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I like shooting on location in New York City.
'Elementary' is a strong show; we watch it almost religiously in our house.
Anything that has to do with air travel and air tragedy is of interest to me.
To a large extent, people's interest in the character is the mystery of the character.
I like the things every actor likes - I like great, intense duet scenes with good actors.
I'm terrible with tech. But I'm good with jargon. I can sound like I know what I'm doing.
It's the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again.
Life will be simpler when I don't spend two-thirds of the year in the middle of the Pacific.
I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.
I'm truly glad there are so many options on television that are for grown and thinking people.
I've been blessed by doing classic plays on Broadway, which was one of my great dreams forever.
My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career.
I see it happen in uniracial congregations all the time. But people - when they're in mixed company, we speak differently.
I was a housepainter and a landscape nursery man, and all these various odd jobs I had, and started doing community theater.
Jack Bender is a real actor's director. Because he was an actor, and because he directed theater, he really enjoys that process.
I have had some good fortune in the world of television. I have had it late in life after many youthful struggles and a change of careers.
Then of course there are bigger things that matter, like who do I see up there in the congregation? Do I see myself up there? Well, I don't.
So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.
I'd really like to play a character who's inarticulate. I always play people with language. It would be good to play a mute or a fool or a saint.
There's always that sense of because we're so racially defined, if you're trying to cross the boundaries you don't fit into any particular space.
Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they'd even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together.
I really do think that every time you play a role well, you are in danger of being identified with that role until the next big thing comes along.
As you may know, previously as Attorney General and now as Governor, I have supported legislation to close the gun show loophole in North Carolina.
I've played villains on stage - you know, the Iagos and so on - but I think of myself as a funny person. I mostly did comedies before I did TV work.
So different groups have different definitions, and then they clash on those. So it takes adept leadership to say we're going to work through these.
In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: "You're going to worship with us."
I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.
I had started out my grown-up life in New York City, but I couldn't figure out how to be an actor there. And so I had been a magazine illustrator instead.
What sort of difficulties would happen when people of different cultures try to come together to worship? Tiny little things such as let's tell jokes with each other.
And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they're not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.
I'm very proud of my New York debut. I played Oscar Wilde in 'Gross Indecency' off Broadway in about 1997. And I was very proud of my Broadway debut in 'The Iceman Cometh.'
I used to make training films for the U.S. government. I was always cast as a madman or a prisoner. I once played a prisoner who was holding himself hostage with a razor blade.
The 'Lost' style book is really quite set. We do things like, we walk through the jungle, and we stop and turn and talk to each other. We never talk and walk. We always stop to talk.
I see this in the way that sermons are preached. How would you give a Black Nationalist speech or campaign for the Republicans when you're an integrated congregation? It doesn't happen.
I liked the scenes with the baby, but the baby steals all the scenes that you're in. So that would get old after a while, because the baby is too perfect. I liked being high on ecstasy.
I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, "People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?"
As an actor, I'm not sure what I had to offer the world of tragedy and comedy when I was 21. I hadn't lived a whole lot. By my middle 30s, you know, I had been knocked around a little bit.
Absolutely, although every congregation will say, you know, every worship leader will say it's vital. It's very important, but again these are, you know, these are different cultural styles.
But what we found in the study is that churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in. So there's something more going on than just reflecting the neighborhood, yeah.
Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they're African American they'll say, "I'm not black enough for African Americans. I'm not white enough for the whites. I'm not Hispanic enough."
It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in The Practice than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both.
I ask the clergy why don't I see myself represented in leadership? And I'm told, and this happens quite a bit, "We don't think about race when we hire. We just hire the best person for the job."
It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in 'The Practice' than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both.
One of the first roles I every played, I was Grandpa Vanderhoff in 'You Can't Take It With You.' Walked with a cane, white stuff in my hair. It must have been horrible. Thank God there's no videotape of it.
We've had people say, "Now when I go to work, I don't feel uncomfortable talking to people of different races, and I go up and introduce myself, and I start making a new friend I wouldn't have done otherwise."
I think it's easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that's why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.
Call-and-response style, yes, exactly. So whenever different groups get together then there has to be this long period of negotiation. How will we worship? What's acceptable? What's not? If I want to say "Amen" can I?
Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn't happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they're quite a bit different.
Yeah, it's funny, working on a show with as large a cast as we have here, your work gets sort of compartmentalized. There's still about half the cast that I've never had a scene with but I have missed working with Terry.
It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, "I have to work with whites.