychiatric troubles when I was growing up, from the time I was 7 on, so it was a really challenging thing at times for us. As it has been for anyone who?s had a mother or father with psychiatric troubles. At first, you?re thinking that all of this behavior is unique to just your family, because you have no context for it or anything, and it took me a long time to even talk about it. But playing somebody like that was really more cathartic than I thought it would be. I signed up for it thinking, ?Oh, I know something about this,? but I didn?t realize quite what sort of place it would take me to, to the point that when I was doing that shower scene.
We were in New York City, and my family had come to visit New York, and I, in a thoughtless way, said, ?Well, you?re gonna have to come to the set, at any point you want in the day.? And I?m in the shower, with blood down me and snot and everything else, and the assistant director comes in and goes, ?Oh, Bill! Your family?s here!? I said, ?Uh, okay, this is not gonna work. Tell ?em to go home.??
Casper (1995)??Dr. James Harvey?
BP: Yes, well, that was one I really remember looking forward to taking, so that I could bring my kids to the set. They were right at the perfect age to enjoy all the magic of that, and it was right over here at Universal. So I just thought it?d be really fun to bring them over to someplace not too far from their house and go into the haunted house that was built on the Universal soundstage. It was really impressive and a great place to visit. And they watched the whole scene with me getting rolled up in the rug and all of those shenanigans. I was really glad that they could be part of that.?
The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988)??Dennis Alan?
BP: That was my third movie, and I thought, ?Boy, movies are gonna be so exotic!? [Laughs.] Because we went to Haiti and then to the Dominican Republic, and then we had a riot on the set! That movie was such an experience. But I?ve remained friends with Wade Davis, who wrote the original book and who?s almost exactly my age, and I just found that whole world of ethnobotany and the anthropological work, the country, the music? It was all just mesmerizing to me. I still have a lot of artifacts from that set and from that experience in my house. It was a very iconic experience for me.?
Zero Effect (1998)??Daryl Zero?
BP: That was? man, these are all the crown jewels in my little treasure chest. [Laughs.] That one, I think, is one of my faves, because it was just such an experience. I had met Jake Kasdan when he was 13, on the set of The Accidental Tourist, and I really loved getting to know him. Then later, when I was on Wyatt Earp and he was doing a documentary about the film, I spent time with him there, and he said, ?I want to be a writer, and someday I might want to write a script for you.? I said, ?Oh, really?? Thinking, ?That?ll never happen.? And gosh darn, when he was 21, all of a sudden I get an offer for Zero Effect. I just love his sensibility, and his whole approach. It was a great honor to work with him. That?s another case of working with the father and then the offspring. I feel very rich having been able to do that.?
AVC: There had been an attempt to do a series based on Zero Effect, but has there ever been any talk of doing an actual sequel to the film?
BP: Not that I ever heard of, no. I think at the time when it came out, it was right around when Titanic came out, and people never know why movies don?t grab, but it didn?t really grab. And I remember hearing, ?Oh, it?s because it?s two movies: It?s a buddy movie and it?s a romance. And people like simple. They want to know what they?re getting.? Something like that. So I think maybe that?s always been hovering in some money person?s mind ever since.?
Spaceballs (1987)??Lone Starr?
BP: Oh, man, yeah. That was? [Laughs.] I have just had the wildest experience, haven?t I? Actually, speaking of Lone Starr, when we were filming an episode of 1600 Penn? You know, you get these scripts about two seconds before you have to be up there shooting ?em, and I was just doing my work like normal. But in this episode, there?s a wedding, and?I don?t think this is too bad of a spoiler?I end up having to do vows, and they end up getting interrupted, so I say, ?Okay, let?s do this fast.? And the justice of the peace says, ?Do you?? And I say, ?I do.? ?And do you??? ?I do.? And then we kiss and run off. And at some point, I said, ?Wow, these guys know their movies. I never talked to them about the fact that this was straight from Spaceballs.? And during a break, I went over by the monitors and said, ?That?s so funny that you put in this thing from Spaceballs.? And they said, ?We didn?t realize it!? [Laughs.] There are these weird circles that happen if they let you stay around long enough, these curious ways that things circle back.?
AVC: What are your recollections about working with John Candy?
BP: I think about him every movie I do, because he was generous and selfless, and in a way that I really don?t run into very much in life. He was so good with the crews and just very generous, giving them things. And I?ve always tried to remember that with every movie and every project.?
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